Dan Harmon Just May End Up Back at 'Community'
Community fans possibly have another reason to stop whining. Not only is their show coming back on the air for an unlikely fifth season, but it looks like the lauded-crazy-genius behind the show, Dan Harmon, might also be coming back. Meaning that perhaps Community will finally get the attention and care its fans think it deserves.
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The Hollywood Reporter's Lesley Goldberg confirmed that Harmon, the original showrunner, is in talks with Sony Pictures Television to return for its fifth season, but it's unclear just what exactly that would mean. Harmon apparently told the audience about these talks in his Harmontown podcast, according to Hollywookie.com. He initially asked it to be edited out of the podcast, but ultimately said: "Ahhh Fuck it. I don’t care who knows!"
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Harmon was ousted last May in between the third and fourth seasons. Sony was apparently fed up with his creative direction and erratic management. (He had also made headlines for his publicized feud with Chevy Chase, one of the show's stars.) When Community returned in February—after a long delay—critics lamented the lack of Harmon's voice. Harmon has been praised, and to some extent canonized, as one of TV's great thinkers, a crazy genius who forever lives to be misunderstood. Take, for instance, Alex Pappademas' Grantland profile from February.
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Harmon comes back to an NBC comedy lineup very different from how he left it. With 30 Rock and The Office gone so are two of NBC's strong idiosyncratic voices. The network is now banking on family-centric comedies like The Michael J. Fox Show. That leaves Community and Parks and Recreation to hold down the fort for the network when it comes to Internet-dwelling comedy lovers. So it seems a bit strange that as the network seems to move away from shows like Community it seems to be getting everything its fans want it to have. That said, it's still unclear when exactly community is coming back on the air.
