As Chevy Chase has revealed over the course of several (possibly drunken) voice mails, he doesn’t think Community is particularly funny. As he’s succinctly put it, it’s “just a fucking mediocre sitcom.” As far as your average TV viewer goes, Chevy is certainly in the majority. The show, mostly unknown by the masses, is dismissed even by a lot of dedicated TV nerds for its quirkiness and refusal to say consistent in tone, genre, and form. Where Chevy is, presumably, in the minority with his negative opinion on Community, however, is within the group of humans currently starring in Community. And as recently as April, Chevy was giving interviews where he predicted he “won’t be around that much longer.”

But never mind all that! With Chevy’s nemesis Dan Harmon out, and new showrunners (that have yet to piss off Chevy) David Guarascio and Moses Port in, Mr. Chase will indeed be returning for this upcoming fourth season. Deadline reports that Sony Pictures, Community‘s production company, has picked up the options on the entire cast. That was never really a question with the other guys, all who pledged support for both Harmon and the show in the days after Harmon was fired. But the fact that Chase is willing to come back, as jerk rich guy Pierce Hawthorne, leads you to believe he’s gotten some promises from the new powers-that-be about how he’ll be used from now on. Far-fetched-possibility alert: Will the new, bizarro Community also feature a new, bizarro Pierce, one who is all cuddly and sweet and un-racist?! And, so, the fourth season of Community continues to be a potential source for unquantifiable levels of strangeness.