They were awful, honestly I hated Shirley, for every funny thing she said the sweet cutsy mum voice made me want to kill her. 1% of her time on screen was worth having her around, the rest wasn't.
Pierce was a brilliant character, but things happen, time moves on. HIckey was pretty boring but not at all bad.
Characters being gone didn't ruin the show, horrific writing did. Early in the series there was occasional jokes about the show, but it was one character believing his life was a show, the rest thinking he was nuts. That was fine, now every other episode they talk about the show, the potential film, etc. That they bang on about it makes it not at all funny or interesting. The new woman had nothing to her character and had Abed sitting at a laptop sending e-mails... how funny.
The main thing is it just wasn't funny. It lost it's way entirely, Jeff the teacher... with almost zero stories involving him teaching, other people all doing essentially boring things. At least last year had funny bits even if it wasn't up to the first few years standard, this fell way short of even last years level. There were about 4-5 actually good lines across both longer than usual episodes.
Mucho disappointed
