No Harmon, No Foul - Thoughts on the Community Creator and His Ouster

Today, I mourn a favorite show.

My grief is weirdly complex. As many of you who read me regularly know, Community has consistently been my favorite show this season, and a strong contender for one of my all-time favorites. I go out of my way to talk about its ambition and its skill.

Today, it was announced that though Community has been picked up for a fourth season, it will do so without the involvement of its executive producer/creator, Dan Harmon. A show which has essentially existed as an auteur piece will lose its auteur. This week's finale, the surprisingly fittingly-titled "Introduction to Finality", was the final Dan Harmon-produced episode.

The thing is, though, I'm not upset at Sony (who produces Community, though NBC carries it) in that simple "fanboy loves a show that done been wronged" way. I am, a little bit. I think they handled a situation - namely, that Harmon, genius though he was, was kind of a shitty manager and a world-class asshole - in the wrong way. They could have simply let the show go, cancelled it cleanly. Or, they could have tolerated Harmon for 13 more episodes as they push closer to their big syndication number. These are my peanut gallery ideas that don't take any account of the world in which network TV is produced. I know little, and can't truly blame Sony for the way they let Harmon go.

I blame Dan Harmon.



Like I said above, it's a well-documented fact that Dan Harmon is a world-class problem child. He created one of the true masterpieces of television comedy, I think, and he deserves all the praise in the world for that. However, unlike folks like Matt Weiner, who wins all the awards ever for AMC and Mad Men, or cable visionaries like David Simon and David Milch, his show ultimately means very little economically for his bosses. His low-rated show managed some degree of creative freedom, to the benefit of critics and fans everywhere.

However, when you have a record of people regularly quitting your show, and a famously huge blow up with one of your stars where you lead a chant against him in front of his wife and child, the cause for dismissal starts to overwhelm the desires of a fan base in the eyes of an employer.

In other words, even though I don't think Sony should have fired Dan Harmon, I absolutely believe he deserved to be fired. And it's important to note that he was fired because he was a terrible employee, not because he made a niche show that alienated viewers. It is very important to remember that.

I find myself wishing Harmon had had a little more awareness, a little more compassion for his fans, knowing that his behavior was ultimately going to possibly martyr him from the airwaves and lead to a cancellation or firing. I wish he had worked a little harder to be better at his job, and less of a dick, so that those of us who love what he created didn't have to go through this difficult transition.

And, mark my words, I am making that transition.

I feel like, ambitious and glorious as Community has been, it can still be a funny, intelligent show without Harmon on board. There's immense talent in that cast, and I want to keep watching them. Hell, maybe the continuing stories might be well served by some more clarity in their execution.

I'm trying to see a bright side here. I have to, because if there's one thing I've always believed in a life in the arts, it's this: there are way too many talented, good, professional people in the world to continue to humor talented assholes. Network versus creative isn't the black-and-white battle ground we want to think it is. There have to be consequences to people's actions.  Even if they are geniuses.

Even if they created 71 episodes of one of my all-time favorite shows.