![]() Part of the problem with replacing Sorkin, of course, is that he wrote or co-wrote virtually every episode for four seasons. He never mastered the Sorkin version of the show he just eventually figured out a new version that he could make work. Wells was able to pull out of the tailspin in the last couple of seasons, but mainly by starting an unofficial spin-off that focused on the race to elect Bartlet’s successor. ![]() ![]() But if he could restore the characters to their original positions, he could never quite make them act – and, in particular, speak – the way they had under Sorkin, and the series went into a very dark period where it seemed an angry, pessimistic imitation of what it used to be. It took Wells, now writing the series for the first time (he had left the day-to-day to Sorkin and directing producer Tommy Schlamme), several episodes to undo the mess Sorkin left him. Sorkin, knowing he was being pushed out the door at the end of the fourth season, decided to stick it to Wells by writing a cliffhanger that essentially blew up the show, with Zoey Bartlet being kidnapped, President Bartlet temporarily stepping down, and the blowhard Republican Speaker of the House taking over the Oval Office. The most infamous example of this was “The West Wing,” where creator Aaron Sorkin frequently came into conflict with the studio and fellow producer John Wells for many of the same reasons that influenced the Harmon/Sony talks: cost and schedule overruns, personality clashes, etc. ![]() Other series have tried to replace idiosyncratic, unmistakeable voices late in the run, and usually not well. Given how strange – and expensive – Harmon’s deviations from that formula tended to be, it wouldn’t be surprising if that’s a version of the show that both NBC and Sony would prefer.īut it’s hard to imagine a post-Harmon version of the show being as unpredictable, as daring, as moving and, yes, as gut-bustingly funny as it was under his watch. The cast is talented enough, and the characters delineated enough, that you can imagine a much more straightforward version of the show in which an unlikely group of friends have wacky adventures on a college campus. It’s entirely possible that “Community” will still be a funny show without Harmon. (He tweeted late last night that he was leaving the show.) So the new showrunners will be “Community” newcomers: Moses Port and David Guarascio, who have worked on a number of Sony shows over the years (as mid-series showrunners on “Just Shoot Me,” as creators of “Aliens in America” and producers on “Happy Endings”). Harmon’s chief lieutenants, Neil Goldman and Garrett Donovan, had already left a few weeks earlier to develop their own shows and run FOX’s new “Ben and Kate.” The writing staff has seen a number of other key defections over the years, and the highest-ranking writer left, Chris McKenna, apparently didn’t want to take over a “Community” that didn’t involve Harmon. ”Īnd there’s not even a chance for an orderly transition. The most public example of that was his feud with Chevy Chase, but that’s just one drop in the bucket as one of Adalian’s sources put it, “Dan is a brilliant at ideas, but he’s terrible at. (As Harmon noted on his blog, no one even contacted him between the season 4 pick-up and when he heard that he was being replaced.) As reported by Joe Adalian at Vulture, the studio took issue with both the esoteric creative direction Harmon took the show in and with his at times very abrasive management style. Harmon’s contract was up after this most recent season, and Sony, which produces “Community,” decided it would rather push forward without him. It’s a challenge that “Community” is going to have to deal with now that we know creator Dan Harmon won’t be continuing as showrunner. And when that person leaves – especially if that person has a voice that doesn’t sound like the one you hear on any other show – it can be a huge challenge for the series to overcome. It’s usually the voice of whoever created the show, and almost always the voice of whoever is running it. Television shows have many minds contributing to them, but the best shows tend to speak with one voice. ![]()
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