A few hours ago I wished you all a Happy Thanksgiving and announced that we’d be taking it easy for a few days unless “Jon Hamm murders Charlie Sheen on live television or something.” Well, Charlie Sheen is still alive (I mean, as far as we know), but here we are anyway because Deadline just broke the story that Chevy Chase is leaving Community effective immediately.
Pierce Hawthorne is dropping out of Greendale Community College. After a tumultuous three-and-a-half year relationship, Chevy Chase and the producers of NBC’s cult comedy Community are parting ways by mutual agreement. Chase’s departure from the show is effective immediately. The bulk of Community‘s 13-episode fourth-season order have been filmed. Chase won’t appear in the 1 or 2 episodes that have not been shot yet.
So, yeah. Outside of the abruptness of it all, this isn’t exactly a surprise. A brief examination of UPROXX’s Chevy Chase tag will remind you what a crappy relationship he seemed to have with the show, the executives in charge of it, and, apparently, much of the cast. The real question here is whether this will even matter in the grand scheme of things, since the show is looking at long odds to stick around beyond this season anyway. Actually, no, the real question is why the hell he couldn’t stick around for just two more episodes, or be quietly written out of them, to avoid this type of public brouhaha on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. Something about that seems odd.
Anyway, as Hitfix’s Alan Sepinwall pointed out on Twitter, the show filmed the season finale out of order, with Chase in it, so it’s pretty unlikely they’ll send him off in a glorious white-hot fireball or anything. We’ll obviously have more as news about this trickles out, preferably during normal business hours sometime next week.
