Community, the tv show

Her other experience in television is Mad Men, Weiner seems like the sort who wouldn't (or wouldn't let any of his writers) turn in anything late. xp

Anyone else get the feeling that Chevy wasn't even in the same room as the others for most of this episode? Pierce was either the only person in the shot or filmed from behind. The exception being when he was sitting next to Troy in the study room and I'm pretty sure that was two images next to each other.

Hologram Pierce

heard that harmon was pretty checked out and awol during s3 - no doubt due in part to network note bullshit, but not shocked that he might have been less than profesh

i mean they don't fire you JUST because you're determined to blow minds

Harmon has admitted himself that he is 'hard to work with'. He has diagnosed himself with asbergers, and is a functional alcoholic. I mean, the show was amazing, but I can't be surprised that Sony didn't want to work with him. I think he would function better on cable, but he seems to want to try and create a broad hit, which just seems weird.

http://www.deadline.com/2013/05/community-is-coming-back-will-dan-harmon-return-too/

last season nbc was super psyched about their new sitcoms to the point where it looked like it might be the end of all their cult thursday shows. Now, everything is canceled except for two of the cult thursday shows. a+

xxxpost whoops I meant Gillian Jacobs, not Alison Brie

i britta-ed that one

He has diagnosed himself with asbergers

Unless he's been actually diagnosed this is probably bullshit.

my god that Deadline article is so dumb.

Unless he's been actually diagnosed this is probably bullshit.

I completely agree but I'm fairly sceptical of actual 'diagnoses' of things like this as well.

the extent of his self diagnosis was that people started telling him that Abed surely had Aspberger's and he thought, well a lot of Abed's quirks are based on my own, therefore I must also have it.

Well, no, he looked it up on the internet and took some tests and stuff. Which is still probably bullshit.

god do people not understand what doctors are for

It's possible that the people telling you about this on ILX are not registered doctors who are accurately reporting Harmon's actual words

heard that harmon was pretty checked out and awol during s3

The writers' room's tumblr was from S3 wasn't it? Or might have just been when I saw it.

Anyway, ppl who worked on S3 have said that 50-85% of another writer's script could be written by Harmon, and the immediate collapse of tone & pace in S4 indicates that he was still present in the editing bay right through S3.

i know he's famous for doing rewriting but I've heard some secondhand chat about him being less predictable and waaaaay behind schedule in s3. while obviously there's a big shift between s3 and s4, s3's patchiness/clumsiness compared to s2 indicates something too.

meant less reliable not predictable

looks like i'm not the only one to hear this

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/05/11/could-dan-harmon-return-to-community-for-season-5

There are definitely reasons to be skeptical about this, one being that Sony and NBC letting Harmon go was due to many factors, with his feud with Chase just one – one that was notable and got lots of press, but at the most was likely a straw that broke the camel’s aspect back more than the central issue, and even that may be an overstatement. In fact, long before the Chase issues, Harmon was said by many to have frequently gone over budget and both he and his writing staff have spoken openly in the time since he’s left about how he almost never had a completed script ready on schedule, making it very difficult for production on a basic level. On top of that, it’s well known (and acknowledged by Harmon) that he was prone to flat out ignoring studio and network notes, something that might make him a hero to fans, but is not desired by those in charge.

that doesn't mean "awol" though, it's more because he wouldn't let something go in order to get the whole thing done

Harmon was said by many to have frequently gone over budget

he's said this himself, and he used to put his own pay back into the production at times

After staying away from the series at first for fear of it being some horrific mess that would spoil my memories of what came before, I have to say that season 4 really didn't seem all that awful to me. Some missteps, sure, and it didn't have the same spark as before, but it wasn't unwatchable. And it sure as hell wasn't as bad as The Big Bang Theory.

i would have preferred it to be a horrific mess rather than bland and unfunny

This was still WAY better than Big Bang Theory

Y'all are high

Maybe you're low?

adam's right

i'm with the attitude that even a mediocre Community is better than most sitcoms and still enjoyable. also agree with the prediction that season 5 will be better than season 4, there were a lot of obvious transitional pains going on with this season, not to mention the horrific scheduling mishaps which were made worse when it seemed like half the episodes were holiday-based

i don't really gaf if a show airs things when it's seasonally appropriate. pretty much every show on cable airs holiday/seasonally specific episodes at the 'wrong' time of the year and it's not like it matters to me at all when i'm watching.

one episode isn't that noticeable, but we only had 13 eps this season so the the abrupt jumps from halloween > thanksgiving > christmas during february-april was really weird to me

i think most cable shows wouldn't do that many holiday episodes in one season either for that reason

The first half of Mad Men season four was just holiday episodes. And it was awesome!

30 rock had a holiday episode themed season which was awesome.

so uh Dan Harmon was apparently offered his job back?

What?

lol

couple folks were talking about it on twitter, apparently he brought it up at one of his Harmontown things

http://www.uproxx.com/tv/2013/05/dan-harmon-says-hes-been-asked-to-return-to-community/

would be happy if that happened, although suspicious that he and/or the stanbase would find some way to fuck it up

He admitted he'd been asked, but apparently said he'd only return if Chevy did too. Not sure which half of that (or if all of it) is the joke.

i think we are being deprived of an epic Pierce death scene tbh

He said he'd been approached but only as part of a ploy to get a new season okayed, and now that that's happened the deal is off the table.

How are they justifying a fifth season? Did they all get held back a year?

feel like people are sweating the 'logic' of that too much. it's not remotely as glaring as high school shows full of 20somethings or the Korean War lasting 11 years.

jeff and pierce are the only ones that graduated

I'm not necessarily on board with every situation like that either BUT if the linear passage of time is not actually part of the reality of the show, I don't have much of a problem with it. With Community, they were constantly counting the years until graduation etc so it does seem glaring.

xpost

I don't even know if "glaring" is the right word: it seems like a question that's at least worth asking.

I mean, Annie's and Shirley's competition to be valedictorian is one of the things that actually stands out in my memory about what I saw of s4.

the whole idea of "graduating" in four years from a community college, or a community college where people live in dorms, and all other kinds of thing.... i mean this show was not built with verisimilitude in mind, let's put it that way

it's like they want to make liberal-arts-college jokes AND community-college jokes so they just kind of combine the two (nonsensically, but in a way that sets up enough good jokes that nobody really cares)

i became jamaican for a moment here

"all other kinds of t'ing, y'know"