Dan Harmon isn’t involved with the new season of Community — perhaps you’ve heard! — but the show’s fourth season will include the story line Harmon says he most wanted to do but didn’t get around to. This afternoon during an AMA on Reddit, when asked what story he most regrets never being able to get to, Harmon said: “The one that immediately leaps to mind is that I wanted Richard Ayoade … to return, this time on camera.†Ayoade directed the “My Dinner With Andre†episode, and might be familiar to audiences as the Abed-ish Moss from The IT Crowd. (For added layers, Ayoade was supposed to reprise his role for the American version of the show — opposite Joel McHale.)
Harmon says he imagined Ayoade playing “an oversea friend of Abed’s that he met in an Inspector Spacetime forum (or subreddit). I just couldn’t resist the meta-liciousness of seeing Ayoade and Pudi on screen together, and the non-meta, perfectly standard sitcom-liciousness of giving Abed a friend of whom Troy would have good reason to be jealous,†he writes.
Though it’s not Ayoade, that sounds an awful lot like the role Matt Lucas will be playing on the new season: a new friend for Abed who’s a fellow Inspector Spacetime fanatic, and whose presence eventually threatens Troy’s place in the Abed affection index. Maybe they can sing a rousing chorus of “0-1-1-8-9-9-9 ….†as an homage.