Following three straight days of talk of disruption, the end of TV’s days and more than a few hangovers, a master class in comedy from renegade comedy writer Dan Harmon was just what the doctor ordered on the last day of Banff.

Harmon is well known as an outspoken critic of behind-the-scenes U.S. network shenanigans, having been fired from his show Community at the end of its third season and rehired for season five after a disastrous season four.

Taking the piss – as the Brits like to say – the Community creator kicked off his presentation with a PowerPoint presentation profiling the evolution of a network exec from a “Suit” to a “Sweater” as the mediascape has changed around them.

“You’ve seen this guy, right?” he said, pointing at a male model in a Banana Republic-style outfit and outlining his survival skills: “You are warm-blooded, sexually discreet, substance-averse (which on screen read ‘less coked out’) and cross-platform compliant.”

But, he added: “some of you still exist to be dangerously unfunny – in spite of the sweater.”

In today’s television industry, Harmon said, there’s no place for network execs that waffle between corporations and creatives – because viewers are making the decision for them.

“I’m here to tell you that the time is coming that you may have to pick a side. And I’m here to tell you, from my admittedly biased position, that the viewers and the writers and everyone but the worst people in the word desperately need you to pick the right side.”

Although Harmon was at Banff to present a master class in comedy, his most compelling advice was for those execs, whom he urged to use their gut instincts in making decisions about the next generation of comedy: “your humour, your humanity and your honest reactions are going to be how you distinguish yourself as an asset.”

What made this last day at Banff truly exceptional, however, was the subsequent pairing of Harmon with True Detective‘s red-hot creator and writer, Nic Pizzolatto.

Joking that he was intimidated by Pizzolatto before he saw him in his black leather “Knight Rider jacket,” Harmon led the famously intense Pizzolatto in an engaging interview on the origins of the critically acclaimed police drama and the creative process.

Frank and forthright, Pizzolatto described the arduous process of creating and bringing to life the story’s complex characters, all the while brushing off the show’s runaway success.

“I still don’t understand what was so different: two cops riding around in a car together who don’t get along. You’ve never seen that before?”

Harmon deftly kept the conversation light, steering Pizzolatto through a description of his childhood in Louisiana in a deeply religious home, his creative process (“What makes your work shitty when it’s shitty?”) and finally to what half the room was waiting for: any sort of teaser to season two.

Loading a question with an allusion to Brad Pitt and Jeremy Renner starring in season two (Pizzolatto: nothing you’ve read on the internet is true), Harmon passed the mic to the audience, prompting the question of how Pizzolatto was handling the weight of expectation for True Detective‘s return.

By doing the exact opposite of what every other panelist at the Banff conference had recommended doing and explicitly not engaging the audience.

“I create in a vacuum – I’m not in the service industry,” he emphasized. “I’m not asking the internet: how do you like your TV? Can I get you anything with it?”

“Every time I’ve done it right, every time I’ve done it in a way that people really responded to, it cost me,” he continued. “It cost me emotionally, physically. And I’m not going through that as a political campaigner.”