NBC’s ‘Community’: Dan Harmon posts lengthy apology blog to pretty much everyone
Let’s start with the good news. Dan Harmon and the “Community” staff are hard at work on season 5! Now that we’ve said that, let’s move on over to the not-so-great news which is Dan Harmon’s continued efforts to do damage control on himself for running his mouth recently at a Harmontown podcast about season 4.
Harmon already apologized for his comments (sort of) with a series of tweets on Monday, but that clearly wasn’t enough. He also posted a lengthy blog overnight (entitled “It Won’t Happen Again Again”) about the feelings he had in retrospect about some of what he said, and the way in which it may have resonated with others. We’re not going to put the whole thing here since it would make this article last forever (and also make it rather profane), but here’s a sample all about his fans:
“I am first and foremost sorry to Community fans that got paid nothing to stick by Community and get us to a fifth season only to hear the incoming showrunner say some stuff that felt very un-Community. Even if my goal had been to hurt someone, it would never have been you. What I said was disrespectful to your love for this show, love that I sometimes erroneously equate with validation of me as a person. I am unwittingly and unfortunately infamous for the amount I care about your opinion.”
There’s an element of strangeness about this whole situation. In a way, many us probably expected Harmon to hate season 4, and many of us also probably expected him to say something horrible about it. Did we expect him to go as far as he did with it? Probably not, but the expectation was still there. So basically, we’ve just watched a man apologize for something that we more or less knew was coming, almost as if this entire timeline was fated from the start. The way we now look at this is that we have a certain level of expectation for this man in particular to be brutally honest and to burn bridges. Is that on him? Sure, but in continuing to project this expectation on him, we’re basically giving him a license to do so. Had the room at Harmontown been different, would he have said exactly what he did?
Let’s just hope that we get to hear about funny stuff related to “Community” from here on out, since we love the show and always have. Let’s just hope that all of this behind the scenes nonsense doesn’t draw any devoted fans away from the product.
Photo: NBC