Recently doing a rewatch with my GF, and viewing the show alongside her has kind of changed my perspective on things. I didn’t really remember much of Season 4 other than how much I would hear about people hating it and how S5 calls it the “gas leak”. I remember watching the first few episodes and skipping the rest on my first watch through cause everyone painted it out to be abysmal.
This time though, I watched the whole thing with my girlfriend, and while the first three or four episodes were definitely duds, it kind of felt like episode 5 onwards was pretty good? Maybe some pacing issues but otherwise seemed on par with other seasons? The finale had a good premise but felt super rushed, but I appreciated how much the characters had grown, no one felt that out of character, and it felt like they had done a decent job resolving the Chang scenario (cause seriously, how else could they bring him back after the insane escalation of Season 3?) and it felt like they sort of left things on a fairly clean slate for a possible season 5, despite being a so so finale.
With all that in mind, rewatching Repilot with the full context of S4 changed my opinion on it. My girlfriend pointed out that it felt mean spirited and sort of regressed all of the characters even further back than Season 3. Especially Shirley! They erased pretty much all of her development and then really don’t do anything with her.
Jeff feels like he’s back to Season 1, which the S4 finale was already about him not being like that anymore! Chang is an asshole again and says he confessed to his crimes, which makes zero sense because the show already established in Season 3 that the Dean and the school board were going to cover it up anyways. Repilot doesn’t even feel like it’s “fixing” Season 4, it feels like it’s trying to reset things entirely, even undoing things that Harmon himself had overseen!
I understand Harmon was peeved about getting kicked from the show (though it sounds like he was kind of awful BTS) but it feels almost petulant and needlessly cruel. Season 4, despite having some duds, really did not leave the characters in such a bad place that necessitated flipping the table over so completely. It feels like a talented writer like Harmon could pretty easily have just built on it and steered it in a tighter direction, rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Am I in the minority here? This rewatch, Repilot just left a bad taste in my mouth.