TV and movie production has shut down around the world, but the coronavirus can’t stop the cast and crew members from years-dead sitcoms from getting back together online to read through old episodes for charity. That’s exactly what the cast of the NBC sitcom Community did just earlier today, with creator Dan Harmon — who’s also one of the creators of the Adult Swim show Rick and Morty — serving as ringmaster.
Community started life as a faaaairly grounded show about a group of people who form a study group at a community college, but soon enough transformed into an unpredictable avalanche of complicated in-jokes and elaborate stunt episodes that regularly reinvented itself. The cast members returning for this virtual table read include Joel McHale, Alison Brie, Donald Glover, and more.
They’re reading the episode “Cooperative Polygraphy,” from the show’s fifth season, all about the death of series regular Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase). The whole thing consists of the core cast sitting around a table while Pierce’s representative puts them through a battery of tests to see if they killed him, which makes it a good fit for a virtual reading; no complicated action here. In the original episode, the representative — Mr. Stone — was played by Walton Goggins, but for this reading, the team managed to snag Pedro Pascal, aka Oberyn Martell from Game of Thrones, aka The Mandalorian from The Mandalorian.
That’s pretty much why we’re writing about it here. Let ‘er rip!
Towards the end of the episode, Mr. Stone presents each of the members of the study group with a vials of Pierce’s sperm — he was a weird guy, even for this show — and the highlight of the reading may be when Pascal can’t get through a line about handing out the stuff:
And we’re out!
This readthrough was put together for the benefit of World Central Kitchen, which safely distributes individually packaged, nutritious meals to children and families, seniors who cannot venture outside, and healthcare workers on the frontline.
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