“I would have fired me.”
That’s Dan Harmon talking about Sony’s decision to can him from the show he created, Community, a television program we’ve written about from time to time. In an interview with KCRW’s The Business, which in a perfect world or on Community would be called TJ Nasty and the Bitch-Ass In the Morning, Harmon expanded on his frustration with the production company that formerly brought us Emily’s Reasons Why Not (see, they know comedy!) and how he’s become like catnip to basic cable networks.
After NBC announced the shortened fourth season (which Harmon describes as the network “smother[ing] the show with a pillow”), “Sony’s job is to take that shot clock and do whatever they can with it,” Harmon explains. “They’re not going to hand the ball to the guy that spent three years losing in the ratings race and not turning a script over until I felt it was finished.” (Via)
Which is why you were fired.
To hear Harmon tell it, he’s in a more enviable position now that he’s off the show. “All of the networks came a-calling. Everyone in basic cable, especially,” said Harmon of the courting process, with recent reports that he has multicamera projects in the works at both Fox and CBS. (Via)
Well, that’s good!
Harmon maintains that he wouldn’t do anything differently, though, except maybe he would have “made a little more fun of the people I’ll never work with again”…specifically, Kim Rozenfeld, who’s the head of programming at Sony. The third-season episode “Digital Exploration of Interior Design” includes a subplot about a bunch of notes written by someone named Kim, who turns out to be a guy even though all the characters insist that Kim is a girl’s name. “We were trying to get under the skin” of Sony’s Rozenfeld, Harmon says. “There’s a lot of jokes about how Kim is a girl’s name, and who care about his notes?” (Via)
Well, that’s a dick move! (But also kind of funny.)
[Harmon] argues that he hurt himself by starting speeches and blog posts with statements about how he isn’t very good at the job. Not that the studio was particularly pleased with his output. “Sony was always so bummed out about the way I wrote and thought, and they always fantasized about doing the show without me.” (Via)
Harmon seems like the kind of guy who loves to be in a position where he can complain. He wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he had everything going right for him — which is why he’s still talking about how upset he is at Sony and NBC, even though he got a billion other jobs because of the firing. In other words, to put my Britta pants on, he’s a bit of a masochist, and to take my Britta pants off:
After all that whining, we need a refresher as to why we love Community so much:
Yup, there it is.
