Salon.com > Community http://www.salon.com Fri, 04 Jan 2013 12:45:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 “Community” writer Megan Ganz leaves for “Modern Family” http://www.salon.com/2013/01/03/community_writer_megan_ganz_leaves_for_modern_family/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/03/community_writer_megan_ganz_leaves_for_modern_family/#comments Thu, 03 Jan 2013 17:41:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13160911 After losing its showrunner and executive producer Dan Harmon and actor Chevy Chase, NBC's dwindling comedy "Community" is facing a third major blow: the departure of one of its top writers, Megan Ganz, who as of today writes for "Modern Family."

Ganz made a heartfelt announcement to her fans on Reddit yesterday, describing the moment she first considered herself a TV writer (Ganz entered TV writing with comedy sketch show "Important Things With Demetri Martin," after working her way up at the Onion):

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/03/community_writer_megan_ganz_leaves_for_modern_family/feed/ 0 Chevy Chase leaves “Community” http://www.salon.com/2012/11/22/chevy_chase_leaves_community/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/22/chevy_chase_leaves_community/#comments Thu, 22 Nov 2012 14:18:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13105810 The NBC series ‘‘Community’’ will finish the season without Chevy Chase.

Sony Pictures Television said Wednesday that the actor is leaving the sitcom by mutual agreement with producers.

His immediate departure means he won’t be included in the last episode or two of the show’s 13-episode season, which is still in production.

Chase had a rocky tenure playing a bored and wealthy man who enrolls in community college. The actor publicly expressed unhappiness at working on a sitcom and feuded last year with the show’s creator and former executive producer, Dan Harmon.

The fourth-season premiere of ‘‘Community’’ is Feb. 7, when it makes a delayed return to the 8 p.m. EST Thursday time slot. The show’s ensemble cast includes Joel McHale and Donald Glover.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/22/chevy_chase_leaves_community/feed/ 12 My neighbor bosses me around http://www.salon.com/2012/09/28/my_neighbor_bosses_me_around/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/28/my_neighbor_bosses_me_around/#comments Fri, 28 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13023791 Hi,

I have a serious problem. My neighbor, who is this super old lady, asks me to take her garbage out every time I pass her front door to get into my apartment. She doesn't say "Please" or "Thank you" and she just expects me to take her garbage out every time. I'm a nice guy and don't like to be rude to old people. But now I'm getting anxiety attacks every time I have to go back to my apartment. What should I do?

Terrified to Go Home

Dear Terrified to Go Home,

If it's not too much trouble, if it wouldn't be a terrible strain on you to take her garbage out, I suggest you do this favor for the old woman for the time being, until you can figure out what her situation is.

One advantage is that then you won't have to be afraid to go home. Plus, bit by bit you could discover what exactly is going on with this old lady -- why she needs someone to take her garbage out, and why she picked you. That way, you might be able to find a permanent solution, or at least put into place some stable practice that will eliminate your fear.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/09/28/my_neighbor_bosses_me_around/feed/ 39 “Community” botches damage control http://www.salon.com/2012/05/24/community_botches_damage_control/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/24/community_botches_damage_control/#comments Thu, 24 May 2012 16:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12926724 It's adorable the way Old Media keeps forgetting that we live in the age of transparency. Hey, Sony Pictures Television, your metaphoric fly is undone.

You'd think that after that ranting, complaining voice mail that "Community" star Chevy Chase left showrunner Dan Harmon went viral this spring they'd have learned. Or maybe after Harmon responded to his dismissal just last Friday by spilling his guts on Tumblr. You'd think the muckety-mucks would have figured out by now that the best you can do when there's tension in your little creative family is to be forthright and creative about it.

