We don’t know yet whether “Community” will be renewed next season, but as Josh warned in the last hour, if it is, it’s likely to get a shortened season. What’s also uncertain is the status of Chevy Chase’s character, Pierce Hawthorne. He gave an interview to Vulture yesterday to discuss the fate of his character and the show, although I have no idea why he’d give an interview where he insists on being a jackass and providing zero insight. Here’s some of the highlights:
Will Pierce take his “suspension” or will he give going back to school another shot?
I have no idea. I don’t even know if we’ll be picked up.
How do you think the fans of Community would react if Pierce suddenly graduated and completely left?
I don’t want to talk about that. Why would I? We don’t know if the show has been picked up. Even if it had been picked up, I haven’t made a deal. I have to go through all that stuff before I can give you my opinion on the character. It’s not easy to answer that, because I haven’t made my deal yet.
How would you change things on the show?
I’d make it funnier.
How would you make it funnier?
With my brand of humor. I’m not crazy about that character and I’m getting tired of playing him.
What don’t you like about him?
I just don’t think the writing of that character reflects what I do comedically, and I love the people I work with. They’re all good kids, and they all do very well in their parts. But I don’t think anyone has a sense of what to do with me, so I got to play some gray-haired, biased, bigoted guy. I’ve been too funny in my life to have to play a character who’s … moderately funny.
Would you say “time heals all wounds”?
I wouldn’t answer such a cliché.
What an enlightening interview. Thanks, Chevy! Thanks for being a ungrateful, out-of-touch, unresponsive, and rude dick. You know why Chevy Chase is written as a gray-haired, biased, bigoted jackass? Because that’s what Chevy Chase is: A grey-haired, biased, bigoted jackass.
What does Chase want? Really? Does he want Clark Griswold written into the study group. Actually, I have no idea why they haven’t done a Vacation genre-spoof — National Lampoon’s Spring Vacation, where Pierce drives the gang to a water park, only to discover that it’s closed, but it doesn’t stop Annie from stripping down to her skivvies and sliding down the water slide over and over and over again. That GIF would kill the Internet.
Nevertheless, pratfalls and the comedy of wrongheaded stubbornness doesn’t belong in the Greendale Universe. Chase should just be glad he’s not playing Leonard, although he is more closely aligned to Chase’s comedic style.
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I hate to say it, but the last few weeks I have started to wonder if there isn’t something to Chase’s feelings about Dan Harmon. I see things that make me think he doesn’t know what to do with his characters, that the show is getting away from him and he’s flailing. Like Britta. Sure she’s been an insecure head case the whole time, but we’re supposed to believe she can’t point a fucking camera in pillows and blankets? But mostly my concerns stem from Chang. I think Harmon has absolutely destroyed one of the funnier characters on the show. Senor Chang was fucking hilarious in season one, but now what is he? Does anybody know? Harmon fucking doesn’t. I’d like to know what Ken Jeong thinks about all this and the (de)evolution of his character. Someone make a call.
I agree about the character inconsistencies and that is why I don’t like the show anymore, but Chevy Chase is being a dick about it. Talk to Harmon about the direction of your character, don’t bitch to the media about not being funny (when you were never the funniest character in the first place).
The show is brilliant, but needs a more linear narrative. We fell in love with it because you know, stuff happened to the characters, so we saw some potential growth. Now it’s just one big meme breeding ground.
the dreamatorium episode almost ruined troy and abed for me, it was such a stupid fucking episode, Law & Order was great, but starburns funeral episode just seemed rushed, I guess they’re setting everything up for the last arc, but it was a mess of an episode, with some good jokes sprinkled in.
I think Britta is the only character who has changed for the better. It’s as if they finally figured out how to write for her but got bored of all the other characters. Chevy Chase might be a dick, but he has a point.
@Lunchbox20
As much as I love the show, I agree with what you said about Chang. It really feels like the writers are getting desperate for Chang to do something. Season 2 had Chang’s role reduced; he’s pretty much a secondary character in the show like Starburns and Magnitude, which is much more suitable for him. In season 3, they tried to make him important again, but it just wouldn’t work if he doesn’t bring anything funny or interesting into the show.
