Chevy Chase leaving Community

Last week it was announced that Chevy Chase was leaving my favorite show, Community.  Community's fourth (and likely final) season will start airing in February, held back by NBC for no good reason whatsoever, in favor of lesser shows. The fourth is a short, thirteen episode season and they've already finished filming eleven episodes, all of which Chevy is in. Oddly enough, they've already filmed the season finale episode, so the two episodes without Chevy are the 11th and 12th. This is good because it will allow them to write Chevy's character, Pierce Hawthorne, out of those episodes and then he'll be back in the season finale.

I'm not happy about his leaving. While many Community fans say that if they had to pick someone to leave the show, it would be Pierce, I think it will be like getting rid of one of the group in Friends. Sure, you'd get rid of Phoebe or Ross, but the show just wouldn't be the same. Pierce may be obnoxious, sometimes racist and uncivil, but he brings a different perspective and outlook to the group. I'll miss him.

Before he quit the show, Chevy was recently in the news because of an outburst on the set. He angrily objected to Pierce's racist dialogue and said something like, "Next thing you know, Pierce will be saying "the N-word"." (He actually said "the N-word".  I'm too polite to.) There was a loud uproar and a lot of controversy which probably lead to his leaving the show. I think Chevy wasn't being racist, but was trying to make a legitimate point.

Pierce's character had a strong arc through the first three seasons of Community. He started off as a goofy, gruff, sometimes surprisingly wise, old, lonely guy during the first season and during the second season went through a long period of anger and intolerance. His character became pretty grim and unpleasant for awhile. But he moved through that story arc, lost his father, gained a brother, and actually grew. It was a really nice story and I thought the character had left behind most of his more archaic prejudices, like racism. When I heard about Chevy's outburst, I could sympathize because I thought the character was finally beyond that baggage.  Clearly, Chevy thought so too. I give him credit for that.

So, unfortunately, it's so long Pierce! Losing you is definitely not streets ahead.

Watch Community or . . .

Tomorrow night (Thursday, March 15, 2012, in case there’s any confusion) TV’s best comedy, COMMUNITY, returns to NBC at 8PM. Please watch it. It’s an awesome show that needs some good ratings to survive.

Comedy Central just picked up the rights to broadcast the reruns, which is great news and helps the show’s chances of renewal for a fourth season. But that alone isn’t enough.

If you’ve never watched Community before, you have a little over twenty-four hours to watch the first two seasons on Hulu. That is totally doable if you don’t sleep tonight and skip work tomorrow. You won’t regret it.

To repeat, watch Community.

That is all.

Terrible TV News

After a great final three episodes of the season and the excellent news of its renewal for a fourth season, now comes some terrible news about Community.

Dan Harmon will not return as showrunner of "Community" next season, as NBC did not renew his contract for season four.

Or, as Harmon wrote on his personal blog: "I got fired."  Link

Community has a unique voice among television shows and that voice is Dan Harmon's.  With only thirteeen episodes in the fourth season order, it's extremely unlikely that someone new is going to come in, find that voice and make a show that even approaches the quality it's had over three seasons.

Interestingly, in order to completely match the Star Trek parallel, they moved the show to Friday nights.  (NBC ousted original Star Trek showrunner and creator Gene Roddenberry after the second season, then moved the show to Friday night.  The following season saw a big drop in quality and was its last).

NBC, YOU SUCK.

I guess we'll have to consider the the wonderful third season finale the series finale.

Edited to add:  SONY, YOU SUCK.

Because apparently the studio did this.

Another visit to Bizarro World

Despite months of Administration rhetoric setting the stage for action against Iran, the U.S. Intelligence community just released a report that concludes that Iran closed down its nuclear weapons program four years ago. Good news!

Unfortunately, the White House has been relocated to an alternate universe, where news that Iran has no active program and stopped the one they did have four years ago is ammunition AGAINST Iran.

"I view this report as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program," Bush said. "The reason why it's a warning signal is they could restart it."

"To me, the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) provides an opportunity for us to rally the international community _ to continue to rally the community _ to pressure the Iranian regime to suspend its program," the president said. "What's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program."

