Advanced Course in Ruining A Good Thing: The Firing of Dan Harmon

I love noticing connections between seemingly random things. For example, (confession time) yesterday I was Twitter-stalking (Twalking? Stittering?) someone who had posted a picture of a morning glory growing in their yard. For the rest of the day, the words morning glory continued to show up. I decided to put my iTunes on shuffle, which I rarely do, and the first song that played was "Morning Glory" by Oasis. One of my Chinese students asked me what we in America, call the flower that closes up every day? I Googled around and found the most common answer was morning glory. And I blogged about Annie Hall, which starred Diane Keaton and in my brief research on Keaton's filmography, I noticed that one of her more recent movies was called...drumroll please.....Morning Glory.

This thing will not leave me alone!

I like to call this synchronicity.

In writing, I think it's called a theme. I have glanced back over the last week of events, and ladies and gentlemen, I think we have ourselves a theme!

The Theme for the 3rd Week of May, 2012 is...Firing.

Not only did I just celebrate my personal 2 year anniversary from losing a job and write a few blogs about it (Blog 1, Blog 2), but firing happened all over TV last week! Phil had to fire Mitchell on Modern Family. Owen Hunt fired Teddy on Grey's Anatomy. Were there others that I missed?

I think the most notable and detrimental firing last week came from a real life situation. Dan Harmon, the brilliant creator and executive producer behind the recently renewed, Community, got fired from the show last Friday. Here is what he had to say about it. I think he was pretty gracious, considering. The idea is that he gets to stay on as a consultant...but I think you can gather from his statement, that he's not interested. And why would he be? That's like firing Steve Jobs and saying...thanks for making Apple awesome, and also, you stick around to help us pick a good color for the next iPod!

Harmon's reaction to "consulting" on Community.

It's rumored that Harmon is tough to work with. That he's demanding and fights in a "my way or the highway" style. In his thoughts on the firing, he doesn't bother to deny that. Because he knows...that's how amazing TV gets made. Someone is fighting for it! Look, you know I love Shonda Rhimes, but at this point, Private Practice, Grey's Anatomy, and the new Scandal all look very similar. It's entertaining TV but it's not doing a whole lot that's brilliant or new. It's character driven and she can write good characters, but it's not clever. It doesn't make me smarter or more culturally aware. And go on, I dare you to play a Shonda Rhimes drinking game where you watch one (or all) of her shows and every time someone passionately exclaims, "You don't GET to..." take a drink. You will be PASSED OUT before anyone even pouts or makes out.

(Note to self: Come up with Shonda Rhimes Drinking Game.)
(Note to reader: Stay tuned for Shonda Rhimes Drinking Game coming Friday!)

Abed did not anticipate this timeline.

My point is, you don't get excellent TV by doing what everyone else is doing! And let's face it, Community is EXCELLENT. Sure it's been called out on being meta for meta's sake, and sometimes for trying to out meta itself by meta-ing the meta. (If you don't know what meta is, I can't help you right now.) If there's one thing fans hate more than seeing their favorite TV show end, it's seeing it ruined before it ends. Harmon birthed and persisted through the impending doom of cancellations and slow to warm fans, to singlehandedly make Community into the fan favorite it is today. Without him its just one bad episode away from being a shorter version of The Breakfast Club, one laugh track away from being Friends. Thanks NBC, in the words of Dan Harmon, and so many who have blogged before me, "You Britta'd it!"