Outside of a few defensive tweets, Community showrunner Dan Harmon has mostly maintained total silence on his supposed “feud” with Chevy Chase—and for good reason. As Harmon acknowledges in this newly posted, self-excoriating blog post, “Anything I say will extend the story’s life and cause more fans discomfort,” and extending the story’s life is expressly the job of the Internet, while causing Community fans discomfort is NBC’s. And yet, Harmon continues, “It’s conspicuously weird of me to say nothing at all about the giant fart with my name on it that you’ve been inhaling,” and so he sets about explaining the circumstances regarding one of the sitcom world’s most unexpected scandals, if the sitcom world resided in a universe where no one had ever heard anything about Chevy Chase.
Speaking of conspicuous things, Harmon’s lengthy explanation—which you should probably just go read yourself—never mentions Chase by name, nor does it go into the details of what allegedly happened at the wrap party, nor does it address that voicemail, nor does it say anything about his relationship with Chase now, nor does it talk about Chase’s implied threats to leave the show. What Harmon does do is apologize to the fans, explaining that he never intended for the deeply personal ranting and other displays of self-loathing that characterize the Harmontown performances he puts on for 150 people to run amok and consume everyone else. In Harmon’s words:
It was in that venue, months ago, that I made the horrible, childish, self-obsessed, unaware, naive and unprofessional decision to play someone’s voicemail to me. He didn’t intend for 150 people to listen and giggle at it, and I didn’t intend for millions of people to read angry reports about it. I was doing what I always do, and always get in trouble for doing, and always pay a steep price for doing. I was thinking about myself and I was thinking about making people laugh. I was airing my dirty laundry for a chuckle.
I ask people at those shows repeatedly to please think twice about youtubing clips of it because it doesn’t play well outside the back of a comic book store. I always accept the risk that a well-intending fan will upload clips and something scandalous will break wide, but the giant mistake I made was involving someone else in that game of russian roulette, someone that didn’t have an opportunity to say “yeah, hilarious, let’s do this.” That was a dumb, unclassy, inconsiderate move on my part. I’m very sorry it’s reflecting poorly on the show.
Harmon makes it clear that he’s under no illusion that his saying any of this will “make it better,” while reiterating that this whole situation only serves to remind him that “I am an asshole,” in case you were thinking of tweeting that at him. And while he also acknowledges that the “feud” and the resulting publicity is definitely “driving ad sale revenue for a week,” it is nevertheless “causing my favorite people in the world —Community fans—distress.” So with that in mind, Harmon vows again not to say another word about it and asks us all just to “wait for it to pass… and don’t worry about the show.” Hey, no problem. When have Community fans ever been unnecessarily worried about the show?