Community

Abed is right, being pushed until midseason is never a good sign, and neither is an extended Christmas break. Indeed, after the Christmas episode on December 8 (3.10 - Regional Holiday Music), Community will go on hiatus for an undetermined period of time. Saying that I am outraged that one of the very best sitcoms on TV is benched would be an understatement. Starting January 12, the sixth season of 30 Rock will take Community's place at the very difficult 8pm timeslot, starting the NBC Thursday comedy block including Up All Night at 9:30pm instead of Whitney, thankfully sent to die on Wednesdays at 8pm against American Idol, without The Office's support.

Except for the first 3 episodes, for 3 seasons, since October '09, Community has always had the hard task to start the night and launch the comedy block, a task once dedicated to Friends (1994-2004), Joey (04-06) and My Name is Earl (2006-2009). Plus, the show is original, laught-out-loud funny, smart, subtle and meta. So, NBC, you can't expect high ratings but you ought to keep it alive for your image, because it is a critics darling and because of the hardcore fanbase.

NBC is benching Community (probably from mid December to early March, unless the fans' pressure is too strong) but the network is maintaining Whitney on the air, a new show getting unanimous reviews, such as "if you caught a snippet of Whitney unawares, you would be forgiven for assuming that it's one of those shows-within-a-show that exists to caricature bad TV" (Slate) or "it's like having vomit poured in my eyes, the vomit of something an NBC executive ate in the 80s and decided to throw up in 2011, and it does not taste good" (yours truly). Choosing Whitney over Community reminds me of them choosing Jay Leno over Conan O'Brian. Let's hope things will turn out differently this time.

Personally what's worrying me isn't the hiatus in itself, if we got to do with it then we will as long as the show is back and still has a 22-episode season (hoping to have 2-3 extra episodes instead of the usual 22-episode order might be a very long shot now). But it shows a lack of faith in Community and it might jeopardize a fourth year at Greendale. And I cannot imagine a cancellation. Community is not in immediate danger but we have to mobilize early, it might help, it cannot hurt anyway. Six seasons and a movie would be perfect, but having a 4th and final season would already be great, right ?

The awesome people at Vulture published cool Save Community posters (you can see them in full size right here) :

Vulture also wrote a very interesting article telling us there are fact-based reasons to believe in season 4. It makes be confident that Community has a genuine shot in being on the air until May 2013, even if Sony has to make sacrifices or if the show has to lose a character/main actor after season 3 (Chang/Ken Jeong ?) in order to survive.

But meanwhile, we need to keep showing our support. First, share these fantastic posters I posted above. And in a few hours, if you have a Nielsen box (or even if you don't), watch Community live (The Big Bang Theory isn't going anywhere) or watch it on DVR within the next 3 days, it matters !

Then, the next step of our rebellion will be to surround the 30 Rockfeller Center with tens of thousands of Community fans wearing Human Beings costumes and evil goaties while waving the official Greendale flag. That's feasible.

If you hear about petitions or stuff like that, you can mention it in your comments.

UPDATE : Thank you Sebastian for passing the information : http://www.save-community.com/.

UPDATE #2 : Here's some cool new posters I found, all created for the same purpose, #savecommunity :

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