Community, the tv show

xp yeah it should be said that Louis' deal is pretty crazy and groundbreaking and of course no network is rushing to offer similar deals

also there are showrunners who hoard credit as well. whether that's deserved or not obviously depends on the show, but one example was Aaron Sorkin on The West Wing who actually did cram out every word of every single script for like three seasons coked out of his goddamn mind

i heard something similar about Weiner on Mad Men as well, but I don't watch it, so i'm out of the loop on that one

Most of Harmon's writing credits prior to Community are all short films and/or parodies, as in he is interested in coming up with concepts, not so much sketching them out. Nothing with a long narrative or interesting dialog, just lots of clever concepts. I bet he didn't actually write most of the jokes in Community.

Weiner notoriously hoards writing credits on mad men, it's true. he shares or owns credit on like 3/4 of the episodes last I checked.

Harmon heavitly rewrites each and every episode of Community, everyone agrees on that. As could be seen in season four, his voice is essential to the show. His lack of credits only mean that he is generous with doling out credit - and cash - to the other writers on the show. It's a very nice thing, imo.

Yes, even when he does a page-one rewrite - and he did the final script for every episode of season one, for example - he never takes credit from a staff writer.

So he is generous with doling out credit to the writers who are writing the show? And it is a nice thing he is doing by paying them money? Isn't is standard practice to pay the writers of a show money and give them credit?

He's being generous by giving them SOLE credit (and hence more royalties) since he could by all rights take co-credit on every script, like Weiner. But that's sort of standard practice tbh, since most showrunners are already credited as producers and getting some other kind of backend.

i think it's standard practice for showrunners to not take script credit, i think significantly because of union matters but also just the etiquette of the situation (especially re things like 'story credit', which is something showrunners will often have the right to but won't take). i imagine with someone auteur-ish showrunners like harmon it will often involve them having the idea for the episode, writing a significant outline, then passing it on to the credited writer to produce a draft before it goes to harmon and the rest of the writing room for redrafting, but still then there'll be no showrunner credit.

Someone just convince me he did not come up with some brilliant outlines and then wander around drunkenly from dept. to dept. - occasionally making "auteur" demands and doing self-promotion on social media -- while the show was being made around him.

Like he is on a bender and then the script comes in and he is in a drunken fever pining over the purity of his creation and rewrites a few references and lines of dialog and he has "rewritten the script to suit his vision".

How come seasons 5 and 6 aren't up there with 2 and 3? Was it his brilliant vision to let the quality just slide?

Easy to be a "Ninja of alcholism" if there is a whole team of people backing you up and cleaning up after your messes.

it's almost as if American comedy shows with niche concepts organically run out of steam in later seasons

i think the show might've been better off if they went with the conjectured "replace the cast every four years" plan

3 of the originals are already gone at this point, anyway

Adam, you're grinding a weird axe itt imo

like everyone who educated about how american sitcoms are produced is like "well, no, not exactly" to basically everything you bring up trying to tear some guy down and you keep coming up with random conjecture to continue spitting on the guy, idk man

How is this random conjecture? He admitted he is an alcoholic and he was famously fired for being an abusive one who could not do his job. Dude has a movie out about a tour about a podcast about how he is a genius writer. The internet is filled with people fawning over him. I'm sure he can take the criticism that perhaps people other than him are why Community was so successful.

I looked at how many episodes he wrote compared to his peers and it was lacking. You guys reminded me of TV working practices, ok, I get that. You realize that does not mean that he DID write all those episodes, but that those episode were written by the staff writers and him collaboratively. Take "Remedial Chaos Theory", a classic episode that is evidence of the creative brilliance of the show. It was written by Chris McKenna, who based it on the idea from Megan Gunz. Dan Harmon's original idea for that episode was a riff on the way you respawn after death in videogames. Yet if you look anywhere online he says the original idea was to copy "Rashomon", "Run Lola Run", and "Sliding Doors". It's like he is trying to score points with my Film 101 professor from 1999.

harmon is definitely not a guy who knows much about films other than like Robocop and Die Hard, I'll give you that.

and hey I'm the guy who said the Harmontown movie was so gross it made me give up on the guy, so I'm not defending him as a genius or a dude I love, I just think there's a huge gray area between louis ck and laughable hack.