He also asserted that the report means "nothing's changed," focusing on the previous existence of a weapons program and not addressing the discrepancy between his rhetoric and the disclosure that weapons program has been frozen for four years.

President Bush on Iran

I view this as a call to arms. Clearly we had better gear up for action against Germany and Japan immediately! What's to say that they won't rearm and invade their neighbors again? And we haven't heard from that Attila the Hun guy in a while. Seems to me like he's up to something. We should also invade the Klingon Empire ASAP. What's to say they won't create themselves and start attacking our colonies and starships?

Wake me up when we're back in our regular universe.

A TV community

In about an hour, a website is going to post reviews of two episodes of a television series that has been off the air for nearly fifteen years. I cannot wait. I have been looking forward to this for weeks.

That website is the Onion’s A.V. Club and the reviews are for the last two episodes of the fifth season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. What the what, you say?

I have been involved in a few communities during my years with Internet access. I first joined Compuserve in the late 1980’s in order to support a friend who was in an argument (with the author!) over a really bad Star Trek novel. After Compuserve I joined GEnie before it died where I was involved in discussion groups on Star Trek TNG, DS9, Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Babylon 5 as they aired. It was a technologically primitive, but glorious, time. Since then, I haven’t been a part of a regular discussion of TV, even as I continue to watch and love many shows.

Which brings me to the A.V. Club. I only discovered it within the last year, I don’t really remember how. But what they do there is review TV shows. New shows as they air, and, awesomely, older shows that the reviewer may or may not have seen during their original run. I’ve gone back and read the reviews of every episode of Firefly and Police Squad! I’ve read the reviews of Pushing Daisies, posted contemporaneously as the episodes aired and conveying the broad highs and lows as the show prospered and then was slowly killed by the writer’s strike. I’m currently reading weekly reviews of Babylon 5, now in the third season. I read reviews of Community, Futurama, SNL, Beavis and Butt-Head, The Walking Dead and Survivor after the shows air.

In addition to excellent and fun reviews, there are the comments. A.V. Club commenters are informed, intelligent and passionate about the shows they’re discussing. There are no flame wars and very little bad behavior. It’s a community of people who love television, talking about television. I don’t myself comment a whole lot, but I do on occasion and it’s always fun.

Which brings me to DS9.

Two Deep Space Nine reviews are posted every Thursday morning at 11AM EST by Zack Handlen. What makes them special for me is that Zack had never seen more than a couple of episodes of the show before he started watching and reviewing, so I’m getting to relive the show vicariously through him. It’s been great to see him grow in appreciation of this greatest of all Treks and it’s been thrilling to see him so excited about the twists and turns this series takes. This morning, he’s reviewing the final two episodes of the excellent fifth season, which ends on my single favorite image and episode ending in ALL of Trek. An ending better even than the end of Best of Both Worlds part 1. That’s why I’m so excited. I can’t wait to hear Zack’s reaction and be in the ensuing discussion.

If you’re interested in TV or catching up on an old show, head on over to the A.V. Club and check it out.

Community Reaches Out

One of the best sitcoms ever, Community, was supposed to reappear on NBC's schedule last night, October 19.  Unfortunately, NBC pushed back the 4th season premier date so they could focus on other, suckier, shows.  Lest their enthusiastic, nay rabid, fans lose it, the wonderful people who make Community posted this equally wonderful video.



Pure awesomeness.

Come with me if you don't want paint on your clothes

My favorite new show from last fall is easily NBC's Community. The writing is clever, I love the cast, and it's just a lot of fun.

In tonight's episode, the community college held an all-against-all paintball game. It was brilliant. The action parodied everything from The Warriors to Zombie Movies to Terminator to Die Hard.

Just awesome. If you missed it, it will probably be on Hulu soon. Check it out.

Community's Fate

It was just announced that Community will return for a "shortened" fourth season of 13 episodes.  That's great news, although a full season would be better.  Still, it will give them a chance to go out telling a complete story.

Awesome.

Baltimore

I just have a couple of things to say about the riots in Baltimore after the funeral of Freddie Gray who died in police custody.

