‘Community’ Showrunner Dan Harmon Apologizes to Everyone … Almost
Sometimes the guys on your team do things that make you cringe, but at the end of the game, they’re still your guys.
That’s likely to be the reaction for fans of Team Dan Harmon, after the once-and–future “Community” showrunner trashed with extreme prejudice the fourth season of the NBC sitcom — the one that ran without his participation.
Harmon today posted a lengthy apology on his personal blog, the length in many ways owing to how many different aspects of Sunday’s Harmontown podcast could be considered offensive. That included, above all, making a rape analogy to describe how season four made him feel, as well as shots at the efforts of erstwhile showrunners Moses Port and David Guarascio and the season-four crew.
“I went to bed feeling great, woke up and started work on season five of ‘Community’ with our exciting season five staff,” Harmon wrote. “I took them to lunch, checked my tweets, discovered my name in several headlines next to several bad words, and, as usual, it was then that I started to consider how my words might affect other people if viewed as headlines. After five seconds of thinking, I realized, as usual, that other people might be hurt, and that I really need to do this whole ‘saying things and thinking about other people’ cycle in a different order at some point.
Harmon also apologized to the fans who invested time in watching season four, although that’s the group most likely to have his back and, if anything, think his rant was justified. While opinions varied to whether season four of “Community” was a success, failure or somewhere in between, you’d be hard-pressed to find any original “Community” fans who aren’t glad to see Harmon back at the reins.
It should be noted that Harmon’s apologies did not extend to Sony Pictures TV, whose “assembly line” approach to writers he attacked, barely two weeks after the studio hired him back. What’s the sound of one hand clapping? That’s the section at the “Community” ballpark where Sony bought tickets.
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