The End of
Community
-Joel McHale
told an interviewer that a seventh season of Community won’t happen. Cast
contracts ended after season six, and no one’s affordable anymore. Yahoo didn’t
confirm McHale’s comment about the future of the series. Dan Harmon hasn’t said
very much about the future of the story, besides that cast contracts ended,
some have new series, and he’d like to a movie. McHale said Harmon needed to
write a script before anyone got excited about a movie (that’s a rough
paraphrase). Speculation around the entertainment websites and blogosphere
involves a seventh Community season following in the hallowed path of Scrubs:
Med School, the quasi-spinoff that cast James Franco’s younger brother and the
delightful Eliza Couple. Folk think Joel McHale and Jim Rash would continue as
cast members guiding a new generation of Greendale miscreants and sociopaths.
Joel McHale’s a
great diplomatist. The man got Harmon his job after season four. Money’s part
of the reason everyone but McHale and Rash would not return, but the desire to
do new projects and move beyond the aging TV series is another part. Community
had five good seasons. The series changed a little after Chevy Chase and Donald
Glover left the series. The series changed more after Shirley’s departure
followed by the introduction of Frankie and Elroy. Frankie and Elroy fit into a
different kind of group dynamic, but the writers wrote episodes toward the
habits, personalities of the original group. The greatest instance of change
and disparity between the first three seasons and season six is the road trip
episode with the giant hand on top of the RV, or the obnoxious group behavior
at the wedding (maybe that’s what being part of the group does to a person,
though; it turns a person into a sociopathic miscreant).
I’d watch a
season seven. I long ago stopped clinging to past versions of a show. TV shows
evolve, change, devolve, and regress. Creativity has long sustained outstanding
bursts of storytelling, but it ebbs and flows. Who knows how long a person gets
at his or her creative peak? Nabokov thought Nikolai Gogol only had 12 years of
creative genius. William Shakespeare experienced a historically creative period
(1598-1610). Shakespeare wrote King Lear and immediately after wrote Macbeth. Harmon’s
creative imagination and energy may enjoy a new burst if Community continues.
He may’ve exhausted the story or the story may’ve exhausted him or the story
exhausted itself. His other series, Rick and Morty, which he co-created with
Justin Roiland (a man who knows great nonsense) is frenetic, crazy, insanely
imaginative, and like the early seasons of Community. Everything Roiland,
Harmon, Ridley, and the other writers put into the final draft, the final cut
of the episode, is working and soaring.
For Community,
I’m in as long as Harmon’s in. Also, McHale expected "nothing less than 900 episodes."
-Another Period,
the Comedy Central series created by Natasha Leggero and Riki Lindholme, has
much great nonsense, which is the highest praise TV With The Foot can give a
series. I love Chair, Garfield, Hamish, Beatrice, Lillian, Dodo, and Peepers.
Last night’s episode featured role-reversals. Peepers play-acted the Commodore;
Blanche put on a dress and became Beatrice’s best friend, and Lillian became
Hamish’s lover. For anyone unfamiliar, the show is a reality series set at the
turn of century with an aristocratic family at the center. Freud, Charles
Ponzi, Mark Twain, Gandhi, Trotsky appeared in various episodes. The writers
play with and subvert tropes, and the writing’s more parodic than satire--for
parody’s a game and satire’s a lesson. Parody’s more fun.
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