I was talking with some folk last night and some suggested that the police should have just started shooting the looters. Let's get some perspective, shall we? The looters weren't murdering people, they were stealing and damaging property, so executing them in the streets wouldn't have been an appropriate response. What's more, decades of police violence and intimidation helped to create the environment in which the riots erupted, so an escalated police response would have just made things worse. We'd have had riots around the country today.

Bob Cesca had the perfect response to the events.

It’s unfair that the memory of Freddie Gray, the latest victim of unfair police profiling and excessive force, is besmirched by looters and rioters who are effectively spitting on his grave by turning what ought to be peaceful protests into self-serving violence and theft — where personal outrage and greed supersede a far more noble cause. The fact is, the looters probably don’t care too much who was killed or by whom. They’re merely piggy-backing their personal greed and lack of morality onto an entirely unrelated event.

It’s unfair that more commentators don’t make a clear distinction between the original tragedy and the violent unrest.

...

It’s unfair to the broader African-American community, which still struggles with racism and racial discrimination, that a relative few looters reinforce the ugly stereotypes marketed by those who seek to separate rather than unite. The looters and assailants are no more representative of the African-American community than secessionist Bundy ranch hooligans are representative of whites.

It’s unfair that poverty, one of the root causes of racial animosity, isn’t viewed by more Americans as a national problem demanding national solutions, rather than a wedge to be marginalized, ridiculed and demagogued with racial scare-words and Southern Strategy dog-whistles.

And if you're one of those charming people who believe that people reacted with violence because of the color of their skin, then check out Cesca's article for a gallery of other recent riots, committed mostly by white people over far more trivial matters.  Here are a couple.

The top is Vancouver, the bottom Kentucky. Both riots occurring after sporting events.

Today is October 19!

This evening, Community returns to NBC’s Thursday night schedule. This episode kicks off the fourth season and is the first episode produced without awesome creator and showrunner, Dan Harmon. I, and most other Community fans, are hoping the show maintains the level of brilliance it achieved so effortlessly during the first three seasons.

Welcome back, Greendale students.

Zombie Community

My favorite NBC comedy, Community, went WAY over the top with their zombie-themed Halloween episode tonight.  WAY over the top.

But it was awesome.

Community Repilots

On Thursday, the best sitcom of the past decade, Community, returned to NBC's Thursday night lineup with two new episodes. Last year's fourth season was wildly uneven as NBC fired show creator Dan Harmon and his replacements had a difficult time finding the right tone for the show. In an almost unprecedented move, NBC renewed the show and rehired Harmon for this shortened season.

Amazingly, the two episodes demonstrated immediately why it's hard to take over for a brilliant, mercurial show creator and how that creator can instill a unique voice in a show. The two episodes were great, reestablishing the characters into the Greendale universe and restoring the distinct, fast-paced dialogue the show uses like few others. The difference from last season was startling. Chevy Chase was the only original cast member not to return, but (spoiler) he made a wonderful, completely unexpected cameo that I absolutely loved.

TV critics received five episodes for early reviews and word is that the fourth episode is amazing.

Can't wait.

Skewed priorities. What's new?

To say that America has been preoccupied with "Muslim" terrorism over the past ten years is to state the obvious.  The scale of our interest, however, is vastly out of scale with the actual problem.

Muslim American terrorist plots have killed since 9/11 — since the 3,000 killed on 9/11 — have killed 33 individuals in the United States since that time. Over that same period of time, there have been more than 150,000 murders in the United States, or 14 or 15,000 murders every year. Muslim American terrorism, then, has been a very small, very low percentage of the overall violence in the United States.  Link

Americans understand that it's impossible to police everyone to stop murders, so they don't get overly excited about it.  But since Muslim terrorism sounds alien and scary, it's much easier to whip us into a security frenzy.  It's easier to demonize people than to work to make Muslim communities feel invested and safe in America.

Even so,

"the Muslim American community has been central in combating the low-level threat. Of the terrorist plots where researchers have been able to identify a tip that was responsible for foiling them, about one-third of those tips originated from the Muslim American community."

America's strength in diversity isn't just a vague concept.  Tolerance and diversity actually work to make all of us better and safer.

Five Seasons, No Movie

NBC has cancelled Community.