…but it doesn’t stop Annie from stripping down to her skivvies and sliding down the water slide over and over and over again…
Dustin, you suggest the best things.
Just the mere MENTION of this idea was enough to shut my brain down for a full 5 minutes.
Dustin I know I was ragging you yesterday for your Elizabeth Moss infatuation, but that is the single greatest idea in the history of ideas.
Does Chevy want to get fired? Is he making that much off residuals from “Vacation” and “Fletch” showings on cable?
I don’t think he’s got “fuck you” money, but I’m pretty sure he’s got enough to say “fuck this” to Harmon and NBC.
Sure, I’ll do your interview
Vulture*asks lighthearted question*
Chevy *mumbles* go fuck yourself
Alright, Chevy, thanks!
Translation: “Pierce has never been the focus of the show. I would make Pierce the focus of the show.”
This!
He may be an asshole, but how in the hell is Chevy Chase a bigot?
Because he has said bigoted things in the past.
Really? Like what?
No, I’m making it up, because that’s what I do. I can’t give you exact examples, but I have read things that he has said that were bigoted. You’re just gonna have to take my word for it. Or don’t. I don’t really give a shit.
Apparently we’re your search engine now: [gawker.com]
Again, I see a lot of jerky behavior in those anecdotes, but not any bigotry.
Unless you count calling your ex-wife a bitch…in which case I think every divorced man on the planet is a bigot.
Bigotry is prejudice against a gender or a group. So, women and gays. Umm, anything else?
He’s a bigot, in SNL he said a lot of sexist and homophobic things to random people on set, so yeah.
…was relentlessly hateful to Terry Sweeney, suggesting that SNL’s first openly gay cast member star in a sketch where they weighed him every week to see if he had AIDS. “So then he ended up having to apologize and actually coming to my office,” Sweeney says. “He was really furious that he had to apologize to me.”
I think Community’s mea culpa is that it seeks to cater to its audience too much and comes off now as inauthentic. Harmon saw that jackasses like us saved the show so now he wants to give us “what we want” but didn’t realize that we already liked what we had. A show can’t be ALL tongue-in-cheek moments or it takes away from the entire point of subversive humor. We used to examine an episode and pick a few moments that were ripe for humor “piggybacking”, now it’s like Harmon is saying “Hey nerds! Here’s the funny parts! Make some of those blog posts about it!”. Anyways, that’s my two cents. I was really hoping I could have worked “gravitas” into this post, but alas.
You may be onto something here. The show has become way, way to self-referential lately. Still funny, but forced funny and only if you know the history. Plus, they have dummed down the characters way too much. I think the show even acknowledges that fact when Jeff told Britta he thought she was smarter than him when they first met. Chang is now a completely insane person. Deranged Chang is funny, insane Chang is bizarre. I still enjoy the show greatly, but it is not trending in the right direction creatively, I believe.
Everybody does realize they shot this whole season before the execs decided to air them, right? So, this half of the season is as it would have been if there was no “campaign”.
The experimental/genre spoof episodes are getting tiresome. Season 1 was mostly a straightforward sitcom format and to me it’s far more consistently funny than 2 or 3.
Oh, we’re already on the “Community ain’t as good as it was before!” train? Didn’t take long. You assholes move quick.
I’m sorry…I was catching up on my DVRed Big Bang Theory…what were we talking about, again?
SIMPSONS WAS BETTER IN SEASON 4!
Friends really fell off in the 5th episode of season 6.
Cousin Oliver was a racist.
Will Balky ever come back from Mypos?
While I will agree that there hasn’t been much of anything happening this season except for the Abed/Troy stuff, I am not willing to concede that Chevy Chase is right.
Maybe the writing is the way it is currently because they know they aren’t coming back. Why do something meaningful with characters if you’re not going to be able to see it through.
English major curse: Second to last sentence, pretty sure it should be “don’t”!
I don’t get all the whining from this article and the comments. He doesn’t like his character, he’s allowed to not like his character. Sometimes I think they really don’t give his character a chance and just sort of make him ridiculous.
