'Just Shoot Me!' Creative Team Now in Charge of 'Community': What That Means for the Show's Future

UPDATE: Dan Harmon took his blog this morning to set the record straight. He got fired, NBC hasn't even contacted him, and he has no creative control over Community's future.

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With Deadline Hollywood reporting that Just Shoot Me!'s David Guarascio and Moses Port will step in as Community's executive producers and showrunners, we now have confirmation that Dan Harmon won't be the man in charge for Community's 13-episode fourth season. Harmon will stay on as a consulting producer.

This doesn't come as a surprise, as NBC chairman Bob Greenblatt was very noncommittal about Harmon's future with Community at the network's upfront presentations last week. This is bittersweet for Harmon and Community's devoted fans, who have seen the show they love get picked up for a short season, moved to Fridays and lose its creator all in one week's time. We're going to get Community again next season, but what's the show going to be like?

NEW SHOWRUNNERS
NBC and Sony have handed the reigns to Community to Guarascio and Port, two very experienced showrunners. Experience, though, doesn't necessarily mean they're right for Community. Guarascio and Port appear to come as a team, serving as executive producers on Just Shoot Me!, Aliens in America and The IT Crowd. They've also been consulting producers on Happy Endings.

The biggest show on their resumé is Just Shoot Me!, which ran on NBC for seven seasons. (If Community ends with its half season next year, that means it will have only been on for half as long as Just Shoot Me!. Where's the justice in that?) I actually used to watch Just Shoot Me! in my younger days. It was an entertaining show, and even at times, an edgy show. Beyond casting Rebecca Romijn as David Spade's bride, though, it wasn't an adventurous show. This is what worries me about Guarascio and Port. They seem to be safe picks, guys who won't do an Dinner With Andre episode.

The idea that Harmon is staying on as a consulting producer could mean anything. Does he just get his name on the show? Does he get input on storylines? Does he get to fetch Chevy Chase coffee? Harmon's level of input going forward is what's going to determine the direction Community takes. Is Harmon as asshole? Yeah, probably. But is he an asshole who deeply cares about the show he's created and understands his show's fans on a level few creators outside of Joss Whedon do? Definitely.

If Community loses Harmon, it loses almost everything. Harmon is Community's heart and its brain. You take Harmon out of Community, and the show is a shell.

FRIDAY TIMESLOT
I kind of freaked out when I first heard that NBC was moving Community to Fridays in the fall. If you know your TV history, you know that a Friday timeslot is a vote of no-confidence and often a death sentence. Networks send shows to Fridays to make them disappear. It's a convenient way to cite ratings as a reason for cancelation.

That said, I'm actually feeling better about Community being on Fridays now that CBS has revealed its plans to move Two and a Half Men from Mondays to Thursdays, pairing it with The Big Bang Theory. How I Met Your Mother aside, CBS excels at producing sitcoms that have little intellectual worth but still put up massive ratings numbers. It's bad enough NBC left Community to whither against The Big Bang Theory the past two seasons — I would hate for it to have to now have to go up against Ashton Kutcher's creative masterpiece too.

Community's audience is the DVR generation anyways. NBC could care less what ratings the show gets at this point. We'll still watch whether it's live or DVR'd. We'll tweet about it as we watch. We'll go online and blog and post GIFs of Alison Brie. Friday isn't going to stop us from caring about Community anymore than we do now.

13-EPISODE SEASON
NBC gave almost all of its comedies 13-episode pickups for next season, with 30 Rock's being announced as the show's final season. Community didn't get any verdict on its future beyond Season 4, but all signs point to this being the end. Community would have to be doing very well in the rating (and on Fridays too) in order to earn an additional nine episodes. FOX gave Bob's Burgers an addition nine-episode order last season, and NBC has previously given Chuck, another show that liked to flirt with death, additional episodes.

There's always the chance that another network could step in after NBC's 13 episodes and pick Community up. TBS announced a pickup of Abed's beloved Cougar Town last week (although that case saw another showrunner ousted), and Community already has a syndication relationship with Comedy Central and an online deal with Hulu. Comedy Central could be Community's future TV home, while Hulu could even step in and extend the show's life like it's doing with Arrested Development.

CHEVY CHASE
Now that Harmon has been chased out, does this mean Chevy Chase gets to claim Castle Hawkthorne for himself? The Harmon-Chase feud took a nasty turn this year. Sadly, Community stars often had to address the situation when on the late-night shows or The View instead of being able to use the opportunity to promote Community itself.

Chase's Pierce Hawthorne has always been the odd man out when it comes to the Greendale Seven. There were even several episodes during Season 2 when Pierce disappeared and no one noticed. Could Community go on without Pierce? When the show started, Chase was the big name, but now Joel McHale, Alison Brie and Donald Glover are all stars of their own right. Jim Rash is an Oscar-winning screenwriter. If it would benefit the creative direction, yes, Community could go on without Chase. The show even alluded to that in its season finale, with Jeff Winger responding to Pierce's "We still best friends?" with a wordless shoulder pat. Are we still best friends, Chevy Chase?

WHAT'S BEST FOR COMMUNITY?
The biggest question in all of this is at what point does Community stop being Community? If Harmon is gone and Chase leaves, are we still fighting for the Community that we've grown to love? Say Community lives on with its new showrunners but becomes a show that has a tone different from what's been established over the past three years. Do we want that show to stick around? Would it have been better for Community to retire on the flash of white and #sixseasonsandamovie card from last night's season finale?

Over the next few months, like it or not, we're going to find out.