A Q&A with ‘Community’ Writer Megan Ganz

Along the Twitter line, do you read recaps? One of them has over 30,000 comments. [Editor’s note: LET’S DESTROY THAT NUMBER, WG READERS. /runs out the door screaming //no one follows.]

I saw that! I don’t even know what people are talking about at that point.

I think I can probably guess, with that episode.

Alison Brie.

Yep.

Annie Mebane and Steve Basilone wrote that episode [“Regional Holiday Music”], and Annie and I wrote the lyrics for Alison’s “Santa Baby”-type song. And I remember being like, it’s Christmas for the commenters. Alison was so funny. When they did the first take of it, Dan [Harmon] told me that she did it one take, and she was so great, she was so perfect at it immediately, that she was like, “Do you want me to do another one?” And they were like, “I guess. You could, but we’re basically gonna use that first take that you did.” And she did one more and that was it. She so nailed that. It was great.

On behalf of the Internet, I thank you. The way I read the scene was that you were turning the table on the creeps like me, who ogle Alison.

I think it was supposed to function in two ways. Every character in that episode is being lured into the glee club by another character, and they use that person’s weakness. So, Pierce’s baby boomer nostalgia, they use that, and they use Shirley’s religion. For Jeff, what Annie is appealing to is his attraction to her infantile sort of nature. But that’s the same thing that sort of repulses him in a way, her youth. But obviously we’re sort of satirizing TV shows that do use women singing and dancing in provocative ways to lure attention, so that’s a very basic story point. There are songs like “Santa Baby” that show that men are interested in this sort of infantilized woman that’s kind of baby doll and dumb. And in the song, she’s getting dumber and dumber and crawling on the ground and trying to eat mistletoe because she doesn’t understand what it is, so it’s just a parody of those types of songs and also playing at the dynamic between Jeff and Annie. But I remember thinking as we were writing that, I’m sure they’re going to have a big reaction to this, the commenters, but I think that it was mostly those other things.