Community, the tv show

revenge is basically lost minus the scifi w/ the narration from desperate housewives but it's still fun, the only network drama i watch. so apt 23 was funny?

Suburgatory is great, but it might be funnier if you actually live in Chatswin.

apt 23 is like a more surreal, frothy Girls with James Van Der Beek jokes, basically.

My buddy Mo on Harmon is/can be a big dick, but how it's the job of NBC to deal with dicks to get good shows:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maureen-ryan/dan-harmon-fired-community_b_1529588.html

Take away:

Look, creative types can be a real pain in the ass. There aren't a ton of showrunners who make the trains run on time, make something approaching art and are also nice to everyone (there are a few, and they are worth their weight in gold). But that's the business "creative" executives are in. It's messy, it's not easy, but if TV executives wanted to go into something more predictable and less stressful, why not try accounting?

i think the s3 peaks (which admittedly i might be talking about 3 or 4 episodes here) hold their own w/ anything from s2 and the valleys might average better than the valleys from s1. parks dipped some this year also i thought (though i'm not one of those who had problems w/ the election plotline, if anything the opposite) but unlike last year where picking a winner between parks and community was more making a choice about what you think a sitcom should/could be than just judging who had the better year here it's pretty clear parks had the better year.

i think you get away with being a crazy showrunner only if your show's a hit. Unless these corporate monoliths decide to speak up for themselves, I just have to assume Sony wants to squeeze out a few more syndication dollars before NBC finally pulls the plug.

were there really valleys in S1? The quality grew gradually, but I can't think of anything as annoying as Detective Chang in s1

valley = not peak episode. i doubt there's five episodes of this show total i haven't liked at least as much as yr average ep of suburgatory. the only episode i can think of i remember out and out disliking was the season 2 abed as jesus one.

Detective Chang was amazing, could have taken another couple of eps with his disconnected internal noirration

valley = not peak episode. i doubt there's five episodes of this show total i haven't liked at least as much as yr average ep of suburgatory. the only episode i can think of i remember out and out disliking was the season 2 abed as jesus one.

― balls, Sunday, May 20, 2012 9:51 AM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah same here, and i am one of Suburgatory's bigger fans here. Apt 23 is aight but i'm not sure its best ep is as good as Community's worst.

Abed as Jesus is one of my faves!

My favorite article on this so far:

Auditionmoviesite.com

Comedy veterans David Guarascio and Moses Port have became a member of cult comedy series Community as executive producers-showrunners. Creator-executive producer Serta Harmon, that has run the underrated single-camera NBC series because of its first three seasons, is a talking to producer. Community, a decently-ranked series having a large online following and rabid group of followers, arrived a 13-episode renewal for pick up if this will relocate from Thursday to Friday. Requested the 2009 week whether Harmon will return as showrunner pick up, NBC chairman Bob Greenblatt stated, “I expect his voice to participate it.” Greenblatt ignored the concept the discussion about Harmon possibly walking lower from day-to-day oversight from the show comes from his ongoing feud with co-star Chevrolet Chase, stating that you will find bigger factors beyond that. “Dan’s the creator from the show, to lose his voice could be pretty crazy,” Community star Joel McHale told TVLine on Monday. “I pray it calculates well"

I pray it calculates well

CHEVROLET CHASE

Rich Corinthian leather

Academy Award De La Hoya

lol harmon's myspace handle was 'unspeakablesadness'

btw maybe i missed some especially damning story but i don't really know why Harmon's being considered a bigger-than-average asshole, especially in Hollywood. i kind of figured that his tendency to care too much was just being treated loosely as character flaw while acknowledged implicitly as a prerequisite for his job. if anything it was the sharing too much that did him in -- whether or not the Chevy thing was what directly resulted in his firing, it was pretty dumb/naive of him to think he could play angry voicemails from his show's most famous actor in front of a paying audience of any size and think that wouldn't cause a shitstorm on the internet.

i think there's an unspoken Hollywood rule that you can only air your dirty laundry to Nikki Finke

best part of the 3 eps:
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m48gfsxYWv1rwsy5jo1_500.jpg

Geez Dennis, are you on coke?

I think Harmon just doesn't know how to use his inside voice and/or play well with others.

Best part was Goth Britta and then the Dean randomly remembering they throw raves there on the weekend!