Note, for example, how the show's star Joel McHale spent the spring diplomatically – and wittily -- handling the talk-show circuit after Chase's meltdown, joking that the voice mail had to be fake because "there’s no way Chevy could figure out voice mail." See, it's glib and funny and sounds magically off-the-cuff! Get it? The cast of "Community" -- which includes the incredibly on-the-ball Danny Pudi, Alison Brie and Donald Glover – knows how to handle itself.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/24/community_botches_damage_control/feed/ 14 More sex and disasters, please http://www.salon.com/2012/05/23/more_sex_and_disasters_please/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/23/more_sex_and_disasters_please/#comments Wed, 23 May 2012 15:15:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12925481 There are a few times of year when network television can typically be relied upon to be as interesting as cable: The fall, when the networks vomit out dozens of new programs; February, when the networks cough up a dozen or so more; and May, when all the series that have survived the year try to end in spectacular fashion. During this last period, season-finale time, couples couple, get married and have babies; characters quit, get fired and die; disasters occur; buildings explode; guns blaze; hatches are discovered and protagonists are left dangling off cliffs, both actual and metaphorical. It’s the TV equivalent of blockbuster season, and like blockbuster season, it can and should be fun. Though in recent years cable shows have been responsible for a disproportionate number of the “Holy crap, did that just happen?!” finales (hello, Gus Fring and his brand-new face!), network shows are usually good for at least some insanity, some drama, some transcendent event that will get people talking around the storied watercooler. Not this year. Nope, this year, season finale season has been a bust.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/23/more_sex_and_disasters_please/feed/ 13 What’s “Community” without Dan Harmon? http://www.salon.com/2012/05/21/whats_community_without_dan_harmon/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/21/whats_community_without_dan_harmon/#comments Mon, 21 May 2012 15:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12923830 A recent episode of NBC's “Community” floated the possibility — debunked by episode’s end — that the seven main characters had not spent the previous three years navigating life, each other and paintball fights at Greendale Community College, but instead, had only been imagining them. In the episode, the recently expelled Greendale Seven found themselves in a group therapy session with a nefarious shrink, keen to keep them away from their college using any psychological means necessary. The therapist temporarily convinced them they had spent the previous years in a mental institution and that everything they remembered happening at school, except their friendship, had been a collective fantasy, a “shared psychosis” dreamed up in the asylum.

As I was watching this episode, "Curriculum Unavailable,” I remember calmly thinking something like, “Huh. That would really explain Leonard.” The possibility that “Community” might be about to “St. Elsewhere” its audience ("St. Elsewhere" ended on the reveal that everything that had happened in the series had all taken place inside the mind of an autistic boy) was not particularly alarming to me. Group psychosis explained a lot about the show's extremely dark psychology, and, anyway, on “Community,” stranger things had happened.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/21/whats_community_without_dan_harmon/feed/ 9 “Community’s” identity crisis http://www.salon.com/2012/03/16/communitys_identity_crisis/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/16/communitys_identity_crisis/#comments Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12682141 Confession: I have a case of "Community" fatigue. "Community," NBC’s low-rated, but passionately beloved, sitcom returned to the NBC lineup last night. It had been pulled from the schedule in December, kicking off another round of anxiety among fans, critics and the cast that the Greendale Study Group might not be back for a fourth season next fall. In the lead-up to last night’s episode, the "Community" faithful hectored anyone and everyone who appreciates good television to help save the show and boost "Community" to the ultimate goal, that longed-for TV state: six seasons and a movie.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/16/communitys_identity_crisis/feed/ 15 Stop the remakes! http://www.salon.com/2011/11/18/stop_the_remakes/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/18/stop_the_remakes/#comments Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10233588 Should you have ever believed that there couldn't possibly be any more entertainment barrel yet to be scraped, remember this: NBC has just approved a pilot for a remake of "The Munsters." Yes, the sitcom about a wacky monster family, a show that has been off the air since 1966, is returning at last. Naturally, this new version will "have a darker and less campy feel" than the Vietnam War-era original. Well, that makes it sound awesome. And NBC is the network that put "Community" on ice while giving "Whitney" a pickup -- so I, the viewer, trust its taste implicitly!

It might be a hopeful sign that the show will be overseen by Bryan Fuller, who created the imaginative, not completely awful "Pushing Daisies." Less hopeful: Fuller is also developing a show based on "Silence of the Lambs." This undoubtedly essential "Munsters" update comes in the midst of an unprecedented glut of reboots and reimaginings, all thick with the promise that No, really, this will be very different. It will creepy and full of action and with a feminist theme. You know what's really different? A stinkin' original idea.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/18/stop_the_remakes/feed/ 59 An interview with the dean of “Community” http://www.salon.com/2011/09/28/community_season_three_dan_harmon_interview/ http://www.salon.com/2011/09/28/community_season_three_dan_harmon_interview/#comments Wed, 28 Sep 2011 22:30:00 +0000 NBC's "Community" (Thursdays, 8 p.m./7 Central) is one of the most deceptively light shows on network television -- a seeming spoof of pop culture and pop obsessives that's as densely imagined as the world of "The Simpsons," and that has a lot more on its mind than movie and TV quotes and self-referential devices. 

