Showrunner Transcript: Dan Harmon (“Community”)

In conjunction with the annual broadcast network upfronts, New York magazine is running a series called “Showrunner Transcripts.” We will feature one each day for the next two weeks on GITS.

What’s a showrunner? For a primer, you can go here to Wikipedia. The short answer: “The person who is responsible for the day-to-day operation of a television series.” It’s more than just managing a series. Someone has to guarantee to a network they can deliver 12, 22, or however many episodes for which the series is contracted. That’s the bottom line of a showrunner’s reality.

Today: Dan Harmon (“Community,” “The Sarah Silverman Program”)

Obviously this is a show that’s not afraid to take a leap into the absurd and the fantastical. But do you ever worry you’ve gone too far?

I constantly worry that we’ve gone too far. I especially worry about that right now. At the end of season one, we decided to end the season itself on a departure episode. And I worry about the volume with which we fantasize in season two. And then I get worried that I really need to take stock and watch all the episodes again, because there are political reasons to worry about that stuff, too: When that conversation is happening in your head, it’s happening also in hallways where people make decisions about scheduling and promotion that affect the next twenty episodes, and I need those conversations out of people’s heads. Whether or not the show needs to change in this way or that way, I need people to stop using certain buzzwords when they talk abut our show at the water cooler, like “weird,” “inaccessible,” “off-putting,” “torture,” “experimental,” “irritating.” I’ve got to replace those words with “Parks and Rec.” [Laughs.] If this show is going to for seven years, it’s going to need to somehow roll out the red carpet for my mom in the third season, without alienating the fans that we have who love nothing more than the unpredictable nature of the show, people I’m compulsively unable to betray because I’m one of them.

Is there a show that made you really want to go into TV, or got you hooked early on?

Ugh, God, so many. I mean, Cheers is the one that I always sort of default to. It was such a centerpiece to my childhood, and such a unifying event for my family. It was just a perfect sitcom. It somehow rose above the inherent limitations of the multi-camera medium and just made you feel like absolutely at home. I loved those characters and never wanted them to go away. I remember having homework to do and just not caring if I got a lower grade in class the next day, because I just had to watch Cheers.

For more of the article, go here.

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