Dan Harmon is the man behind NBC’s Community and the Adult Swim series Rick and Morty. He has obviously found a lot of success in his field, and continues to expand his business interests into other realms. For example, he hosts a weekly podcast called Harmontown and published his book You’ll Be Perfect When You’re Dead in 2013.
However, he recently made entertainment news when he posted on Twitter on New Year’s Eve. In the post, he admitted that he had been a terrible boss (in more brash terms). This caught the attention of Megan Ganz, a former writer for Community.
She asked him to be more specific, and the two exchanged a few words. Dan Harmon was seeking forgiveness, apologizing frequently. However, Megan Ganz refuses to accept his apologies. She appreciates the gestures, but stands strong in her refusal to forgive.
But what exactly happened between the two? In the conversation, Ganz alludes to feeling unsafe at work. It seems that Ganz had been complimented by Harmon at one point, and later he asked for her number. The writer alluded to some sort of altercation, saying that if Harmon didn’t put up his walls “with male coworkers” he would be “falling into the Mike Pence School of Gender Relations that says men can’t be trusted with women’s phone numbers”.
Perhaps he had harassed her on her cell phone, or attempted to employ some sort of power move on the writer. Either way, something definitely took place that prompted Ganz’s reply to Harmon’s New Year’s Eve post.
One thing that might give us a clue as to what took place is events that occurred in 2015. Harmon was on a flight in October of 2015, when someone tweeted something rather insulting towards him. He went off on a rant, posting no less than seventeen abusive statuses targeted towards that user. Harmon might have a bit of a problem controlling his anger — perhaps this was a factor in the incident with Ganz?
It is important to note that Dan Harmon suffers from mental illness, as he has spoken about it on Twitter and in his podcast Hermantown in the past. He has actually given some very solid advice to his fans on this topic before, helping to soothe their emotional pain and empathize with them.
Dan Harmon also discovered that he had Asperger’s syndrome when he was writing Abed’s character for Community. A form of autism, the disorder can cause certain symptoms including “inappropriate emotional reactions and deep empathy”. This would explain how he could go off on mad rants one minute, and make a deeply empathetic speech the next.
Either way, Dan Harmon isn’t the nicest guy on the planet. He does seem to be truly apologetic in his Twitter exchange with his former writer, Megan Ganz. But we can understand why the current Modern Family writer left Community when she did. It would be very hard to write under somebody who could be so volatile. Especially considering the implied abusive workplace relationship that Harmon established with her.
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