Your opinion is not shared by me. I thought Community just kept getting better.
Beyond that, why would anyone be surprised Harmon was canned?
Nobody’s surprised. We’re bummed, because Community without Dan Harmon is like Buffy without Joss Whedon. Sure, you could do it, but why bother?
It’s not just Harmon, though. At least two other principal writers, including the guy who played Starburns (Dino Greek-sounding-last-name) are sounding off on twitter; at least one is out for sure. I realize that the average writer’s room isn’t SMALL, and they do still have Megan Ganz (who’s given us most of the best eps), but losing your extremely hands-on producer/lead writer plus two of your other big names on the script makes it almost inevitable that there’s going to be a significant change in tone, pace, and perhaps quality.
Which isn’t to say that the new season might not be pretty okay TV, especially on the backs of the cast. But if Harmon’s to be believed, he was intimately involved in virtually every element of creating and shooting the show; with that vision removed, I’m not sure how interested I am in the final 13 eps.
I feel the same way. I loved the first season. I liked the second. And this season has been very hit or miss with me. A couple of episodes were very funny but for the most part I didn’t care for many of the episodes. It did feel like Harmon was either trying too hard or just seeing what he could get away with at this point since he probably expected it to be canned either way.
I don’t know how to feel since it was his baby and I have seen too many shows go off the rails after they lost their creator. But then I really didn’t enjoy much of this season though I did keep tuning in.
I have some hope, since the only show that I kept watching after the original creator went away was The West Wing, and I thought that went pretty well under John Wells. The season of transition wasn’t that great, but the season after that was pretty excellent, where there’s a new election in the works.
As for Community, my major problem with Season 3 has been the Chang episodes. Turning him into an actual crazy person was such a poor decision, I felt. It made all his episodes so irritating. And that’s such a shame. He was such a great character in Seasons 1 and 2: off the wall, and unpredictable, but not full-on-crazy.
Ganz will probably end up the senior writer in the room (unless they are bringing in someone new with more sitcom experience), so with that in mind the scripts probably won’t suffer too terribly. On the other hand, as mentioned already Harmon was instrumental in pretty much every aspect of the show that we care about (writing, directing, creative) and his abscense will be felt. I suspect we’ll have a return to a more episode-centric played-for-laughs style that was prevelant in season one, but without the heart or charm that those episodes exuded.
I’m still planning to watch, because I love the show, but my expectations are lowered and I do not believe the show will last beyond Season 4 (and possibly not even all the way through that).
So, what are the odds the new show runners decide to pull the trigger on Troy / Britta or Jeff /Annie? Is there a vegas style odds sheet for this kind of stuff?
For me - I think they could have a lot of fun subverting the usual expectations fans would have after big change in the creative direction of a TV show, and play into it deliberately (eg the scriptwriter version of Roseanne’s “I like the second Darrin much better.”), but I also have the feeling that that kind of fun concept is the absolute last thing they would do with it now.
Just watched the Digital Estate Planning episode. Absolute hands down funniest episode since Dungeons and Dragons. The 8-bit animation was also fantastic. As a gamer and a Community fan it hit all the right buttons. So many funny moments I was pausing and rewinding because I’d miss something from laughing so hard.
nKoan
1689
Chang has been going downhill since season 1. I liked him then, but season 2 is where he started falling off. It seemed like they were trying their hardest to keep him on the show after essentially writing him off. In season 3, he’s be outright terrible.
I’m hoping the new writers/showrunner don’t completely Chang up the 4th season.
See I thought a few of the uses in season 2 were pretty good - eg. where he tries to move into jeff’s apartment during the soccer / house party, or the dungeons and dragons one. That is about my tolerance for him. But yeah season 3, who knows what happened. I think he got big and gave them all a Changover as a result of being written in as a title cast member rather than a guest (he’s gonna explode! what a bargain!) and they just ran out of interesting shit to do with him.
Is season 4 officially the last or is there just a 13 episode order in and things are still up in the air?
As far as I can tell, it’s still in the air. If all of NBC’s new shows really bomb, it might get more episodes, but even then it’s not very likely. Putting it in Friday night means they’re basically writing it off. Does the 13 episodes put it over the syndication limit?
If the first three seasons were all 24 episodes, then another 13 would be 85, and syndication is 84, isn’t it? I don’t remember exactly.
There’s no official rule. As I recall, there’s one show that had 81 eps that made syndication. Generally, the more is the better. 84-85 would be enough, though.
88 is supposedly the lower limit (4 complete seasons) but a lot of shows aim for 100 episodes
100 is the number I’ve heard before, but it seemed high. It seems like if they’re just shy of the limit, they may be more likely to give them a couple more eps to push them over, maybe a 5th half-season. or something like that.
If they don’t do that, then I’d think they might be trying to shop it to a cable channel or netflix or something to exploit the relatively passionate fan base. In this scenario, maybe they just got rid of Harmon to make their remaining block of episodes easier to deal with.
jason
1697
I’m also less happy with the Chang stuff. Sometimes he’s amusing, but I can’t help but feel that perhaps the original idea was that the main cast would be the study group, the dean and the teacher of whatever class they were currently taking, and the decision to keep Chang around lead to a diminished role for future teachers.
They also lost the British prof. He helped balance things with Chang.
To be fair, they never really had him. Daily Show and other things kept him quite busy.
Just got my 3rd Season DVD set in the mail today. Totally worth it if for nothing else than the Allison Brie freestyle rapping.
