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Dan Harmon, an executive producer of NBC’s “Community,” filmed himself telling his cast that the freshman year sitcom had been picked up for a second season. We already know the good news, but here is the cast’s reaction:

Source: NY Times

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At the start of the 2009-2010 fall season, critics were rooting the hardest for “Modern Family,” “Glee” and “Community.” At the halfway mark, two of those early favorites have shot ahead of the pack, while the squad from Greendale Community College is still trying to catch its breath.

The debut of the NBC sitcom attracted 7.7 million viewers, but since then it has averaged 5.4 million, enough to get a full-season pickup on a struggling network, but not enough to qualify it as a hit or guarantee a second season.

“We’re No. 1 among Asian pervs,” said actor Ken Jeong, who, like the rest of the cast assembled on set this January afternoon is more interested in cracking jokes than analyzing why their sitcom is off to a slow start.

There’s every reason to believe that with some patience and promotion, the sitcom will develop into a fan favorite.

“I’m really proud of the show we’re doing,” said Yvette Nicole Brown, who portrays the gang’s den mother. “I feel like the people who were meant to find the show will find the show, and I’m glad NBC has given us a full year to find that out.”

Read the full story Modesto Bee

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The peacock network has made a surprising early pickup and has renewed Parks and Recreation for a third season.

The Office and 30 Rock are all but guaranteed to be renewed but there’s no word on how the Parks order will affect Community’s chances for survival. The Chevy Chase freshman sitcom typically performs better than Parks so it would seem that it’s also a lock for renewal.

However, the network has eight comedy pilots in development and would likely want to keep a Thursday night timeslot open to try one or two. The network may be waiting to look at the new pilots until making a decision about Community.

We are still hoping for the good news!

Source: TV Series Finale

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Zap2It has an article about Community star Yvette Nicole Brown. Here is the highlight:
A solid role on a sitcom gives an actor recognition and a steady paycheck as NBC’s “Community,” airing Thursdays, has done for Yvette Nicole Brown, who plays Shirley. But it took a supporting role on a kids cable station comedy to give her celeb status.

It was her stint as Helen, the loud theater manager on Nickelodeon’s “Drake & Josh,” that made Brown a star among kids.

“The greatest gift I got from ‘Drake & Josh’ is I am ridiculously famous with children,” Brown, 38, says. “If you are going to be famous, that’s the segment to be famous with. I cannot walk down the street without a face peeking out from behind a tree. It’s a ball of joy that greets me everywhere in the world. It was my first bit of steady employment.”

…

“Shirley is becoming me at a rate I am really afraid of,” Brown says. “I love people and am such a cheerleader.”

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In the fight between Conan and Leno, Alison Brie, the NBC sitcom “Community” actress took sides with Conan: “My heart belongs to Conan!” she stated on Twitter last weekend.

Read the full story on NY Times.

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What seemed in early fall a rare outbreak of inspired television writing has in recent months become something rarer—not an epidemic, exactly, but a season impressively stocked with creations drenched in wit and enterprise, all unmistakably reflective of a drive toward formula busting. These things are, of course, always relative. In television these days, one quality hit a season—especially in the impossibly snare-infested comedy genre—seems a lot; two is like breaking the bank.

Yet we’re now finishing a television year that has seen both the emergence of ABC’s uproarious“Modern Family” and its less dazzling but wonderfully mordant lead-in, “The Middle,” about another kind of modern family—a brew of consistent charm and character with a bracing hint of nightmarish reality underlying its sitcom fun. Add to these the most unexpected gem of all—NBC’s “Community,” a satire set in the unlikely precincts of a community college. Its creator, Dan Harmon, was, by his own account, inspired by the semester he once spent at one in pursuit of an effort to strengthen ties with his girlfriend. That relationship didn’t work out in the end, but, happily, the same can’t be said of this whip-smart series about an improbably compelling band of adults taking classes at a sunny academic hell called Greendale Community College.

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The same can be said for “Community,” which stars Joel McHale (“The Soup”) in top form as Jeff—a glib but undeniably attractive former lawyer who has gone back to school because his license to practice was revoked (he’d apparently skipped going to law school). The difference here is that the laughs derive entirely from the show’s flinty heart. There are lapses, to be sure, when its creators can’t resist the old siren call—the sitcom impulse to dump a little treacle into the brine. That way lies ruin, as most writers of satire ultimately learn. And “Community” is, despite its doses of warmth and fellowship, nothing but satire in its look at the adults in the study group Jeff runs. They’re all strivers, most of them bent on getting close to Jeff because this disbarred lawyer seems a person of stature. These characters are the product of cold-eyed observation, exquisite at its meanest, particularly when it focuses on an older student—the insufferably pompous Pierce, a character to which Chevy Chase brings considerable authority, and not surprisingly. None of this is to say the series doesn’t offer more varied targets of amusement. Its picture of the sorry lot of obsessives and other deranged types in charge of delivering learning at the college, and of the assorted weasels and buffoons serving as deans and other high officials, is priceless.

Read the full story on the WSJ

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Jack Black has scheduled a sitcom appearance, the “Tropic Thunder” actor has signed on to guest in a January episode of the Chevy Chase/Joel McHale comedy “Community.”

“Community” — which follows a manipulative, young lawyer (McHale) whose is disbarred and forced to attend a local community college where he befriends a band of misfits — has been gaining critical praise throughout the season.
It could, however, use a bit of a boost in ratings.

Source: Zap2It

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Did you know that Ken Jeong is a real doctor?
He and Joel McHale have an interview about Community on AOL. Here are some highlights:

You both have had an amazing year: successful stand-up careers, movie roles, and TV gigs. What about being on a network sitcom appealed to you?
Joel: For me it was the catering. Free food all day long, which is something I had always dreamed about.
Ken: Sitcom food is by far the tastiest of all showbiz food. Honestly, you gotta try that oatmeal in the morning.
Joel: Mmm, it’s steel-cut. [Joel & Ken make yummy noises.]

Ken, I want to know more about SeñorChang. Is he a bitter man? Is there another layer underneath that?
Ken: Absolutely. I think this Thursday’s episode will help answer that in terms of getting the background as to why he becomes what he is. I have an unlikely relationship come about with Joel’s character Jeff, where he realizes something about my character, about what makes Señor Chang tick, why he is so angry and why he is, at times, so mean and psychotic.

Joel, at first glance your character Jeff seems like the most “together” guy on the show, but he’s not the moral center, is he?
Joel: You’re right, my guy is not the moral center at all. My guy is the guy who has lied a lot through his life. He lied about having a college degree and now for the first time in his life he actually has to do work. He had always skated by by using his mouth and his words and now he can’t. And so he is facing those things every episode.

You’ve been picked up for a full-season by NBC. Do you still feel that “new show anxiety” or does that vote of confidence help you relax a bit?
Joel: I think now with it being picked up we feel like like, Great, here we go, let’s make this the best we can. Hopefully that will send us into the next season.