During the Television Critics Association 2013 winter press tour, ABC treated critics to a pie break “sponsored” by The Neighbors. Sadly, the pie was mediocre, but beyond that, it’s nothing short of remarkable that the series was featured at the event at all, given its initial reviews, which were awful, to put it mildly. What a difference half a season makes: Last week, ABC rolled out a new promo for The Neighbors that opened with a collection of several of the series’ more high-profile critical thrashings, then closed with more recent, decidedly more positive appraisals from many of the same publications. With The Hollywood Reporter breaking the story that Star Trek icon and Internet superstar George Takei is guest-starring on the season finale as the father of alien leader Larry Bird (played by Simon Templeman), and TV Guide revealing that Mark Hamill will play Takei’s co-worker, The A.V. Club reached out to series creator Dan Fogelman (who also scripted The Guilt Trip and Crazy, Stupid, Love.) to see what else he might reveal about the remainder of The Neighbors’ first season.
The A.V. Club: Can you give us any more info about the finale?
Dan Fogelman: Well, Takei plays Larry Bird’s father, and he’s coming back to basically put him out of the mission in the final episode of the season. So as our season builds to a close, we literally have war descending on this little gated community in New Jersey. [Laughs.]
AVC: There have been occasional hints about the aliens’ mission, but nothing particularly specific.
DF: Yeah, throughout the season, we’ve kind of always played that there was this nebulous mission and faction back home, but we never delved too high into the “What’s going on back home?” of it all. It’s just been this Samuel Beckett/Waiting For Godot thing, where they’re just interminably waiting, with no instruction from home. In the final episode of the season, though, the adults go to Atlantic City for an overnight trip to have a little time away from the kids, and they leave the two teenagers in charge of the houses and the little ones for the first time. And Dick Butkus [Ian Patrick] starts getting communications from home, from his grandfather, saying, “We’re coming, but don’t tell your parents.” Oh, and Takei’s method of communication is toast that keeps popping up in the toaster with messages written on it. [Laughs.]
AVC: Was it difficult to get Takei to commit to another science-fiction role?
DF: Actually, I haven’t even met him yet! [Laughs.] I sent him a letter. My plan was always to get him to come and play Simon’s father in the final episode of the season. We have a bunch of Trekkies on our staff, and on top of that, I’m a huge Howard Stern fan, so I wrote him a note and told him I feel like I know him better now, more personally, than I did when he was just on Star Trek. And he said he would come and do it. My long-term thought is that there’s the potential of having the fun in season two of the uninvited in-laws showing up on Earth, so we’d get to play the fun of new aliens experiencing Earth for the first time. But that’s if, in fact, we decide to bring Larry Bird’s parents to Earth.