Living on a Winger and a prayer

Speaking of midseason returns, Community is back (somehow). The promise of "six seasons and a movie" is becoming closer to actually being a reality. In the meantime, here's a trailer for the upcoming fifth season of the show.

Chevy bolt

From EW.com

Community will be losing a cast member, and it’s… the one that you were thinking: Chevy Chase. The 69-year-old actor, who stars as the wealthy, grumpy and bigoted Pierce Hawthorne, is exiting the NBC ensemble comedy by mutual agreement, sources close to the show confirm. (Deadline first reported the news.)

It’s not exactly shocking news, as Chase has endured a rocky relationship with the series that he does not always speak warmly about. He engaged in a feud with series creator Dan Harmon that went public last year over an expletive-laced voicemail message that Chase left Harmon. (Harmon was dismissed from the show last spring.) Last month, production was interrupted when Chase, reportedly unhappy with the material he was shooting, used the N-word in an outburst while trying to make a point about the direction of his racist character.

After having its Oct. 19 premiere date postponed, Community finally returns to the air on Feb. 7 to kick off its fourth and possibly final season with 13 new episodes. Chase will appear in all but two of them — which have yet to be filmed — and he will be seen in the season finale, which has already been shot.

The new showrunners, David Guarascio and Moses Port, had sounded optimistic when talking about Chase earlier this fall. “The truth is we’ve had a very easy working relationship with Chevy, maybe just because it was so volatile before, there’s no fight left,” Guarascio told EW with a laugh. “We sat down, had a real nice lunch… And so it’s been really easy for us. He also says what he wants to say and does what he wants to do, and you just can’t control any of that aspect of it.”

2012 Fall Television Schedule Announcements (NBC)

I could post all of the news here if I wanted the post to take up the entire length of the blog, so I'll instead make it easy for you guys and direct you to all of the information in the link below from Comingsoon.net:

2012 NBC Fall Lineup

I'll instead spend this space giving my thoughts on NBC's moves. Of all the major networks, I probably watch the most shows on NBC, yet for the past several years they have languished near the bottom of the ratings. I commend them for saving some of the shows that they did, despite less than stellar ratings. Namely keeping Community and Parks and Recreation Parks was given a full season pickup and remains on Thursdays, while Community gets a 13-episode order and gets shunted to Fridays. The Friday move is fine, but I question why they paired it up with Whitney. Those two shows seemingly have nothing in common other than they were both lucky to get renewals. In fact, that was a trend throughout most of NBC's schedule. They slotted several sitcoms, but I thought some of their pairings were odd. For instance, I felt they should have paired Up All Night, which focuses on being young parents with the new sitcom Guys With Kids, which also deals with parenthood. Meanwhile the show that they did pair it up with, Animal Kingdom seems better suited with the single-camera, laugh track free comedies on Thursday nights.

On the drama side of things, the only new show that caught my eye was Revolution, a drama dealing with people living on Earth 15 years after a blackout hit the entire planet. While the premise was intriguing, I feel like we've seen this type of 'event' drama over and over again ever since the success of Lost and none of them have been successful. I've become jaded, but I feel like this one may suffer the same fate: sizable audience for its premiere that vanishes in the subsequent weeks when impatient fans get frustrated when the show doesn't give them answers to the central mythology quickly enough.

Finally, with their reality slate, the biggest news is that NBC's one new hit The Voice will already be returning in the fall. I personally don't watch the show, but I don't blame NBC for wanting to schedule another season so soon given that it's about the only thing in their schedule that consistantly pulls in viewers. Let's just hope that they don't create an overkill backlash like they've done with some of their other hits like Deal or No Deal. If it can remain a hit, hopefully viewers will be willing to stick around and watch some of their other shows as well.

School's back in session

After a bit of a hiatus, Community finally returns this Thursday for the rest of its 3rd season. Here's a trailer promoting the return:

Coming together as a Community

I probably don't give Community enough love on this blog, but that's only because while it's very good, it's not as amazing as Parks and Recreation. But now that Community is struggling in the ratings and could be facing cancellation, I thought I'd do my part to get the word out more to help save this show. And what better way to do that than by showing this video that mashes up scenes from Community in the style of the Parks and Recreation opening credits. In a word, awesome!.