Last week I interviewed the show's creator, Dan Harmon. Our wide-ranging conversation covered many of the expected areas: his sense of humor, his influences, behind-the-scenes production anecdotes, and hints of episodes to come. But it also delved into more elusive and heady issues: the role of pain and humiliation in comedy; the question of how self-referential a show can get without destroying our ability to sympathize with its characters; and the influence of "The Simpsons" and -- yes, really -- "Gilligan's Island" on "Community." It's also the only interview I've ever done with a TV showrunner who casually dropped the word "vestigial."

Now that we've waded into the show's third season, I wanted to ask you what sort of reaction Season 2 got from the show's fans. This series is closely watched and obsessively scrutinized.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/09/28/community_season_three_dan_harmon_interview/feed/ 3 Alison Brie: Buttoned-up sex bomb http://www.salon.com/2011/07/15/alison_brie/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/15/alison_brie/#comments Fri, 15 Jul 2011 17:16:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/07/15/alison_brie She didn't snag an Emmy nomination Thursday -- despite being in the cast of both a beloved comedy and a critically acclaimed drama series. But "Community" and "Mad Men's" Alison Brie is nonetheless having a swell week. 

First, a clip of her doing a rocking karaoke duet of "Total Eclipse of the Heart"  last month with Emily Blunt in Ann Arbor, Mich., went viral, proving her adorable shamelessness knows no bounds. Then GQ answered America's prayers and served up a black lingerie-clad Brie getting spanked with the business end of a hairbrush by her "Community" costar Gillian Jacobs.  Take that, Betty White. 

What is it about the fresh-faced Brie that makes her such a standout? Well, the looks don't hurt. Like Katy Perry, she's got the kind of doe eyes and formidable rack that would make a manga character jealous.  But more than that, Brie isn't just another hot chick lucky enough to land on a sitcom. 

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/15/alison_brie/feed/ 11 Betty White clones herself for the AARP http://www.salon.com/2011/06/21/betty_white_clones_aarp/ http://www.salon.com/2011/06/21/betty_white_clones_aarp/#comments Tue, 21 Jun 2011 20:22:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/06/21/betty_white_clones_aarp Betty White is like the James Franco of older women. At first everyone jumped aboard her popularity train, and then as she became ubiquitous in our pop culture, the backlash began. (Although, unlike Franco, no one can be too mean to White; instead they blamed the media gigs that keep employing her, like "Saturday Night Live" and "Community.")

This time last year, we were all suffering from a little bit of Betty White fatigue. She was on the Emmys! "Hot in Cleveland"! "Inside the Actor's Studio"! It was like, we got it, Betty White: You are talented and funny (we can trace this whole thing back to when you called Sarah Palin a crazy bitch in 2008) and have sex appeal, something that only older men like Paul Newman are supposed to have! You're one in a million!

Well, not quite.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/06/21/betty_white_clones_aarp/feed/ 9 Ken Jeong’s CPR infomercial http://www.salon.com/2011/06/17/ken_jeong_cpr_commercial/ http://www.salon.com/2011/06/17/ken_jeong_cpr_commercial/#comments Fri, 17 Jun 2011 17:18:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/06/17/ken_jeong_cpr_commercial Ken Jeong has made a name for himself in the past several years with small, hysterical cameos in everything from "Knocked Up" to "The Hangover." Now on "Community," Jeong has subsidized his teacher's income with several commercial spots, most infamously in Adidas spots as "Slim Chin," a hip-hopping mogul who hangs out with Dwight Howard and Derrick Rose.  Oddly, the official video for the commercial has now been marked "private," perhaps in response to the swirling controversy around his portrayal of Asian stereotypes. 

Maybe that's why Jeong is now starring in infomercials for CPR: As penance for playing up the ethnic card (if you want to call it that), he is now giving people tips on how to save lives with cardiopulmonary resuscitation ... the fun way!

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/06/17/ken_jeong_cpr_commercial/feed/ 11 Your guide to “Community” pop culture references http://www.salon.com/2011/05/05/community_season_2_pop_culture/ http://www.salon.com/2011/05/05/community_season_2_pop_culture/#comments Thu, 05 May 2011 21:15:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/05/05/community_season_2_pop_culture Out of all the shows on NBC's Thursday night lineup, "Community" may be the smartest. No offense to Tina Fey or Amy Poehler, but Dan Harmon's show about Greendale College is so rife with pop culture references that it's impossible to get most of them in one sitting.

And with tonight's first half of the season finale showing us exactly what happened to "Lost's" Sawyer after he left the island (apparently he became a paintball expert), I'm expecting nothing short of 10 meta-layers of insider jokes that I won't get until I look them up on Google. In the meantime, enjoy this slide show that encompasses my favorite wink-wink/nudge-nudge culture jokes from "Community's" second season. There's doubtlessly more: Please leave all the ones you think of in the comments!