As much as I appreciated his transparency and candor, I don't think having such an open relationship with fans worked in Harmon's favor at all. At least not with respect to his success at this particular endeavor. He probably built a pretty sizeable fanbase who will continue to check his stuff out.

I'd be excited for his next move if I didn't remember Running Wilde

The air conditioner school stuff was awesome enough that I really wish Ken Jeong had skiddadled to cinema and not forced them to find shit for him to do at the expense of everything else.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m48gfsxYWv1rwsy5jo1_500.jpg

yeah i was actually kinda crestfallen by 'are you on coke' cause i was hoping they were gonna fully commit to the mad max vibe for the scene

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/grace-parra/dan-harmon-community_b_1531004.html

Who is this? Those of us not applauding Harmon's firing are bad people, because he apparently mistreats his employees (tho there are no instances cited, nor have any appeared in the press aside from him playing the Chevrolet tapes.)

i don't know who that is but she is v v attractive

Blog content is terrible, yeah, but she's pretty.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/bastard-machine/why-firing-dan-harmon-community-327002

While NBC probably would have preferred Sony not fire Harmon, and avoid more "NBC why u hate funny?" shit, they already slotted it for a half-season on Fridays, so in the long run it's not their battle.

Hm, wasn't as into "The First Chang Dynasty". I hate Chang and his army though. I kind of felt like I was watching an Adult Swim show (which I generally don't like at all). I was actually a little touched when Troy send his goodbyes, however.

I guess I'm just not that enamoured with Suburgatory or Apartment 23, although I'll watch them if I'm too lazy to do anything else. Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock might possibly have been better than Community this season.

I don't care. People make TV shows, I usually don't care who it is if the show itself is good. He had a handful of near-duds this season but went out on a good note. Maybe he'll go on to do even way better things than Community after this. Got to look at the bright side. I don't understand people getting all emotional about TV bureaucracy drama.

because people like the show and are sad to see it gutted after being renewed

sad to see it gutted after being renewed

All the cast remains, and so far only one writer has left in protest of Harmon's firing. I wouldn't call that "gutting" the show, but I guess it depends on how much or how little you think Harmon had to do with Community's day-to-day operations.

this news definitely shouldn't bother fans of Bob Camp Ren & Stimpy episodes and the last season of gilmore girls

John K. never took Ren & Stimpy so far up its own ass that a change seemed needed. Community has been barreling toward that conclusion for most of this season.

ok you just questioned how much dan harmon had to do with the day-to-day and then suggested he made it require rectal surgery

By pretty much every account Harmon was really hands-on and, to his detriment perhaps, unwilling to compromise on a lot of things he wanted to do. Considering his top lieutenants left, and another major writer has quit, and presumably nobody within in the show wanted to step up and take the reigns, and they've had to get two guys who have never worked on it, I imagine there's going to be a lot of changes. Especially as Harmon's idea were very...particular.

And yeah, fans of GG and West Wing and NYPD Blue and whatever know how it can be, but this is worse imo because the studio isn't just trying to maintain continuity without a unique voice at the centre of its creative process, it actively wants to alter it to appeal to more people. There's a real worry that the studio desire is to strip out a lot of the idiosyncratic elements that have tended to set it apart from other sitcoms.

"There'll be...an actual clip show!"

i do wonder if they're actually trying to overhaul it or just get it to a syndication goalpost without a lot of hassle

Gutted = stripping away all the moving parts, not just replacing the roof.

Harmon was by all accounts the idea man and mostly hands-on in the editing stage, but the writers did the heavy lifting episode to episode. I trust them to carry what's left of the show's arc in a satisfying way.

yeah but the writers that were closest to the larger process are gone.

Well, if it comes back in the fall looking more like Friends (in college) than Community, I'll be the first to admit I was wrong. But I don't see that happening.

lol fever do you understand how writers rooms work???

in american tv at least?

I must admit I am curious to see whether it goes Friends (in college) or "Abed dreams the cast are in the Wizard Of Oz"

why don't they just make a spin-off where pierce runs a bar

lol fever do you understand how writers rooms work???

Sure, I watched Studio 60 lol.

so that's a no then

Yeah, that's a no. Why would I have any realistic idea of how a writers room works? All I know is that showrunners are, for the most part, a revolving door on tv and it's only a select few whose vision really permeates he or she runs. Harmon is Community, but I don't think Community has to be Harmon.