While reports say that the decision was mutual, Chevy Chase has made a deal with NBC to leave Community and never come back. Chase had filmed the majority of the fourth season's episodes, but there is no word yet on how the absence of his character, Pierce Hawthorne, will be addressed. Everyone who enjoyed his voicemails and borderline racist behavior will miss him dearly. (via Deadline)

  • Repurposed

    Chang is ready to fill the gap.

    • EH

      They should have kept Chang a teacher.

  • Trig Discipline

    Frankly I won’t miss him.  Now that he’s gone, can we get Dan Harmon back?

  • http://twitter.com/thelightisred Jon Donaghy

    Apparently it was mutual, so expect it to actually be a departure that makes some sort of sense, rather than just “OH NO, HE’S DEAD”, which it probably will be anyway.

    • http://www.aarongilliland.com/ Aaron Gilliland

      *Study group receives a voicemail*

      “I have to go, now.  My planet needs me.”

  • BarBarSeven

    Hmmm… Announced right around the time a truce was brokered in the Middle East between Hamas & Israel. Connect the dots, people!

  • http://2000ah.blogspot.com/ Edward

    At This point i would just like to see community back on the air.

    • catgrin

      Thursday, February 7, 2013 is apparently now the new October 19th.

      This was posted back on October 19th, both here and at the Hulu Plus link the new premiere date is still listed. Hopefully, it still stands – regardless of Chase’s bulls**t.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LV7M_WeGX8

  • http://twitter.com/the_damned_fool the damned fool

    Not sure why it’s news that Chevy is an a**hole.  Will Ferrell wrote that Chevy was one of the worst SNL guests during his tenure there.  Chevy was mean spirited, even slapped Cheri Oteri in the back of the head and then pretended it was a joke.  Watch the closing credits for that show (when the sax music plays and everyone makes nice)…the look on Will Ferrell’s face says it all. 

    • http://cobramcgiantballs.tumblr.com/ Xploder

       I was going to post something basically along the same lines as your post – What? Chevy Chase was acting like an asshole? Who knew? – but of course, you beat me to it. Well done.

    • http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki

       what an asshole… he should have slapped Will Ferrell.

    • Halloween_Jack

       Heck, he was an asshole back during the original cast run–he nearly started a fistfight with Bill Murray, his replacement on SNL. (Watch their one scene together in Caddyshack–which Harold Ramis convinced them to do almost literally at the last minute–in light of that.)

  • Jake0748

    Ok, I’ll bite… What’s “Community”?   Admittedly, I haven’t had regular TV for several years, but I do read the papers and the internets.  How come I’ve never even heard of this show? 

    • http://www.KladniFigures.com/ Scooter Jackson

      Because it’s good, and it’s on NBC.

      • Finnagain

         No.. Because it used to be good, and now NBC owns it.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      IDWT, but I believe that Community is another flimsy excuse for Joel McHale to get his kit off.

    • Snig

       it’s one of about the three shows I watch.  It’s good even if you don’t like most TV.  “Remedial Chaos Theory” is a good episode to start with. 

      • catgrin

        and that’s the one with the gaming die

    • catgrin

      I don’t typically like American sitcoms. I love Community. This is a sitcom that is, well, better. It’s basically a variably surreal college trip. 

      If you want to watch it, the first three seasons are available via Hulu Plus. Each season has about 25 episodes, so it’s worth that whole $7/month fee for getting Hulu Plus if you’d been considering it. You’ll be busy for some time, and just catch up in time for February. :)
      P.S. You haven’t heard of it because it doesn’t appeal to lowest common denominator, and dumbing it down would kill it. NBC may have done that by opting to fire the show’s creator Dan Harmon (when he and Chase previously tangled) instead of just letting Chase go in the first place. That’s why people are asking if maybe they can get Harmon back now. I think he’d work with the other guys brought in to head the show – they were fans of his, and happy to jump in on a show they liked.

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

    Well, FWIW, Chase was a logical choice for an actor for portraying an obnoxious, socially clueless older student. He just wasn’t funny or had any chemistry.

  • amarx

    Not surprising after his racist rants: http://hollywoodandswine.com/jesse-jackson-more-shocked-that-chevy-chase-still-alive-than-by-his-use-of-the-n-word/

    • http://twitter.com/sfrazer Scott Frazer

      I’m pretty sure that link is to a satire site…

      • C W

        The incidents were true, even if this response was satirical.