I don’t think he’s being a dick just because he’s being blunt.
“Would you say “time heals all wounds”?”
“I wouldn’t answer such a cliché.”
See? Dick.
“I’ve been too funny in my life to have to play a character who’s … moderately funny,”
More dick
“I’ve been too funny in my life to have to play a character who’s … moderately funny,” said the voice of Karate Dog.
BURN!
Chase out. Murray in.
Worked for SNL back in the day.
If they hired Murray and made him Pierce’s brother AND Jeff’s father, that’d just be the ultimate.
Obviously Chase was kind of a dick to the interviewer but we don’t know the full context. My take away from this is that Chase is absolutely right about his character. What’s wrong with putting a little Fletch or Clark Griswold into the character- that’s Chase’s wheelhouse.
It almost seems like Harmon has been taking out his dislike of Chevy Chase on his character. I know that sounds absurd but from what I’ve read about Harmon these last few months he seems like a bigger dickhead than Chase.
I would have to agree…other than falling over the drumset (don’t remember the episode) and having a scene after the credits where he’s dealing with a soft-serve ice cream dispenser, there haven’t been any “Chevy Chase schtick” scenes. But you can tell the ice cream bit wasn’t scripted – they just pointed a camera and told him to do his thing.
Another comedy show that has one of their lead stars doing harsh comments everywhere and probably won’t come back for next season and somehow it’ll doom the show?
Because that worked so well for Two and a Half Men. BTW, it was me or last episode of TAAHM jumped the shark?
…by “last” episode do you mean “all, ever”? Because in that case I’d agree.
That show terrifies me with how much money I could theoretically make as a television writer. I just think of the worst, least thought out joke possible for every single situational setup and 90% of the time that’s what appears on the screen.
I think Chevy took interveiw lessons from Woody. Meh. Community is still a good show. I think that it would still be a good show without Chevy and that is most likely why Chevy is as pissy as he is about it.
I agree, yet I can understand why people wine when a show is “still a good show” instead of a “great show”
If Chevy left, would anyone notice?
It looks like an honest attempt by Chevy to get into another Comedy Central Roast.
I get so frustrated by Chevy Chase. As a die hard Community fan, to say he simply doesn’t find it funny (really, like, at all?? Come on, man. That’s kinda extreme) is an insult to fans of the show and what we consider funny. And to constantly bitch and moan is just getting tiresome. Though Dan Harmon has equally struck me as a egomaniac and not necessarily someone I’d side with in this whole debacle, there’s a power struggle here between these two I’m not keen on hearing about anymore.
I don’t like the direction they’ve taken with Chang, but I’ve loved the direction they’ve taken with Britta. She cracks me up way more now than she did 2 seasons ago. But I’ve been indifferent to the direction they’ve taken with Pierce because of his indifference to his spot on probably the funniest show on television.
I don’t know why anyone would talk to Chevy Chase about Community and not expect him to give these answers. I’m not entirely sure why anyone talks to Chevy Chase anymore, ever.
I think I missed the Community Sucks Now train departure. Probably for the best. Looks crowded. I’ll see you fellas again when the Backlash To The Backlash Express swings back through town.
Chang’s insanity in building an army of jack-booted pre-adolescents is inspired. The Law & Order episode was every bit as well done as Abed’s claymation Christmas episode. It isn’t as consistently sit-commy as it had been. The focus has shifted, to be sure. But it is still second only to Archer. Take these last two episodes compared to the last two episodes of 30 Rock (another of my favorites) which were brutal. Perfect reflection of the show as a whole. It takes more creative chances than any other show on TV and overwhelmingly hits the mark. It’s more daring in an episode than dreck like BBT has been in the 17 years it’s been on, combined.
The show’s straight-up feminized now. It’s just not that funny anymore.
Chevy’s a dick but his gripe about not being used more in physical comedy bits is absolutely justified. Is it really that hard to write more of those in the show? Physical comedy takes skill and is every bit as funny as word play. You just don’t have as many people jerk off to how clever the writing was later.The only thing this can do is take a character who is not liked by the audience and make him funnier and give Chevy Chase what he wants.