Over on The Daily Beast, the women of NBC’s “Community” — including one of its female writers, Megan Ganz — sat down to discuss the return of “Community” and what it was like to produce episodes in a vacuum (production on season three wrapped up during the hiatus). Specifically, they spoke of the challenges in writing a show in which they’re not receiving audience feedback from previous episodes, since we haven’t seen any since the Christmas episode.
Gillian Jacobs: One thing that is different: there’s almost a dialogue between us and the viewers. Christmas was such a high because we had like nine trending topics that night on Twitter for the episode. That was our last chance to watch it at the same time. We haven’t seen any of the episodes that we’ve shot past that point. We’ve been doing these interviews and are struggling to remember the episodes. They ask, “So, what can we look forward to?” We’re like, “Uh …”
Alison Brie also discussed her “dark” journey, specifically the Boop-be-doop-be-doop scene in the Christmas episode:
Jacobs: Annie’s the romantic of the group. But we’re watching that from trying not to sexualize her in Season 1 to—
Ganz: “Boop-be-doop-be-doop Sex.”
Jacobs: And also trying personas on. OK. Maybe that’s not me. Or trying this relationship. That whole journey—
Brie: The awkward adventurer that everyone has to be.
Ganz: That song too was supposed to be a satire of the way that those Santa Baby songs infantilize women’s sexuality. Of course, it’s Alison Brie doing it, so it’s going to be sexy.
Brie: It was funny to see people’s reactions to that on Twitter: I’m not sure if I’m aroused or put off.
Ganz: But that’s the thing. We’re so used to that sexualization of women being an infantilized sexualization. In that song she gets dumber as the song goes on. Having you like crawl around on the ground and stuff, there’s a definite message there.
Brie: By the end she’s not even saying the words.
There was also a suggestion that Annie is “going through her darkest hour” this year, which suggests a continuing spiral. I hope it doesn’t end up in Requiem for a Dream territory, or — given how that movie ended — maybe I hope it does.
However, the fun discovery in the interview came from Jacobs, who revealed that there was once a “Community” porno in the works.
Regardless of what happens in May, we can dream about six seasons and a movie.
Ganz: Twelve seasons and a theme park.
Jacobs: Thirty seasons and a porno. Yeah, even our porno got pulled. It did.
Brown: What happened with that?
Jacobs: No one participating in it had ever seen our show. They had a Spanish bodybuilder playing Abed.
Oh, well. That just figures, doesn’t it? You’ve got a show with two of the hottest women on television, and you can’t even get porn producers to watch it long enough to come up with a porn parody. WHERE IS THE JUSTICE?
(Source: The Daily Beast)