  • CarlPurp

    To be fair to Chevy. He was angry about his characters overt racism. He said something to the effect: Am I going to be calling them n****rs next? That is a fair complaint.

    • nachoproblem

      Yeah, I was going to point out that complaining about having to portray a racist character is not particularly racist. But logic isn’t much of a crowd-pleaser either.

    • puppybeard

       No, you see, having a racist character for cheap laughs is hilarious.

      And if you don’t agree, YOU are a racist.

    • SuperMatt

      I agree with Carl.  This “article” is very poorly stated.  And let’s not forget what a complete ass Dan Harmon was to him, in public.  They wanted him on the show for the ratings, but have treated him like a drunk uncle.  Unlike the “friends of Dan Harmon” club, I will miss him a lot.

      • http://www.aarongilliland.com/ Aaron Gilliland

        The “friends of Terry Sweeney” club will not.

    • Halloween_Jack

       Given that that’s how the character was written since the very first episode, that’s not a very rational complaint.

      • catgrin

        I agree – especially since all the characters have taken turns getting “better” or “worse”. Joel McHale’s character, Jeff, has been nearly destroyed by his ego on more than one occasion. He hasn’t come off seeming more pleasant for that part of his personality – just more three-dimensional. Danny Pudi’s character, Abed, has literally lost touch with reality (even going stop motion once!) several times. It’s one of his character flaws, and the show bothers to explore it in depth.

  • http://microblog.ourcoffs.org.au/mjd mjd

    I expect he just wanted to be free to work with Dan Harmon again.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=723148341 Lucy Gothro

    I’m reading Roger Lewis’s “The Life and Death of Peter Sellers” (1993), & it sounds to me that Chevy’s channeling Mr. Sellers with extraordinary ease.  He’s been like this on SNL when he’s gone back there, so I don’t see why everyone’s surprised…when a gay cast member asked if he could do anything for Chevy, he said, “You can lick my balls.”  (From “Live From New York”, 2002).

    • http://twitter.com/mr_bloo_sky mr_bloo_sky

      I think I understand where you’re coming from with that comment, that they were/are both difficult to work with, but, I think we can contrast them as well.

      Peter Sellers disappeared into his roles. I think it’s from the book you mentioned that Sellers himself told an interviewer: “I don’t really have any personality of my own. There used to be a me behind the mask, but I had it surgically removed. I don’t know, if I didn’t have characters like Clouseau, I don’t know who I’d be.” He appeared to come from a place of deep self-doubt.

      I grew up in the 70s, and watching Chevy’s work, he has always had the opposite problem- no matter what character he plays he’s still Chevy Chase reading lines, but still being Chevy Chase. In the 70s and 80s that was cool, because we thought Chevy was cool, but, like that older brother of a friend that you thought was so cool when you were all younger, it turns out he might have been just mean and arrogant all along.

  • Finnagain

    I try so hard to separate art from artist. This is not helping.

  • puppybeard

    I actually enjoy Community, but as far as characters go, it’s not like everything else. In a lot of ways the characters are underdeveloped. The character, Pearse, is totally unrelatable,  and the only character more neglected as far as plot goes is Shirley.

    However, that’s not actually as important as it sounds, because the show is deliberately absurd.

    There are entire episodes of the show that are completely flat though, most typically the ones that have singing in them. It’s not consistent at all. If Chevy Chase wants to make a good name for himself, playing Pearse in Community really isn’t the right way to do it.

    I don’t really care if he’s an asshole, as far as I can see all he’s done is piss people off. These thespians need to get over themselves. They’d probably sell their mothers to act in a Roman Polanski flick, and that fucker raped a kid.

    • http://twitter.com/mr_bloo_sky mr_bloo_sky

       I don’t think irony is the right word, but it’s odd that you would use the Polanski controversy to make your point, given what Samantha Geimer, the minor in question, has said herself:

      “During a television interview on 10 March 2011, Geimer blamed the media, reporters, the court, and the judge for causing ‘way more damage to [her] and her family than anything Roman Polanski has ever done,’ and stated that the judge was using her and a noted celebrity for his own personal gain from the media exposure.”
      — Roman Polanski. (2012, November 22). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 11:59, November 22, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Roman_Polanski&oldid=524326413

      • puppybeard

         She wants to get on with her life and is sick of being known as the girl he raped. That’s her right. It doesn’t vindicate him in any way.

