Grantland followed Dan Harmon on some dates of his recent Harmontown live podcast tour. In between tidbits like that the second season of Community was “brought to you by Adderall†and that Harmon once put a Sharpie up his butt to see if he was into that sort of thing, is one good old-fashioned diatribe. When asked why 30 Rock was able to stay on the air as a poorly rated yet very smart show, Harmon goes off, espousing a very “everything is bullshit†message. He calls all TV, regardless of quality, “a bunch of goddamn baby food made out of corn syrup.†Read the whole thing below. Don’t worry, it has a George Orwell reference.
When 30 Rock lands on the cover of Rolling Stone, when any television show is lionized for being “smart,†someone’s laughing all the way to the bank — some company, it used to be General Electric, but now it’s Comcast. That there’s a difference between any of this shit is the greatest joke that television ever told. I mean, as the creator of Community, I’m telling you: It’s all garbage. And the idea that my garbage, y’know, needed a better time slot or deserved an Emmy or didn’t deserve an Emmy, the idea that it was better or worse than 30 Rock or Arrested Development or Freaks and Geeks and all that shit — you only have to take a couple steps back before you realize that you’re looking at a bunch of goddamn baby food made out of corn syrup. It’s just a big blob of fucking garbage. The medium is dispensed to people who can’t feed back, can’t change it, who only get it in 20-minute chunks interrupted by commercials, and you’re watching either really well-written jokes or so-so-written jokes or terribly written jokes, but you’re just watching jokes written by a bunch of people who all have one thing in common: They’re not allowed to say whatever they’re thinking! They’re not allowed. You’re definitely not getting truth; you’re getting lies.Â
Read the rest here.