Community Creator Replaced as Showrunner

This is not news that will be greeted with joy by Community fans, I'm guessing (And yes, they'll be a healthy dose of editorial in this news story). Dan Harmon, the man who created Community and has served as its showrunner, is being replaced in that capacity in Season 4, reports TV Guide, along with other outlets. The new showrunners will be newcomers to the series, Moses Port and David Guarascio.

Port and Guarascio wrote for Just Shoot Me and created The CW's short-lived Aliens in America. Recently, they served as consulting producers on Happy Endings. However, the tough pill to swallow, regardless of Port and Guarascio's own accomplishments, is not having Harmon be the guiding force for the series anymore, given Community's very unique feel and vision among the sitcom landscape.

TV Guide says Harmon was only signed to a one-year deal last year. He will have a consulting producer title on Community going forward, though TV Guide stresses that doesn't mean he's be actively involved in the show. No doubt fans will ponder what it means hearing Sony (who produce the series) "had been looking to make a change at the top," according to TV Guide, which is why they hadn't made a new deal with Harmon.

Community is a rather low-rated show, but one with excellent reviews and an intensely loyal core fanbase who know much about the people who make it. That being the case, it's odd to see this dramatic change behind the scenes, as many of the key creators of Community will likely be dramatically different next season. Besides Harmon no longer running the series, executive producers Neil Goldman and Garrett Donovan are leaving for a new deal at 20th Century Fox while co-executive producer Chris McKenna has a new deal at Universal TV. TV Guide says McKenna also wouldn't have taken the showrunner job if offered without Harmon's involvement in the series.

All of which begs the question, will Community: Season 4 feel like Community? TV Guide says Sony had been "looking at ways to broaden Community and attempt to extend the show's life on NBC," as they sought new showrunners. But it's pretty clear fans of the series love Community the way it's been.

Source : http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/05/19/community-creator-replaced-as-showrunner

Where Glee Went Wrong

Editorial:

"Why are you reviewing Glee?!"

"This show stinks! Stop reviewing this crap."

"What?! You review Glee but not 30 Rock? What is wrong with you people?!"

"I hate you all. Except Fowler."

You may have noticed… We're not reviewing Glee anymore. If you want, you can go ahead and assume it's because of your constant complaints that the series was even being covered in the first place. It's true. We stopped because of you. You can stop reading now.

- FOX

More to the point, we stopped reviewing Glee because you actually (mostly) stopped complaining about it. And those of you that actually liked the show, you stopped watching it. You stopped reading about it. It's no coincidence that readership of Glee articles on IGN has dropped along with the viewer ratings of the show itself. Less people are watching it, less people are reading about it and now… less people are writing about it.

Blame Glee.

What's important to note is that reviews of Glee on IGN used to actually do very well. We didn't expect to review the show after the first episode or two, but surprise, surprise, the interest there after all. It was clear many of you were watching the show… and liked it! And so did we.

Yet here's a series that rocketed to popularity and now wallows in the "Meh" category of weekly viewing. It was a one-of-a-kind choice in primetime: a series that successfully integrated song and dance into an hour of scripted television. Fame did it for six seasons, but that was more than 20 years ago. Glee was easy to love, at first. It was funny. It was dramatic. They sang songs we liked. And it was fresh and new. And then it became popular. Perhaps too popular. Album collections were produced at what seemed like a weekly pace. The cast went on a concert tour. That tour became a 3-D movie spectacular. A spin-off reality series gave contestants a chance to guest star on the series. Glee was everywhere! And we were on Glee overload.

Of course, this wouldn't have been a problem (or at least not a problem we couldn't have overcome) if the series at the heart of the hype remained strong and/or got better. But it didn't. What was once fresh and new became old and stale… and it's only three seasons in. So what happened? What has pushed the viewers away? How did the series go from appointment television to a months worth of unviewed listings on my DVR? Well, it turned out that Glee didn't really have a story to tell.

- FOX

"Is this thing on?"

How often can we get wrapped up in whether or not New Directions places at Regionals and gets to Nationals? It's a fine season long goal, but it's not something you can really keep coming back for. Certainly, the writers know this, which is why there's plenty more going on at McKinley. There's on-again/off-again relationships and… off-again/on-again relationships. Who's dating who? Who's marrying who? Who's having whose baby? Over and over and over. Again, this could be fine material. There's plenty of great television that thrived on dating, sex and scandal. But Glee just seems to be rehashing and stumbling over their own stories and characters.

You either have characters that never change or grow (Rachel, Finn, Schuester) or characters that change week to week (Quinn, Santana, Sue Sylvester). It's hard to stick with a series when characters you're invested in never evolve. Season after season Rachel has been a selfish pain in the ass. And not in a fun, evil kind of way. Just a stupid, selfish character. And we've gotten no payoff. No comeuppance. No change of direction. She doesn't even change her pained facial expression when she sings.

It's also hard to stick with a series when characters you're invested in are a different person every week. In the past year or so, Quinn has covered being a chain-smoking punk, a vindictive birth mother, a born again Christian, a judgmental best friend, a future Harvard-attending goodie-goodie and a struggling paraplegic. She changes her personality nearly every episode, so that she can (awkwardly) fit into any conflict the writers want to put her into, even if it doesn't match what came before.

And the music hasn't helped anything. You could say the song choices are the problem, or the obvious theme episodes hinder creativity. But my biggest problem was the presentation. They were either on a stage or in the choir room. It was either a song battle or a heartfelt confession. And that's about it. And more often than not, the songs had only the vaguest tie to the story happening in that episode.

Simply put, Glee became a struggle to watch. The song performances became trying, the characters remained annoying, the repetitive plots kept repeating. The viewers left the series, the readers left the reviews and IGN stopped covering the episodes week to week. So, for some of you Glee haters out there, you're welcome. You got your wish. We're not reviewing Glee. And for the rest of you that watched the series at first, but have stopped keeping up with it week to week, well… you're probably not even reading this anyway.


Source : http://tv.ign.com/articles/122/1224479p1.html