While Playlist favorite “Parks and Recreation” continues to light up our Thursday nights with a dose of refreshingly smart comedy amidst two holdovers in “The Office” and “30 Rock,” some have been taking to all forms of social media to mourn the midseason loss of “Community,” which occurred this past winter. If you’ll remember, there was a pretty significant outcry over the cult series being yanked from its 8 p.m. time slot for the return of “30 Rock,” with a slate of episodes still left to air. For some fans, it started as a tweet from series showrunner Dan Harmon that read, “What you call 8:00, we call home. Community returns to Thursday nights on March 15th,” for others it was sites like Deadline that proclaimed that the cult hit was back with a vengeance in its normal time of 8 p.m. on Thursdays. While word on whether the hotly debated ratings of this hilarious live action cartoon will bump it into a fourth season, it’s nice to see Jeff and the gang returning, and we’re happy to see the time slot didn’t Chang.
In other television news, we informed you at the start of the month that “Haywire” star Michael Angarano would be joining a CBS pilot written and helmed by “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” writer-director Nicholas Stoller, loosely based around his life. Now “United States of Tara” fans can rejoice, as it looks like series regular Brie Larson will play alongside Angarano in the female lead role. Currently untitled, the pilot centers on a commitment-phobic ad agency executive who is dumped by his longtime girlfriend Laura (Larson), and is then forced to work only one cubicle away from her. Looks like a promising bunch of spry young talent will be populating the screen for this twentysomething ensemble comedy.
Finally, another familiar face will be joining a series we’ve been anticipating, as former “Heroes” alum Milo Ventimigilia will be joining Frank Darabont’s TNT pilot “L.A. Noir.” A crime drama set within the city of Los Angeles in the ‘40s and ‘50s, news broke awhile back that “The Walking Dead” regular John Bernthal was also in the running for a lead role, which still seems to be the case according to the Deadline report. Ventimiglia is set to play former marine Ned Stax, who was a brother in arms with Joe Teague (Bernthal) during World War II, and is now a lawyer who also acts as a master “fixer” for the mob. Sounds like some more quality television about morally ambiguous characters is on the way, and we’re up for that, especially with Darabont writing and helming the pilot.
