There was a fashion once for novels to have subtitles – not as in “Pride & Prejudice II: The Revenge” but “Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus”. Please consider the following to be called:

Constraints are good for you, or, What’s Wrong with Community?

There is unfortunately a lot wrong with the new season 6 of Community but constraints and the lack of them is a big enough issue that you can identify it.

Community used to be on NBC television in the States and all network television shows have mandated running times. They’re getting shorter, but they’re mandated. To the second. Here in the UK, Russell T Davies once argued that he really needed a longer running time for a particular episode of Doctor Who and Julie Gardner persuaded BBC schedulers to allow it. But as good as she was, she could only pull that off because the show aired on Saturday nights. If it had been during the week there was no possibility whatsoever because the six o’clock news hour will always finish at 7pm and you’ll never guess when the ten o’clock news is on. Saturdays don’t have those two bricks in the schedule so there was room yet it was still a big job and a big ask to get the extension.

Especially since Doctor Who is sold around the world and every other network has the same constraints. I don’t know this but I’d bet money that Doctor Who episode now exists in two forms: the original UK extended one and an edited version that was shown around the world.

Community has stepped free of these constraints because it’s no longer on television, it’s online. Yahoo Screen made its single biggest splash on the web by buying the show and producing a new season. I think they also cocked it up, mind. If you’re in the UK, go to the UK Yahoo Screen website and you’ll see that you can exclusively watch episodes on that site – but you can’t. You can’t watch any episodes there, not one, because they made a deal with Sony Entertainment TV to air the show on Sky TV a day after its official release each week. Good for them getting some money for the show. But we’re on episode 12, we are three months into this and still the website for their single biggest property is wrong.

I am curious about that airing on an obscure, high-numbered Sky TV channel: from what I can see the episodes aren’t edited to fit the slot, they just take whatever time they take. And I do see that they take more time than they used to.

On NBC, each episode was 22 minutes – and a marvel, just a marvel with what they did in that time – whereas the new sixth season episodes will sometimes run to 26 minutes. I want to say a couple are longer but I can’t prove it.

The show still has financial constraints, its budget is its budget and you don’t get more cash just because you fancy running a little long this week. The length is now entirely an editorial decision and I think they’ve got lazy because they could.

Back in the first season, there was some change that meant they suddenly had to fill a few seconds under the end titles so they filmed little vignettes – if you know the show, it was usually the Troy and Abed routines – and added them to the episodes. They were funny, they were warm, they were daft and you liked them.

In season six, they’re gone but you regularly get an equally unrelated moment. You get a scene with characters who may have been mentioned in the show but usually not seen. You get something that’s tangentially related to the story but if you could have a very tangent, they are very tangential. A couple are fine and forgettable. Some are rather touching. But the rest are just dire.

No, they’re not just dire, they are dire and also very long.

Once when I raved about Community I mentioned that it was an episode about paintball that hooked me. Then I said that I’d just learned there was a sequel paintball story in the next season and it took will power, serious fighting will power, to stop myself from just leaping forward to that story. In comparison, there was a paintball episode in season 6 last week and when I heard it was coming, I actually said aloud: “Oh, no.”

It turned out to be fine. Not brilliant, not on a par with the previous ones, but a definite high point in this season – except the last three minutes are this other unrelated scene and it just made me wince.

Much of this run is liable to wincing. As in the poor season 4, you can see the actors acting and so many of the quirky things that happen feel forced. Chang falls over a hedge in episode 12 because it’s funny to have Chang fall over a hedge, not because anything got him there. Characters now react in a sitcom way not because the show is mocking sitcoms but because it is one.

So there is a lot that is disappointing about season 6, the so very much awaited and hoped-for season 6, but if you tried to fix it, the first thing you’d do is sort out the running time.

When you can’t go over 22 minutes, you have to lose material and that is hard. But it turns out that it is better than keeping that material in. You have scenes and lines you love but still it is better if they go. Maybe all I’m doing is paraphrasing William Faulkner’s line that ‘in writing, you must kill all your darlings’ but if so, then ironically I’m doing so at enormous length.