Straight from Harmontown: What Dan Harmon Said About His ‘Community’ Job Offer

This post was brought to you by Hope L Nicholson, Associate Producer for an upcoming documentary for Superchannel called Lost Heroes, about the history of the Canadian superhero.

On a recent trip to L.A. Hope happened to attend the very Harmontown Nerdmelt where Dan Harmon let it slip that he had been offered back his old post at Community. Since this big news didn’t make the actual podcast, Hope has been kind enough to share the whole adventure with GEEKPR0N. 

————————

Recently, I made a trip out to Los Angeles, looking to explore the grand world of Hollywood South, and maybe catch some time on the beach to make up for Toronto’s pessimistic weather. Acting on the advice of my friend Aaron, a typical Canadian television producer who made it big here then left for LA, I went to visit Meltdown comics. Located a few blocks from the tourist craziness of Hollywood’s walk of fame, through a fairly terrifying walk peppered by street harassment, I arrived at the shop. It was truly a nerd mecca. It’s the type of clean, well-organized, spacious store that we can only dream about in Toronto. Don’t get me wrong, I love our stores. But none of them are designed for easy browsing given the limited space they occupy.

Look, they have a Seth section! This caused me an inordinate amount of national pride.

But even better than the store itself was the gem located at the back. A dank, small, dark room with canned pop (sorry, soda) for sale and about 50 folding chairs gathered around a stage. This is Nerdmelt, a collaboration between Nerdist Inc. and Meltdown comics. It functions as a space for local comedy acts to gather and a few well-known names to record their podcasts in front of a live audience. The first night I went in and a local comedian practiced a variety hour Fringe-type show that was quirky and cute. But what really excited me were the advertisements for Sunday’s show: Harmontown. Like everyone else, I was devastated to see what happened to Community the past season without Dan Harmon at the head, and retro-actively embarrassed of the social media campaigning I had undertaken last year to help encourage its renewal.

So, I was curious. I was not familiar with the Harmontown podcast, so I went in blind on Sunday. I was surprised to see it wasn’t a packed house, maybe 40 people or less sitting in, quite a few empty chairs, probably due to the holiday weekend.

I saw Dan Harmon for the first time, and he pretty much looked and acted like every comic book shop owner I’ve ever known. Disheveled, unshaven, dourly funny, with a comically large ego. He seemed to be tired and cranky. I learned through the course of the show this is actually the happiest Dan has ever been. All of this due partly to his new blissful domestic life with his girlfriend and a new puppy (not a shelter dog, he guiltily admitted). The other guests on the show raved about how patient and sweet Dan’s girlfriend is even during the terrors she endured while on the road touring with Dan, and I felt a sudden swell of pity for her.

The other component of Dan’s new happiness was due to a type of vindication that most of us can only dream of. After the recent fan-despised season of Community, which Harmon had been asked not to be a part of (ie. He was fired), he had been recently asked back to show-run again, by the same faceless entity that fired him before.

Or his agent heard a friend of an associate of this entity say, rather. The US television business is strange.

Dan laughed when he brought up his probable return to Community, made us promise not to tell anyone, then changed his mind and said he didn’t care anymore. He explained that his newfound happiness was because he had become a golden god, and feared nothing. He’d already been fired, he had nothing to lose if they fired him again. The fact that they asked him again, even if the deal falls through, is enough to prove how much they need him.

He alluded briefly to Chevy Chase, joking that one of the conditions of the new job is that they had to bring Chevy back too. But then changed his mind, saying he’d rather hire Patrick Stewart instead, since he knew Stewart could at least remember his lines.

But his actual conditions are that he needs to have absolute control over the hiring of the writers and directors if he is to return.

Then he did a bit about white privilege that was actually fairly impressive in that it got most of the (largely) white audience squirming. He ended the night with playing AD&D in front of us. Which no matter how much you jazz it up, it’s not so much fun to watch someone else play while you twiddle your thumbs and think how if you were playing you’d have cast Ball Lightning in the first round.

I still can’t believe that I was in the audience for that announcement. I was expecting to see a fairly funny guy shoot the shit, and instead listened to him casually announce the news that the entire fan-community has been clamoring for over a year.

How do I feel about it? Good, definitely. The last season of Community was missing a lot of the heart and cleverness that had been injected into previous seasons. It was a shell of a show, with all the technical parts there, but no spirit left. I glumly watched each episode of the season, but didn’t chuckle once. I’m not as ecstatic as most fans about this news though. I admit that I lost a lost a lot of interest in the show after the first season, when it became less about a quirky community college and more about bizarre absurdism. The puppet and Claymation episodes almost had me throwing my remote at the screen. That said, I’m well aware I’m in the minority on this and most fans love the show more when it’s not bound to a serial storyline.

After the show, I chatted with some of Dan’s friends and groupies in the parking lot, and waited for a chance to meet the man himself. I did and he was charming, so much more polite and personable than he was ‘in character’ on stage. I felt so suddenly guilty that I had already tweeted about his return immediately after the show, that in a strange burst of Canadian-ness I told him a secret of my own that he could hold against me if he was offended. He graciously accepted and promised not to repeat, and told me he’d see me around.

I decided maybe I didn’t need to pity his girlfriend after all.