The fourth season, without creator Dan Harmon, was very rocky, but Harmon’s return gave us a very good, if not quite the same, fifth season. It will be the last. This is definitely not streets ahead. NBC Britta’d it, big time.

I consider Community to be the best sitcom of the past decade and one of the greatest of all time.

Farewell, Greendale Human Beings. You will be missed.

Another Opening, Another Show

I met my wife on the first day of school in our Sophomore year when we both tried out for the fall musical, Girl Crazy. Since that time, I’ve been in thirteen high school, college and community theatre productions. My last show was West Side Story, somewhere around 20 years ago. I really miss the fun, the camaraderie and the singing and dancing. Someday I’d like to do some local community theatre.

To my delight, last fall Rachel tried out for her high school’s fall musical, A Chorus Line, and got a small (but incredibly crucial) part. She impressed the Drama Teacher so much that she understudied one of the other girls and served as dance captain when the choreographer was out. It was a great experience for her. I was amazed that they’d do such a mature-themed show (as there’s no way we could have done it during my high school years), but times have certainly changed; they toned down only a few words of dialogue.

After winter break, Rachel was invited to play the role of Yvette, the French Maid, in their charity production of Clue, based on the Tim Curry movie. She did a great job and the show was a lot of fun.

Which brings us to tonight, the premier of the spring musical, Bye, Bye, Birdie. Rachel is one of the girls of the town, Margie. We’re really looking forward to it.

Rachel has done all of these shows in her Freshman year, so if she keeps up with it, she could blow past the total number of shows I’ve been in by her first year of college. I’m looking forward to that.

They only have hammers

I had a talk with someone I know the other day, and she spoke in favor of the deployment of the National Guard in DC. She's qualified to have an opinion because she lives and works in DC and is often harassed by homeless people in the street. She thinks that the deployment of troops, and we can, as of today, add West Virginia National Guards into the mix, will help against crime. It seems like common sense.

Here's why she's wrong.

You wouldn't hire a plumber to rewire your fuse box.

You wouldn't hire a barber to remove your appendix.

You wouldn't hire an unqualified anti-vaxxer to be your head of Health and Human Services (unless you're an addled moron controlled by fascists).

It should be obvious why you wouldn't do those things - training and expertise. Unfortunately, people often conflate police and the military because they tend to be big, strong men and women trained to shoot people.

But here's the thing. Police receive training in community engagement. They operate in civilian populations every day. Plus, they receive training in the laws and regulations of their community, their state, and the nation. (Putting aside the fact that many, many police in America are terrible, violent, and a blight on their communities).

Soldiers are NOT trained in any of that.

There may be a big, strong National Guardsman on your street corner, but you can't trust that he'll be an effective crime deterrent or law enforcer, because that's not what he's trained to do. He's more likely to stand there ineffectually or cause problems himself. Given that trained police often don't understand civil rights or due process, why would you expect soldiers to?

The bottom line is that soldiers are not trained law enforcement officers and expecting them to be is unfair to them, and unfair to the citizenry that are obviously expected to obey them. (Ask the Iraqis how that worked out.)

As Commander William Adama said: 

"There's a reason we separate military and the police: one fights the enemy of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."

It is illegal to deploy American troops on American soil for that very reason. And this invasion of our own troops is going to quickly expand to other cities, also not guilty of the hellscape designation that MAGA have given them. These troops are not there to fight crime. They are there to quell dissent, attack and arrest protest and resistance, and end American democracy in favor of a king. A really petty, stupid, king.

Don't support this.

Community is Coming Back!

The question wasn’t if it was coming back, but when it was coming back. Now it’s official.

"Community" is back on NBC's schedule! The fan-favorite comedy is returning on Thurs., March 15 to its old 8 p.m. EST timeslot according to series creator Dan Harmon who tweeted the news.

Please watch this awesome show so it gets a fourth season. Please. You will be rewarded.

Futurama and Community

Tonight on Comedy Central, one of my favorite shows, Futurama, begins its 13 episode “final” season. This is the second final season it’s had, the first being in 2003 when it stopped airing on FOX. This is the show’s third season on Comedy Central and while it never reached the incredible heights of its first four seasons on FOX, it has been a consistently fun show. My biggest disappointments have been the incredibly heavy-handed and obvious social commentary in some episodes, when subtle satire is much more effective, and that they’ve continued the on again/off again Fry/Leela tease rather than have the characters move forward in their relationship. I wish they’d just get married already.

