Saturday, May 19, 2012

NBC Messing with Community

I've been really enjoying Community on NBC. They do the most amazing spoofs of genres. One week they describe a "war" on the community college campus between the blanket and pillow forts in the style of Ken Burn's Civil War. Another week they cover a paintball battle by spoofing every action movie. Yet another they spoofed My Dinner With Andre and delivered actual character development. Last Thursday one of the episodes had all the characters in an 8 bit video game that was 30 years in development and had more depth than you could imagine. It was hilarious. This show regularly produces episodes that become my favorite sitcom episodes of all time.

Community's ratings weren't strong. Media Decoder wrote, "The show itself barely survived cancellation this season, finishing with an average of only about 3.3 million viewers, and limping to the finish last week, with a three-episode marathon Thursday night, which hit the lowest ratings ever for the comedy." They also document some of Harmon's less than perfect working relationships. I note that 30 Rock's ratings were worse this week.

I thank NBC for renewing it for a fourth season, though moving it to Friday night means they probably expect just one more season from it, if that. But if you do that, why do you fire the creator, Dan Harmon? That's what they did. The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "The NBC series, which was recently renewed for a fourth 13-episode season, has tapped TV scribes David Guarascio and Moses Port as co-showrunners and executive producers, sources confirm to The Hollywood Reporter." Their previous credits are Happy Endings, Aliens in America and Just Shoot Me.

Harmon isn't happy about it, he wrote, HEY, DID I MISS ANYTHING?.

"Why’d Sony want me gone? I can’t answer that because I’ve been in as much contact with them as you have. They literally haven’t called me since the season four pickup, so their reasons for replacing me are clearly none of my business. Community is their property, I only own ten percent of it, and I kind of don’t want to hear what their complaints are because I’m sure it would hurt my feelings even more now that I’d be listening for free."

"The important one is this quote from Bob Greenblatt in which he says he’s sure I’m going to be involved somehow, something like that. That’s a misquote. I think he meant to say he’s sure cookies are yummy, because he’s never called me once in the entire duration of his employment at NBC. He didn’t call me to say he was starting to work there, he didn’t call me to say I was no longer working there and he definitely didn’t call to ask if I was going to be involved. I’m not saying it’s wrong for him to have bigger fish to fry, I’m just saying, NBC is not a credible source of All News Dan Harmon."

"So do not believe anyone that tells you on Monday that I quit or diminished my role so I could spend more time with my loved ones, or that I negotiated and we couldn’t come to an agreement, etc. It couldn’t be less true because, just to make this clear, literally nobody called me."

Regardless of if you want to make a change, that's a crappy way to fire or demote someone.

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