        It’s just a personal opinion, but for me, what he did, any time someone works with him, I’m alienated by them forever. If he’d served his time, that’d be one thing, but he’s unrepentant.

        • Halloween_Jack

           This, so much. It astonishes and saddens me that people are willing to take the statement of someone who obviously just doesn’t want to talk about it any more to excuse the inexcusable.

  • http://www.facebook.com/ChuckyG Charles R. Grosvenor Jr.

    I think the best idea I’ve heard so far about this, is to have Bill Murray replace him in much the same manner that Bill replaced Chevy on SNL.  A “soap opera” style voice over like “The role of Pierce Hawthorne will now be played by Bill Murray” would be cool too.

    • http://www.aarongilliland.com/ Aaron Gilliland

      I would tattoo a peacock and the words “NBC 4 EVA (peron)” on my forehead if they did that.  

      I can’t imagine them making such a wise decision, though.  A “Kutcher-Sheen” or “fecal quid-pro-quo” seems more likely.

    • Halloween_Jack

       What I wouldn’t give to see that. Unfortunately, it’s kind of unlikely that Murray would sign on to a regular gig; he’s notoriously lackadaisical about his career (he doesn’t have an agent; instead, he has a voicemail box that he checks sporadically.) Having him step in for even one episode would be sweet, though.

  • bluest_one

    “Borderline racist behaviour”?

    Complaining about your character becoming more bigoted (because you don’t want him to be) is racist now?

    Ah! Sorry … any white person who used the N word is suspect. Regardless of the context. Got it.

    Over here in the UK (albeit the land of un-free speech, compared to the US) a comedian won a libel case for just such a ludicrous and untrue insinuation.

  • Johnny Come Lately

    Complete BS. He protests the racist behavior that he’s being told to portray and all the fish-headed reactionaries go out of their way to completely miss the point and brand him a racist. People make my brain tired.

  • Ipo

    “The other part of the disconnect is obviously, you don’t get my humor at all, or what it is I do that’s funny, that actually makes people laugh,” Chase says, to which Harmon casually responds, “That’s true.”

    Now that’s comedy gold.

  • http://www.aarongilliland.com/ Aaron Gilliland

    You know what I don’t get?  ”Modern Problems”, 1981.

  • catgrin

    The very first episode of the second season, Pierce’s first joke is in response to Troy (who is black). Troy is living at Pierce’s home and expresses how cool that is. 

    Pierce:”I know! It’s like Batman and Shaft.”

    Troy: “Batman actually had a guy, his name was Robin.”

    Pierce: “Troy, Batman’s friend didn’t have to be Robin. It could have been Shaft, Dolomite, Leroy Brown. Don’t let society limit your people.”

    (For people who don’t watch the show. The next thing you see is other friends laughing at what Pierce has just said because Troy has Twittered it. The joke doesn’t end as a stand alone, but sits in context.)

    So Pierce recites a series of Blacksploitation names and “your people” in one joke – but he’s not racist. Pierce’s character has always been mildly racist in that he has acknowledged race and made some disparagingly thoughtless, but not intentionally cruel, comments about it.

    Community hasn’t ignored this on the whole. There’s even an episode that discussed how trying not to be racist can be interpreted as being racist (if you notice race, and are showing care because of it, are you being racist?) and it results in the ”ethnically neutral” school mascot. (Football, Feminism, and You 1.06)

    Chase has known all along this was his character’s identity, and the show turns up the volume on character flaws (ego, inability to deal with reality, jealousy) all the time. So for Chase to freak out over this is really foolish. It seems like he just felt it was a great excuse to leave.

  • http://www.facebook.com/rustblue2 Nick Thomas

    I second “I just wanna see Community back on the air.” IMO, it’s the most modern, relatable t.v. show in a loooooong time. Absurd, yes, but look around you people, read the other BB links above this article. We’re swimming in a sea of Absurdity! Community was the smartest, funniest reflection in the pond of American pop culture.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001343627016 Scott Anthony

    The only proper way to swap out Peirce, is to throw in Dan Ackroid, or Bill Murry, or anybody on the same level, but have only Abed notice, a Rosanne ‘”They say she’s the same, but she’s not the same.”-DJ’ kind of thing. Hell they could even keep swapping in various different actors, with only Abed noticing, the rest of the group being oblivious.