We’ll see how it ends in September and whether or not someone else will pick it up to produce more episodes. I hope so, but if not, it’s been a good run.

In stranger news, NBC renewed Community, one of the best sitcoms of all time, a few weeks ago after its fairly disastrous fourth season, produced without series creator, Dan Harmon. Harmon was fired after the third season and the new showrunners, facing an impossible task, couldn’t recreate the magic. The show became obvious, strained and pandering much of the time and I was content to let it end with the fourth season. But now that Harmon is back (even network producers occasionally show some smarts), I’m looking forward to a reinvigorated fifth season, probably airing next winter.

Strange times in TV Land.

Coming Out - Enlightenment

Continued from Part 2.  Here's Part 1.

Through the nineties, I still called myself a Christian but was honestly more of a deist.  I believed in a kind, loving god who would not condemn people to torture for differences in beliefs or petty crimes.  I did not believe that any being who could create the entire Universe would give a crap about some of the ridiculous "sins" that Christians (and Muslims) raise to the level of mass murder.  The idea of a petty, vengeful god who deserved to be feared was absolutely nonsensical to me.  The god I believed in made sense and was in all ways good.

But then things began to change.

Although it will likely chagrin him to learn it, my brother was a big factor.  I don’t know for sure but I believe that his church was becoming more conservative during the late nineties.  They were hosting creationist, right-wing evangelical speakers like Ken Ham and focusing more and more on Biblical literalism.  When we visited my family in Indiana, my brother would raise some of the creationist topics and we would discuss them as much as we could stand.  Topics like the age of the Earth, the existence of dinosaurs, and biblical literalism were all discussed.

Even though I still considered myself a Christian, I couldn't agree with him that counter to all scientific finding, the Earth was only 6000 years old.  I couldn't agree that dinosaurs existed within that time frame, were mentioned in the Bible and that fossils were planted by Satan or God as a test of faith.  I couldn't agree that the Bible was literally true in all aspects and trumped scientific fact.  But when my brother asked me if I believed that Jesus was the only way to eternal life, I still felt like I had to answer "yes" and did so. 

In a way, I feel that I let my brother down.  As we discussed these issues, I didn't have the information to answer his questions.  He may only have been trying to get me to validate the conservative Christian worldview, but at some level I like to think that he realized the arguments he was being exposed to in church didn't make sense.  He's a smart guy and recognized the contradictions and rationalizations and so raised them with me.  Unfortunately, at the time, I couldn't give him the answers he sought in order to reject these ideas.  So I may have cemented his belief in some of the anti-intellectual mumbo-jumbo through my inability to effectively counter it.

But if I failed to convince him, the seeds of skepticism and rationality had been planted in my mind and were taking root.  I continued thinking about these topics and started seeking the answers for myself.  And, perhaps more importantly, I started thinking about why people hold such irrational beliefs.

At some point in the late nineties, I discovered the James Randi Educational Foundation.  The JREF is the organization founded by magician and skeptic James "The Amazing" Randi.  I don't remember how I first found the site, but I was initially attracted by the fascinating articles he posted every week debunking all sorts of paranormal and pseudo-scientific nonsense.  Religious belief often makes you susceptible to other silly beliefs.  My sister-in-law, for example, believes in alternative "cures" which do absolutely nothing.  Before discovering the JREF, I had never really thought through the concepts of ghosts, dowsing, homeopathy, the existence of the soul, the effectiveness of accupuncture and "eastern medicine" or many other ideas.  I guess I was agnostic on these things.  I didn't know.

Randi's weekly columns straight-forwardly and devastatingly destroyed these supernatural ideas.  There is no proof of  such things as ghosts or the soul.  Dowsing never works when confronted with actual scientific testing.  Eastern medicine has no data to backup its claims.  Homeopathy would violate the laws of physics if it actually worked.

