Well, it was a “we’re only renewed for half a season” season, so if it’s not canceled, it’s pretty close to it.
Ah, I guess I was under the impression this was the final season because of the half renewal thing.
rei
1743
More Allison Brie pandering
There goes my productivity for today.
Apparently they’d already filmed the season finale so there will be some odd continuity in those last three episodes. It will be interesting to see if they hang a lampshade on it. (It would be hilarious if they replaced his character with Chang in a wig or something.)
Actually, the rumor I had heard about this season being pushed back from the Fall to Winter was that, with so many of their new comedy’s stinking, NBC decided that they should finally give Community the time slot and publicity push it has always deserved. They know the critics love it and that it has a very loyal fan base so they want to see if they can get ratings out of it by not burying it.
Even so, I cringe every time I see this thread get bumped.
RickH
1747
So NBC (and/or Sony) picked Chase’s side in the dispute between him and Harmon, and ended up having neither of them. How very NBC of them.
IMO, they should have kept Harmon and spent season 4 kicking dirt onto Pierce’s grave. But then, I don’t get the “star power” than NBC and Chase think that he has. The man can’t draw an audience to his movies and holds TV shows in contempt. Retire already.
My understanding is that it wasn’t just Harmon vs. Chase, it was kind of Harmon vs. Everybody else. He’s apparently very hard to work with. Chase may have provided a handy lever, but it isn’t anything they didn’t want to do already.
He was fired because of money, not because he’s hard to work with. Auteur creatives like him and David Chase and Matt Weiner, etc. are always hard to work with. That’s part of the game.
His contract was up. His right-hand man’s contract was up. Several producers and writers contracts were up. NBC gave the show the slimmest of a lifeline with 13 episodes, and it would have cost much more to rehire all those people than just bring in new people and do a hail mary and hope for the best.
Sony doesn’t care about the quality of the show - they would put out 30 minutes of a piece of poop sitting on a counter if it got ratings. They care about how much money they will be making. Harmon cared about the quality of the show for them, that was his job. I only hope the new guys do as well.
RickH
1750
Yeah, that’s about word-for-word what Harmon said in the XOXO “keynote”, but even then he admitted he could not be fully honest. And he was trying to make a point about money versus creativity.
I’ve just finished watching all of the seasons, I’m not hopeful about the quality of season 4.
The one bit of good news is the lack of Chevy Chase. His is the one character that just doesn’t work in this series. Pierce does things that are beyond the pale and yet everyone eventually rallies around and forgives him- I’m hard put to think of any goodness or nobility that he has displayed without an ulterior motive. I can understand that he is there as a foil but he really hasn’t changed at all since the first episode compared to most of the characters.
At least I’ll no longer have to suffer any more Chevy Chase prat-falling.
hepcat
1752
I think Chase is a dick just as much as the next guy, but he was the highlight of more than one episode of Community. The Dungeons and Dragons episode comes to mind immediately.
Will the show suffer without him (if it ever comes back)? A little. But the rest of the cast is so damn good they’ll pick up the slack. However, Chase did some truly funny stuff on the show.
I always thought that the truly biggest sign of how good the writers are in Community was that they managed to make even Chevy Chase funny. When I saw him in the pilot episode, I groaned. I used to love him in the Fletch days and earlier, but man, after I saw the short-lived and very very awkward Chevy Chase late night talk show on Fox, I thought it was impossible for him to be funny in anything. He’s just a crazy old man. But they did it. They made even Chevy Chase interesting and funny on Community, and the focus of some good episodes.
But yeah, I won’t miss him.
Even crazier, reading into the controversy yesterday I came across the interview Chase did where he says that the writers are terrible and the show is not at all funny. So, not only did they manage to make Chase funny, they managed to make Chase funny against his will and without his knowledge. It also says something about Chase’s acting skills, though what it says is hard to understand.
What is this I don’t even:
http://youtu.be/Y7ACRFd9aJ4
This is going to feel weird: an entire episode dedicated to parodying a film reference that I, as a longtime Community fan, won’t get at all?
Go back to comprehensible references like 2001 and Ken Burns Civil War documentaries, please!
I was imagining a session where the production team is discussing a role about an unfunny old white guy who truly believes that he is funny and cool. ‘Who can we get for this role?’ they ask, before all looking at each other and shouting ‘Chevy Chase!’.
I’ve not seen the Hunger Games either, but the gist of it is pretty clear I think.
This is a joke about the My Dinner with Andre episode, right?
It felt like walking into a white tie reception in memory of a Lithuanian dignitary I’ve never heard of wearing nothing but a Hawaiian shirt, billabong shorts, and American flag flip flops.
