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Harmon-izing

Having discussed Community in comments to my last post (I was kind of agin it after the pilot, but by the end of the season I was fer it, and fer it I continue to be), I should link to this interview with the creator of the show, Dan Harmon, who discusses what’s in store for season 2. Happily he spends most of his time discussing ideas for episodes and gimmicks — including the inevitable Betty White appearance — rather than who’s going to end up with who. The season 1 finale, where we learned that no woman can resist Joel McHale and that this is a problem for him, was not promising, but hopefully the second season will be able to steer away from this kind of thing and spend more time on what the show is good at: characterization, character interaction, and mashups of all the pop culture floating around in an ’80s child’s brain.

I still feel like NBC would be better advised to put 30 Rock in the difficult 8:00 slot opposite Big Bang Theory and let Community face off against the weaker Shat My Dad Says — but for all I know, the network may have decided that they’ll forgive whatever ratings Community gets in that slot. The interesting question is which of NBC’s two excellent but low-rated comedies, Community and Parks & Recreation, has a better chance of survival. The fact that P&R was delayed until mid-season may be seen as a vote of no-confidence, but could actually help it in the long run, since it could be the show that doesn’t get a full season but always comes back when the network needs a backup, like Rules of Engagement. Community by contrast is a show that needs some help and isn’t getting it. But in fairness to NBC, the only slot they have that could really help the show is 9:30 after The Office, and this is too young-skewing a show for that late in the evening.

The comments to that interview link to a YouTube video that compares a Community scene to an internet video that was apparently made earlier. However, when I see something like this I always assume that both scenes are borrowing from something else I haven’t seen. Besides, the editor of the video took such small chunks of each scene that it seems like he/she may have picked only the bits that were similar (and some of these jokes are almost inevitable once you start with this premise).

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