Fall TV Report Card (Returning favorites pt. 2)

The Big Bang Theory: The big question for this show would be how they would address the shocking cliffhanger from last season that saw Raj and Penny seemingly have sex after a night of heavy drinking. I was not crazy about that twist so I was glad to see they copped out of it to begin this year by explaining what exactly happened. The rest of this hour premiere was a good collection of hearty laughs from the expanding cast. The show really felt like it was already in mid-season stride, which was nice to see. The addition of the female cast members has really made this a richer show and prevented it from simply becoming the Sheldon show. This may not be the smartest show, despite being about very smart people, but it's one of the most consistent performers and I look forward to another strong season from this merry band of geeks. Grade: A-

Community: After making a promise through song and dance that this show will be 'less weird' this year (yeah right), the rest of the half hour was spent trying to introduce us to a couple of new recurring characters this season - Michael K. Williams (The Wire) as a tough as nails biology teacher and John Goodman as Greendale's vice dean. Both played imposing forces that will likely cause many problems for the study group and dean, respectively. As is often the case, the show veered into some dark territory that didn't exactly provide a lot of laughs but made for an interesting character study. Here's hoping that as the season progresses, we get fewer character study and more group efforts that showcase the widely talented cast that this show has to offer. Grade: B

Parks and Recreation: You cannot imagine how happy I am to see this show return. This premiere picked up right where things left off last season with Leslie dealing with the prospect of running for city coucil and Ron trying to run away from his evil ex-wife Tammy One (played by Patricia Clarkson), not to be confused with his other evil ex-wife Tammy Two. Because we had a lot of story to get through in the episode, this wasn't their funniest effort, but a strong outing nonetheless. Leslie's breakup with Ben was perfect and extremely heartbreaking. The fact that we learned Tammy One works for the IRS is just brilliant (the one agency even more evil than the library). I was also really happy to see that Andy opted to work as Leslie's assistant rather than with Tom at Entertainment 720 since that will likely yield more comedy gold. The stuff with the revealing photos being sent to everyone's phones was a bit silly, but it also showed that the people that run Pawnee as just as creepy as the people they represent. All in all it's great to be back in Pawnee. Grade: A-

The Office: While news had leaked earlier this summer that James Spader had been added to the cast, we also knew that he would not become the regional manager (his Robert California character actually convinced the Sabre CEO to give him her job). The answer came in the premiere and low and behold, Cornell's own, Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) was chosen. He's probably the best person for it as he has the acting chops and star quality befit of this bigger role and he doesn't have to abandon the qualities that made him a great character to begin with (unlike if say someone like Jim had become the manager). The other big surprise was learning that both Pam and Angela are pregnant. That will likely yield some interesting comedic situations throughout the season. While Steve Carell's presence was missed at times, I thought the show did as well as it could to move forward without him. This is certainly a whole new show now. I feel that there are enough talented people working on the show to still allow the show to remain funny, but it's likely it'll never reach the greatness that it once had. Grade: B

NBC newbies

Over the past week, there's been a lot of casting news with a lot of big names announced as joining the casts of some of my favorite NBC shows for next season. Here are some of the familiar faces you can expect to see come this fall...

Parks and Recreation: One of the biggest questions that came out of last season's finale was who was going to play Tammy 1, the other ex-Mrs. Ron Swanson. Fans knew that the woman had to be terrifying if just the mention of her name scared both Ron and the evil Tammy 2 (Megan Mullaly). Well this wicked woman will be played by none other than Patricia Clarkson. Some of you may recognize Clarkson from recent films like Easy A or perhaps from playing Andy Samberg's mom in the Motherlovin' digital short on SNL. Clarkson was not someone I thought of when fantasy picking the role, but she's definitely a terrific actress and I think she'll do a great job at being absolutely terrifying to anyone who's in her presence.

Community: It appears the staff at Greendale Community College will continue to grow as this sitcom enters its third season. First we learned that Michael K. Williams, who played Omar on The Wire, will play a biology teacher for a multi-episode stint. Then it was announced that John Goodman had been hired to play a vice dean (and someone who will butt heads with Dean Pelton, no bout). And if those two announcements were good enough, a third bit of casting news came out that Martin Starr is also being brought on to play a political science instructor. While Starr was recently seen in the Starz' series, Party Down, I came to appreciate his immense comedic talents this summer watching the cult favorite series, Freaks and Geeks, for the first time. This guy is truly an underappreciated comic actor and I can't wait to see what he brings to table acting with Joel McHale and company.

Chuck: As this show prepares for its final season, it looks like they intend to go out with a bang. During Comic-con, word got out that Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill would be joining the cast playing this year's big villain. Then earlier this week, news broke that Craig Kilborn had also been hired to play a villainous role to go against our favorite spy team. Most people haven't seen Kilborn in a long time, but I think they'll quickly remember that this guy can play smarmy so well, that he'll easily adapt to this villainous role. Finally, we'll also see some love on the show when The Matrix's Carrie-Anne Moss comes aboard to be a romantic foil for Casey. With that trio, it appears this show is attempting to reach Nerd-vana.