Is everything just officially announced through twitter now?
As it turns out, the answer is a strong “maybe.” When Community was renewed for another 13-episode season by NBC last month, Deadline reported it had heard the season was likely to be the show’s last, and that the famously fired show creator Dan Harmon would be approached about returning to the show as Executive Producer/Showrunner. Then, on his podcast last week Harmon let it slip that he had indeed been invited back to the show, and yesterday he responded to a direct question posed to him on his Twitter account with the following three tweets:
“Yes yes yes! I’m back I’m back I’m back. You can thank @joelmchale. / Here are my ‘deal breakers’ coming back to Community: Rhonda Robinson on props. Denise Pizzini on design. Ruthie Aslan in post. Tell Sony. / Also I would very much like it if @joelmchale @yvettenbrown @GillianJacobs @alisonbrie @dannypudi and @DonaldGlover were somehow involved.”
Here is the cast, dancing with joy, at hearing the news.
Not just that, though. According to Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter, Sony Pictures Television (SPT; the show’s producer) is also finalizing negotiations with writer/executive producer Chris McKenna to come back as well. McKenna might be best known by fans of the show as the writer of the Emmy-nominated season 3 episode “Remedial Chaos Theory” (aka the one with the multiple timelines).
Harmon was fired from his position as Executive Producer/Showrunner by SPT and NBC in May of 2012 after the show’s third season, at which point McKenna left the show for a two-year deal with Universal Television. McKenna was not alone, as other key creative personnel such as Andy Brobow, Neil Goldman, and Garrett Donovan had left the show by that point as well, though not necessarily all leaving at the same time. It’s unclear if any of them might be able/willing to return as well. However, it seems likely superstar writer Megan Ganz-who wrote the beloved Law & Order spoof episode and was still on the writing staff for season 4-isn’t leaving her new job as a writer for Modern Family anytime soon, and directors Joe and Anthony Russo are pretty busy directing the new Captain America movie.
Here is Alison Brie dancing at the news of Harmon’s return.
Of course, nothing is actually official at this point. Deadline reports that although it is expected to get done soon the negotiations with Harmon did hit a snag yesterday. However, Harmon’s replacements, David Guarascio and Moses Port, have reportedly passed on returning to the show meaning one way or another there will be a new showrunner(s) next season, and it’s probably going to be Harmon. According to Hitflix, this rather unexpected turnaround might have been instigated by the cast from the show lobbying SPT to bring Harmon back due to their displeasure with the quality of the scripts in season 4.
Although it was never officially explained why Harmon was not asked back for the show’s fourth season, it was assumed his feud with show star Chevy Chase played some sort of role (something Harmon refutes). At the time, Harmon took to his website and explained his ousting as being due to SPT and NBC wanting the show to have a wider appeal, and his temperamental nature wasn’t worth it for such a marginally rated show. However, industry sources speaking to Vulture.com directly refuted many of Harmon’s claims, and painted a picture of a show which was glorious on the screen but a nightmare to work on, thus explaining the massive turnover (more so than normal for a TV show) on the writing staff from season to season.
Since being ousted from the show, Harmon has sold an animated show, Rick and Morty, about a genius inventor and his grandson, to Adult Swim. He also signed separate script deals to develop television shows with CBS and FOX, and embarked upon a Kickstarter campaign to fund a stop-motion animation project with Charlie Kauffman.
I still think the non-Harmon puppet episode from season 4 was great.
Sans Harmon, the fourth season of Community was generally panned by critics, as it took a fair amount of generous squinting to see the new episodes as anything other than a step down in quality (although I personally loved their puppet episode, and thought some fans were a little too blindly too devoted to Harmon in decrying the quality of the new episodes). However, the third season, Harmon’s last, had also been something of a step down in quality from what had come before. Harmon had built the show’s reputation around its propensity for meta-humor and genre spoofing. However, at some point during this process the characters became secondary. As Jesse David Fox argued about season 4 on Vulture.com:
“Somewhere in the middle of the second season, the idea of how Community was revolutionizing television (which it was) became more important than any of the show’s actual characters. Viewers followed the show to see how it played with the sitcom form each week and less to see what the characters were doing or why they were doing it […] But now that the dust has settled on that era, we are stuck with tossed-off parodies and characters (save Jeff and Abed) that feel incredibly underdeveloped for a show that is in its fourth season.”
To me, season 4 looked like a show which no longer had that guy behind everything who would pull multiple all-nighters to make sure everything was perfect, or pay out of his wallet to get the title card sequence changed when SPT wouldn’t put up the money themselves. It lacked that incredibly self-destructive creative force behind everything who would be willing to sacrifice personal relationships and sanity to make every joke great. Those, of course, are all kind of bad things, but are undeniably what Harmon brought to the show and is possibly bringing back to the show now.
NBC currently has not scheduled Community, meaning it has been renewed for a new 13-episode season but NBC has not committed to when it might air. As such, it could replace one of the new shows that fails (because most will) in the Fall, or could end up a mid-season replacement again. If no additional episodes are ordered, the new 13 will bring the show’s total number of episodes to 97, a good number for syndication purposes. Re-runs of Community will begin airing on Comedy Central at some point in the Fall. All prior seasons are currently available on DVD and Hulu Plus.
What do you guys think?
