Brace yourselves, fans of the best scripted comedy show on television: NBC did not include “Community” on its mid-season lineup.
Those of us reading the tea leaves can only conclude that bad times are ahead for everyone’s favorite community college study group. Is Community Cancelled? Almost, maybe, but not quite. If NBC does cancel Community, they’d show just how “streets behind” they are.
But as Abed would likely point out, this is a lot like Family Guy. Or Community’s network neighbor, Parks and Recreation. Shows with lower ratings that the networks puts on hiatus or orders fewer episodes of for the season to try some other things out. Unfortunately, in the case of Family Guy, you’ll remember that it was cancelled for over 2 1/2 years before Fox brought it back. I don’t see NBC having a similar change of heart (although I’m still crossing my fingers for the triumphant return of Life or Journeyman! Just kidding. Not holding my breath.)
But if you want to blame anyone, blame the nerds. Seriously. Community, unfortunately comes in streets behind CBS’s surprisingly popular Big Bang Theory. Unfortunately, you have two shows with similar target demographics competing against one another. It looks like NBC is putting returning champion and Emmy magnet 30 Rock in the 8pm ET/7pm CT timeslot, so it’s probably unfortunate that even the might of Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey could be crushed against Big Geek.
So what’s a fan to do?
The only thing TO do. Save the show. Watch the hell out of it. Start calling people in your local phonebook until you find 5 Neilsen households and ask them if they will PLEASE watch Community on Thursday. Tell everyone you know to DVR it and then watch it. (Because the cable companies track that, you know). We’ve only got 2 episodes left before it goes off the air, and so while NBC officially says “We haven’t cancelled the show,” let’s make sure they would never think about canceling it by giving it over 5 million viewers for the next two Thursdays.
And I’d say to watch it on Hulu, except for some idiotic reason you can’t stream Community through your Roku box, PS3, XB360 or other Hulu Plus enabled device, only on your computer. Well, go watch it on your computer. Play it in the background on your computer at work. Every 22 minutes go choose a new episode. Make Community the #1 show on Hulu.
Oh, and tweet about it. Remember to follow showrunner @DanHarmon on Twitter, (and most of the other cast members are on Twitter, too) then during the show make sure you tweet about how much you love it using hashtags like #savecommunity , #community , and (my personal fave) #sixseasonsandamovie , which is how long Abed thinks the show should run. I quite agree. I’ve also seen #Occupy30Rock and a @OccupyNBC twitter account, which are probably both a great idea. Want to vent your frustrations @ someone? @NBC would be a good place. In any case, watch to see what is trending, then jump on that bandwagon.
Oh, and someone’s already started a petition.
I pray someone at NBC reads this and understands how much we love this show. YES, I love 30 Rock, and I love The Office (though a little less, recently), and I love the idea of being able to watch husband-and-wife team Amy Poehler and Will Arnett back to back with Parks and Recreation and Up All Night. But don’t cancel Community.
Because if you take away Jeff Winger from Joel Mchale, he’ll just have that much more time to make fun of the Kardashians. And since half of America is now a Kardashian-based economy (they, like Snooki and The Situation, are patriotic job creators who need their tax cuts!) if you destroy them, you will send this once-great country into an economic death spiral that will make the 1930s look like a cakewalk.