Now, all that said, what's the deal with Yvette Nicole Brown? I'd read she was backing out of this for family reasons, but I see her on the "Odd Couple" show now. Can't be that big a family crisis if she's still on TV...
I get where you're coming from, but we could try to be a little compassionate concerning the life circumstances of a person we don't know, yea?
Yvette's father is ill and she's moved over to projects that allow her more time to take care of him. The Odd Couple is a multi-camera sitcom with an extremely fast workflow, which only would require her availability for table reads and for the one-to-two short shoot days in a standard sitcom week, depending on the episode (probably only one shoot day for her scenes, since her character is unlikely to be needed for the pre-shoot day). Community, on the other hand, is a single-camera show (where each episode is basically shot like an entire short movie, with each angle covered by a separate setup and lighting rig) which requires a full work week for the main cast and extremely long shooting days (12-17 hour shoots).
A multi-cam show requires SO much less time away from her family than Community did.
For some reference--I once worked on two different TV shows in a two-week period shooting very similar scenes on both shows (Themed Dance parties) that took up a similar amount of time in the respective episodes. One was on a multi-cam sitcom (2 Broke Girls) and the other was, appropriately, Community (Single Camera Sitcom).
On the multi-camera show, to shoot the dance scenes I was hired for one workday. They had rehearsed camera blocking with stand-ins all week, so they brought actors in on the final day of the workweek. We rehearsed the sequence in the morning, went to dinner, came back, and shot it that evening in front of the studio audience with the cameras rolling. We shot the entire episode in about 5 hours. The dance section itself took about an hour of actual recording time.
On Community? To shoot the dance scenes, I was hired for 3 workdays. We shot for 14-17 hours, each day, for three days straight. That was how long the dance section took to make in terms of actual recording time--roughly forty-seven hours of work on set for that sequence.
...Yvette has a much lighter load this season. I wish her and her family well and understand her decision, even though as a viewer I'd prefer if Shirley was still on the show.
(Sidenote: roommate just reminded me that I worked on an episode of 'The Odd Couple' this season. I hadn't registered that it was the same show. The shoot went fast.)
Don't forget, Keith David is nobody's 4th Ghostbuster! :thumbsup
Man, I can't wait for this, this trailer makes it look like they're going back to what made the show great to start with!
I'm excited, too! Really looking forward to it!
. And good to see Paget Brewster, I only know her from her role as Kathy on Friends. 