Word yeah I just need to ignore DH entirely. I wasn't calling out anyone on this board in particular but rather the general perception, DH's bullet-proof brand.

there's a very blackhearted part of me that almost admires harmon for saying, "you wanted your little hashtag to work, huh? well here's your goddamn sixth season and probably your goddamned movie, you asked for it!!" regardless of quality

...and then I remember how distasteful I find the obvious cynicism involved in this completely unwarranted revival of community. and yet ppl seem fairly happy about it, and I don't think that makes them dupes by default, so it's a complete gray area for me. I don't think I've watched an extended stretch of community episodes since season 3

interesting to mention weiner upthread, bc like harmon he is roundly regarded as both a pretty brilliant TV mind (weiner may legit deserve "genius") and kiiiind of an awful person. this has always been something I wonder about. like when I hear an artist of any kind I like is a complete dickbag, I always get kinda bummed even though I know I shouldn't really care about their personalities long as they aren't committing crimes or being bigots

"That was the fanciest sentence I ever heard, and I used to watch Frasier"

Sorry that should have gone in the "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" thread.

We'll clean up your mess you, drunkie

yahoo screen makes this unwatchable

given that they own the content, they should be able to work out the buffer lengths necessary to make good streaming possible.

i didn't have any problems (or ads, weirdly) using the xbox app

finally saw these, first ep was very blah to me, but I dug the 2nd episode. Dean in virtual reality was great, and portugese gremlins cracked me up

If anyone here liked E3, please tell me why and/or how and I'll listen.

The kids pranking the Dean was funny, as were the asides, but the main plot strand just wasn't funny at all.

In general, the bits of to the side of this season have been great, but the chemistry just isn't there between the main group any more. There's a lot of heart missing without Shirley and Troy there. The thudding repetition of "they gave a degree to a dog" suggested that maybe Harmon isn't trying as hard as he would have for network TV.

Britta parts were good, rest was pretty mediocre
I liked the bits with the Japanese kids and the ending tag

Also I still don't understand the point of Keith David's character, and I wish the show had gone to a bit more trouble to establish relationships between the group and the new characters before throwing them straight into forced plot conceits. That was Community's big strength in the first season.

Abed's AV nerd bit was great

wouldn't have guessed that was the episode directed by Bobcat Goldthwait though

He directed a bunch of Chappelle's Show bits, too.

Keith David is awesome, good nerd-get having him on the show. That is the point behind his character. Personally I thought he was great in the Saints Row games.

Yeah it is becoming more and more difficult to care about what is happening at all on this show.

Like I am trying to describe any of these characters in relation to each other and am coming up empty other than they are good at being generators and recipients of snarky comments.

oh I hope they spend a lot of time on relationships between the characters. that was always the funniest part of the show

That seems to be the thing they're doing the least of.

The character stuff was often the most numbskully part of the show

Like it was either pure satire on sit-com form or people kept telling Harmon he needed to make people care about the characters

Community’s biggest focus this season needs to be redefining these relationships for the audience. Are they still friends, or are they now more like co-workers? Is there still a romantic spark between Jeff and Annie or has that dynamic been abandoned completely? Who or what is Chang? There’s more to solidifying Community’s sixth season than randomly plugging in a couple new characters, but if anyone can make these characters’ relationships feel genuine and dimensional, it’s Harmon.

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/community-basic-crisis-room-decorum-216984

Well the comedy isn't doing it for me anymore. I had to rage-quit in the middle of Frankie's speech on "What is truth" just cos it was the nth joke where the comedy revolved entirely around "how clever is this?" I guess this show isn't for me anymore.

It's like the intellectual equivalent of a series of guitar solos.

some people like Grant Green

Are we still supposed to hate guitar solos?

think the rule is you may solo if it sounds like Prince http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/16900-ivory/

or Neil Young: http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19536-strand-of-oaks-heal/

There is lots of pre-grunge guitar on here: some actual shredding and soloing, albeit no showboating. Synths play a much larger role on HEAL, especially on the neon-lit title track and on “Same Emotions”, with its video-game solo on the coda.

so basically you have to solo like Prince, but with no showboating.

you have to be eddie van halen, but only 1984 eddie.

oh look, this is the Community thread