Death of the Auteur

Despite its overblown headline, this AV Club article about Community is actually not half-bad.  Well, to be more accurate, it’s only half bad.  But, since I’m in a charitable frame of mind today (good goat milk yield today out here in Eau Claire), that means that it’s half good.  And for the AV Club, half good is high praise indeed. 

Joel Keller, writing this article, claims that the departure of Dan Harmon is overblown:

Sure, the show has changed. But, in its fourth year, it’s aging just like most other sitcoms that have gotten this far. It’s gotten comfortable with its characters and has started going back to comedy wells that have become increasingly shallow. Plots get recycled. Characters change, sometimes not for the better. Jokes fall flatter.

I hate this discourse about the “life-cycle” of a sitcom that these people keep throwing around.  Again, Seinfeld: seasons four and five are the best.  But, fine, maybe the departure of Harmon isn’t to blame.  As Keller says,

It’s a pretty safe bet that, if Dan Harmon weren’t Dan Harmon, people would be giving season four of Community a much wider critical berth.

Undoubtedly true.  And Mr. Keller goes on to compare the show to previous sitcoms like MASH that lost their creators. 

These articles are worthwhile.  Certainly the auteur-centered criticism of contemporary TV shows has gotten a bit excessive.  But all these articles ignore a basic fact—that comparison of Community to previous shows like MASH simply isn’t appropriate.  Larry Gelbart left MASH because he wanted to leave MASH.  He wasn’t fired.  And he wasn’t fired specifically (or at least in part) because the network was unhappy with the direction of the show.  Maybe Community is on some natural evolutionary downward spiral.  But everyone seems to forget that NBC wanted the show to be different—wanted it to have more “heart.”  And, lo and behold, now it is different!  Different, and worse, without Dan Harmon.  Mission accomplished.