"Community" Plans Stop-Motion Animated Christmas Episode
Sept 18, 2010
by Kate Stanhope



"Community" will celebrate the holiday season with a special stop-motion animated Christmas episode, TVGuide.com has learned.

"It's going to be like a timeless Christmas classic in the stop-motion medium that used to give us so much happiness as children," creator and executive producer Dan Harmon told reporters Friday.





Harmon wrote the episode with Dino Stamatopoulos, who plays Star-Burns on the series.

The episode will be completely animated like such Christmas classics as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, but Harmon that the episode is not necessarily a departure from "Community's" storytelling.

"There's a reason for it to be stop-motion animated, but it's not a dream. It still exists within the reality of the show," Harmon said, noting that characters will be able to refer to the episode's events afterwards.






Harmon said the Christmas episode is just one of several upcoming special episodes, including a space-themed episode and what Harmon called "an extravagant and insane" Halloween episode directed by Anthony Hemingway, who recently directed "True Blood's" Season 3 finale.

"Second season, we're coming out of the gate with episodes that I refuse to wait to do," Harmon said. "We're doing stuff that you shouldn't be allowed to do in an entire season."





The new season of "Community" premieres on Thursday, Sept. 23 at 8/7c on NBC.

http://www.tvguide.com/News/Community-Christmas-Episode-1023265.aspx

Sweet!

I really enjoy Community. It started off a little slow, but it really picked up as the first season progressed. Very funny.

Dan Harmon of "Community" on Christmas Animation
by Joel Keller
posted Sept 21st 2010


Are you still on track to do that stop action Christmas episode you were thinking of?

We are on track to do that. I had to write it immediately, because of how long it takes to put one of those together.

So I'm actually, that's why I missed the Emmys. I was staying up all night writing it out with Dino Stamatopoulos.






So that's going to be the Christmas episode?

Yeah, Christmas episode.













So it's going to be very much kind of like Rudolph or some of those similar kind of specials that we see, right?
Is it the entire episode?

Yeah, it'll certainly evoke those feelings. I'm not gonna do... I feel like it's been done to death, the actual homage, the actual spoof to the period stuff. I think we've seen that.

And we've also seen amazing, we've seen Coraline now, we've seen... there's a whole new generation that's only familiar with those specials through spoof. They know, oh that looks like that MadTV sketch. So I don't need to be a fly on that fruit.




Because all you really have to do is do it stop action and it'll immediately bring up those feelings that anybody watching it, that's like, it's a great Christmas medium.

So we're not actually going to be parodying a '60s style or anything like that. My goal, I say with a humble smirk, is to make a new timeless classic. Whether you're a fan of the show or not, just a half-hour of TV you want to watch at Christmas.











But the fact that you and Dino are writing it, I imagine it's going to be a bit off-kilter a little bit.

(laughs) Yeah, I mean, we had to make sure of that, because there has to be a reason why we're doing it. And it has to fit into the canon of the show. As you can imagine, that's not easy when you're doing a stop action show.


On one end of the spectrum, why would you just make a regular "Community" episode animated, if nothing unusual happens and if it lends itself to animation?

And on the other end of the spectrum, if they're going to fly around in jetpacks and fight werewolves, then it has to not fit into the show. It never actually happened. And you don't want to... then what's the point?



So somewhere in the middle there, as with Paintball, you find reasons that this episode is special that still exist within the reality of the show and the timeline of the show.

http://www.tvsquad.com/2010/09/21/dan-harmon-of-community-on-christmas-animation-and-the-second/