Skepticism, properly applied, allows you to see past the bad science, the lack of adequate controls in testing, the anecdotal evidence, the confirmation bias that almost always accompanies outrageous claims.  Looking at fantastic claims through the prism of the scientific method is an effective way of identifying trash ideas.  I also joined the JREF Forum, an on-line community populated by skeptics (and believers) who discussed all sorts of issues, from science to religion to politics.  It could be brutal, but you could get nowhere without evidence to back up your arguments;  it was a great way to earn your skeptical, logical and rational chops.  I owe a great deal to the JREF.

I was very active on the JREF Forum for a number of years.  The key event, a turning point in my life, came fairly early.  I was reading Randi's weekly column and he was discussing some pseudo-scientific "energy" claim (I don't remember the actual topic).  He made a statement to the effect that there are no "miracles", no "supernatural" energy.  And I, in all my believer-y goodness, added silently, "except for God."  And as soon as I added that in my mind, I realized for the first time that Randi wouldn't ever add that.  He couldn't.  I realized that the inexorable conclusion to Randi's writings were that he didn't believe in God.

I was shaken.  It had never occurred to me that The Amazing Randi was an atheist.  (Actually, atheism had never occurred to me at all.  After all, I was sure in my heart that there was a god.  Weren't atheists just people who "hate god"?)

The article I was reading didn't explicitly say so, but I was now sure Randi was a non-believer.  For Randi to believe in God would be a total betrayal of everything he had written in his columns, everything he said he believed.  And for the very first time I thought about the logical application of my growing skepticism, the application of that skepticism to religion.

After that, as I became more adept at viewing the world through eyes skeptical of fantastic claims, religion came further and further into my sights.  As Carl Sagan said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."  Did I have any evidence for my religious beliefs?  Did any Christian?  As far as I could tell, your religious beliefs are mostly dependent on where you were born.  Did my family have proof that I didn't?  Going back in time, did anyone have any proof?  Why should I believe in ideas fostered by bronze-age herders who didn't understand germ theory or heliocentrism?  Should I believe just because it's popular in my community, my country and my family?  Or should I have actual evidence before believing the extraordinary claims made by religion?

I don't remember the exact date, sometime around the year 2000, but I remember the time and place.  I was on the bus after work, rounding the Clopper Road exit off I-270 heading for the park-and-ride lot.  I was thinking about my beliefs and my utter lack of evidence for them.  I could think of no reason to believe in something for which I had no evidence.  If I was to be intellectually honest, I had to admit that.

And just like that, my "faith" slipped away and I abandoned it utterly.  The last fleeting "religious" thought I had was that Jesus would be mad at me.  I instantly recognized that as a church-conditioned response, a last desperate attempt at belief through fear.  I let it go.

I was free.

To be concluded . . .

Sometimes, the good guys win

It looks like the bad publicity and boycott of Chic-fil-A may have worked. In negotiating with Chicago to open stores in that city, Chic-fil-A appears to have agreed to stop sponsoring hate groups like Focus on the Family and the National Organization for Marriage. And note that this result comes despite Mike Huckabee’s “eat at Chic-fil-A and support bigotry against gays” day a few weeks ago.

In a letter addressed to Alderman Moreno and signed by Chick-fil-A’s Senior Director of Real Estate, it states, “The WinShape Foundations is now taking a much closer look at the organizations it considers helping, and in that process will remain true to its stated philosophy of not supporting organizations with political agendas.” Winshape, a non-profit funded by Chick-fil-a, has donated millions of dollars to anti-LGBT groups, including some classified as hate groups, such as Focus on the Family and the National Organization for Marriage. In meetings the company executives clarified that they will no longer give to anti-gay organizations.

“We are very pleased with this outcome and thank Alderman Moreno for his work on this issue,” said Anthony Martinez, executive director of The Civil Rights Agenda. “I think the most substantive part of this outcome is that Chick-fil-A has ceased donating to organizations that promote discrimination, specifically against LGBT civil rights. It has taken months of discussion, both with our organization and with the Alderman, for Chick-fil-A to come forward with these concessions and we feel this is a strong step forward for Chick-fil-A and the LGBT community, although it is only a step.”

If they’ve truly changed, and time will tell, then I’ll be glad to patronize them again.