 

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/05/05/community_season_2_pop_culture/feed/ 12 “My Community Pulp Fictional Dinner with Andre” http://www.salon.com/2011/03/25/community_pulp_fiction_episode/ http://www.salon.com/2011/03/25/community_pulp_fiction_episode/#comments Fri, 25 Mar 2011 16:04:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/03/25/community_pulp_fiction_episode Last night's "Community" -- aptly titled "Critical Film Studies" -- was art. And art about art. And entertainment about entertainment. And a free-ranging conversation about the value of stories. The episode was "Pulp Fiction" metafiction wrapped in "My Dinner With Andre." It had a monologue about being and nothingness and "Cougar Town," references to Quentin Tarantino and Louis Malle, a fire gag and a poop joke, Ken Jeong in a skullcap and Chevy Chase in a fetish outfit. (Bring out The Gimp!) It was the most self-aware, self-reflexive half-hour I've seen on a broadcast network since the "Simpsons" episode "The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show." But it improved on that classic in one important respect: Even as it folded and refolded itself, morphing from analytical to sincere and back again, it focused on characters we've grown to know and love, and scrutinized two of them with such compassion that it made them seem more real than ever.  

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/03/25/community_pulp_fiction_episode/feed/ 13 “30 Rock” vs “Community”: The pop culture wars http://www.salon.com/2011/03/25/30_rock_community_sorkin_pulp_fiction/ http://www.salon.com/2011/03/25/30_rock_community_sorkin_pulp_fiction/#comments Fri, 25 Mar 2011 12:25:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/03/25/30_rock_community_sorkin_pulp_fiction NBC is currently watching a war unfold within its own ranks: Who can cram the most pop culture references into any given episode of a comedy show? Before this year, the award clearly went to "30 Rock," a program that effortlessly slid between Huffington Post and "Harry and the Hendersons" references without missing a beat. No matter how many times Steve Carell uttered "That's what she said," or "Outsourced" did ... whatever it is that "Outsourced" does…they just couldn't keep up with the culture-consuming writers of Tina Fey's hit, hip show.

But this season, a dark horse appeared on the horizon. While the first season of "Community" dealt with establishing the characters and giving Joel McHale a chance to prove he was more than just a pretty face from "The Soup," the second season quickly moved beyond the sly wink of self-awareness to become a show that reached, as Patton Oswalt describes it, "the ETEWAF* singularity." It was the closest TV has ever come to being the Internet (sorry, Tosh), with in-jokes doubling back on themselves the way a Television Without Pity forum thread might. Nothing was sacred: not Dungeons & Dragons, Charlie Kaufman or the Web itself (which creator Dan Harmon has used on occasion to throw his fans off-track with fake spoilers on his Twitter feed).

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/03/25/30_rock_community_sorkin_pulp_fiction/feed/ 12 Will future generations understand “The Simpsons”? http://www.salon.com/2011/03/08/simpsons_pop_culture/ http://www.salon.com/2011/03/08/simpsons_pop_culture/#comments Tue, 08 Mar 2011 16:05:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/03/08/simpsons_pop_culture I recently rewatched "Krusty Gets Kancelled" from Season 4 of "The Simpsons" with my 13-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son. Krusty the Klown was on "Springfield Squares," a game show hosted by moonlighting Springfield newsman Kent Brockman and featuring special guest Rainer Wolfcastle, the action film icon. Brockman introduced Wolfcastle as the star of the new movie, "Help, My Son is a Nerd!"

Wolfcastle: "My son returns from a fancy East Coast college, and I'm horrified to find he's a nerd."

Kent Brockman: "Ha, ha, ha! I'm laughing already!"

Rainier Wolfcastle: "It's not a comedy."

I laughed at this. My son laughed, too -- but after a moment he asked, "Dad, why is that funny?"

I told him it was too complicated to explain, because it was.

Wolfcastle was "The Simpsons"' stand-in for Arnold Schwarzenegger, a wildly popular movie star circa 1992-93, when that episode first aired. Schwarzenegger built his fortune on bloody action thrillers, but had recently begun playing against type in such dumb but harmless comedies as "Twins" and "Kindergarten Cop." The movie Wolfcastle was promoting was obviously in that vein, but the plot evoked the 1986 Rodney Dangerfield comedy "Back to School." Wolfcastle's line, "It's not a comedy" was also a joke at the expense of phony '80s macho; the very idea of nerdiness would horrify a gym-muscled dolt like Wolfcastle.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/03/08/simpsons_pop_culture/feed/ 77 Has “Community’s” Web content broken the fourth wall? http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/community_nbc_twitter_spoilers/ http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/community_nbc_twitter_spoilers/#comments Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:35:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/02/15/community_nbc_twitter_spoilers In its second season, NBC's "Community" currently has the second lowest ratings of the network's Thursday night comedy lineup. (Though it finally beat out "Outsourced" by a couple hundred viewers.) Which is a real shame, because "Community" is one of funniest shows on TV right now, combining "meta-comedy" with pop culture references. This happens to fall into the sweet, sweet middle spot of the demographic Venn diagram that contains (respectively) "film geeks," "comedy nerds" and "people who have started to forgive Chevy Chase for the '90s."

The show doesn't just tackle dream subjects for nerds -- robots versus zombies, Jesus Christ versus Charlie Kaufman, "The Soup's" Joel McHale vs. "Mad Men's" Alison Brie -- but it's also been able to grow where no other prime-time show has grown before: the Internet.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/community_nbc_twitter_spoilers/feed/ 21 Prime time’s new age of crudeness http://www.salon.com/2011/01/17/crudeness_on_tv/ http://www.salon.com/2011/01/17/crudeness_on_tv/#comments Mon, 17 Jan 2011 15:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/01/17/crudeness_on_tv In a recent episode of ABC's "Modern Family," pear-shaped actor Eric Stonestreet, who plays histrionic gay dad Cameron Tucker, paces casually around the living room in form-revealing bike shorts. His groin is pixelated. It is bulging, we deduce, in revealing ways. At one point Stonestreet poses in front of family-member Claire Dunphy, played by Julie Bowen, indecisive about where to do his cycling, and says, "I’m leaning toward the park." With her gaze fixed on his genitals, Dunphy dryly replies, "I can see that."

That may seem like a crude joke, especially for a family-oriented show, but network television has increasingly been leaning toward just this sort of humor. In 2004, the Federal Communications Commission received more than 1.4 million indecency complaints pertaining to 314 programs. The next year, the number of complaints dropped to under 250,000. Whether this is due to a shift in taste or a learned helplessness is difficult to gauge, but either case, most TV watchers will likely agree, network television seems to be getting much naughtier. Dirty jokes are a force of nature, a celebration of life in all its fullness and squalor, as universal as comedy gets. They are the first line of attack in the battle for free speech -- but the rise of dirty TV isn't just a sign that we're overwhelming would-be censors, it's a sign that television is growing up.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/01/17/crudeness_on_tv/feed/ 46 NBC’s “Community” to experiment with “Twittersode” http://www.salon.com/2010/09/22/us_tv_community_twittersode/ http://www.salon.com/2010/09/22/us_tv_community_twittersode/#comments Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:27:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/09/22/us_tv_community_twittersode The premiere of NBC's "Community" will begin with a scene played out online, in 140 characters or less.

NBC has announced that ahead of the sitcom's Thursday premiere, "Community" will present what it's calling a "Twittersode." A scene will be acted out on Twitter feeds devoted to the show's characters, who will be planning their second year at community college.

The scene will be composed of 80 tweets and will debut at 7 p.m. EDT, an hour before the show is scheduled to air. It can be followed at http://www.NBC.com/CommunityTwittersode.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/09/22/us_tv_community_twittersode/feed/ 2 The best TV of 2009 http://www.salon.com/2009/12/22/best_of_2009/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/22/best_of_2009/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 02:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/i_like_to_watch//2009/12/21/best_of_2009 This was the year TV dared to be odd. Comedies and dramas across the dial flirted with darkness and freaks and bizarre references and tiny subcultures and left the big, obvious, conventional stories and plotlines far behind. Instead of tolerating the same generically likable characters and bland, familiar American lives, we traveled through time and space to meet manic community college professors, polygamists struggling with money troubles, a suicidal retired CEO, a self-deprecating geek with a knack for extreme neurological makeovers and a gay couple bickering over their adopted daughter's bedroom mural.

Yes, this year, bad TV was still bad. But good TV? Good TV was smart and weird and hilarious and fun and provocative -- remarkably so. This year, TV overachieved, and instead of one or two quirky, original, suspenseful, strange shows, we had about 15 of them. If that sounds like an exaggeration, well, maybe you're watching the wrong stuff.

1. "Mad Men"

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