Community Got Hiatus'd! Or, Why I Almost Rage-Quit NBC.

By now, you’ve no doubt heard: in the Great NBC Schedule Change-Up of 2011, there have been a few casualties, including the apparent but unofficial cancellation of Prime Suspect, and far more importantly – for the purposes of this blog and this post – the network’s decision to remove Community from its airwaves from January, February, and into March. And although this probably a pointless exercise – not only are the chances of NBC executives or even a general internet audience reading this, but by the time I’m able to finish/post this, there will no doubt be many other posts about this move competing for your attention (as with so many complications in my life, I blame grad school for this – but I need to write this piece. NBC’s move left me angry. I don’t mean miffed; I was outraged, fist-shakingly, couldn’t-concentrate-on-the-paper-that-was-due-in-an-hour-and-a-half angry.

I realize that this isn’t a rational reaction to this news, and that as a television critic (albeit an amateur one) I shouldn’t base my reactions to television and television news so heavily on my emotions. Even though, at the end of the day, television criticism is a subjective exercise, it’s still important to keep your rationality in check. I get that there are reasons I shouldn’t be mad. I know that television is a business, and that Community, which isn’t exactly pulling in the numbers, probably shouldn’t have lasted as long as it has. I also get that this doesn’t change the show’s chances of renewal, since Sony Television has in the past jumped through hoops to get shows into syndication, and four seasons would do it.

And yet I’m still angry. Why? Well, the short answer is that I love this show.

Perhaps this needs some explanation. I write about a lot of television, and while my general rule of thumb for what I write about is that a show needs to achieve a certain level of quality (there’s that subjectivity again), there are some great shows that I don’t love. Mad Men is a fantastic show, one of the best ever made, and I enjoy how is makes me think, I don’t love it. Similarly, though I am compelled to turn into Justified every week, I’m not sure that I love it either. (Though, to make things clear, these are all fantastic shows, and you should be watching them, and if you tell me that you don’t, you will see my exasperated/shocked face, which, seriously, is pretty brutal.)

“Love”, in this sense, means those shows that touch that inner part of my heart and endear themselves to me almost immediately. This includes shows like Terriers, Scrubs, Arrested Development, and of course Community. These are the shows that thrill me, that move me, that can engender any number of reactions from me with the greatest of ease. And some – in the case of Scrubs – are shows where my emotions can override my rational emotions, to the point where I don’t notice their flaws, and I defend them unequivocally even in the face of rational and compelling arguments otherwise. For example, I don’t like when people say that season three of Arrested Development or certain seasons of Scrubs mark a dip in quality, and I don’t see any episode of Terriers as a misstep. Community more or less falls into that camp, because while I have criticized some episodes, there usually criticisms that only occur to me after I’m done watching the episode, and I get down to writing about it. (It’s probably for the best that I’ve never written about AD, Scrubs, or Terriers. Or more specifically, seeing as how I did write that one piece, never in an episode-by-episode capacity.)

So that’s why; Community has wormed it’s way into my heart – fittingly, it’s the best post-Arrested Development show to fill that hole in my heart left by AD’s cancellation – and NBC taking away my current favorite show, even for two months, hits me in the exact same spot.

But, in case you still think I’m overreacting, let me give you a long answer, complete with some (hopefully) rational arguments:

·         Part of this network reshuffling places Whitney with new Are You There, Chelsea? (formerly Are You There Vodka? It’s Me Chelsea) places them in the 8/7c on Wednesday. While this move also means (and I’m actually quite pleased with this) that Up All Night will take the post-Office slot, where it can hopefully build an audience, it also seems as NBC is unnecessarily rewarding Whitney. While most people believe that this means the end of both shows – and god I hope that that’s the case – I would hate for either show to flourish. And given that this is America, I think it’s quite possible.

·         Additionally, 30 Rock will take Community’s spot. Now, I can’t be mad at 30 Rock – it’s a good enough show that it deserves to be back – but I can be mad at NBC. Putting 30 Rock in a deadly slot – this is also when The Big Bang Theory and American Idol air – seems to indicate that NBC doesn’t care about this show either. (I’m also this show is only around because of the post-Office bump.) And sacrificing one quality show for another – even if I like one more than the other – is a pretty shitty move.

·         Then, there’s the issue of Community’s return. Now, NBC is standing by its promise to deliver 22 episodes this season, and while having the back season airing without interruption (and possibly even with back-to-back, hour long airings), it’s also possible that people will lose the show during those months off. Don’t believe me? The line of thinking for why NBC didn’t heavily promote the fourth season of Chuck – as well as why the fifth season now airs on Fridays – was that “The Chuck audience is the Chuck audience” and they will follow the show anywhere. And yet over the past three airings, Chuck’s numbers have become deplorable, even by fourth season’s standards, dropping by something like 60%. Still convinced Community’s audience is that hardcore about the show?

·         And that raises the question of where Community will be placed when it comes back, considering it spot was taken by 30 Rock, which will probably stay right there for the rest of the season. Moving it to Wednesday – assuming Whitney and Chelsea fail – would just create causality, and NBC doesn’t have any other place to stick a comedy, considering that all the other nights are full, either with the few shows doing just good enough not to be cancelled, or with new shows that the network no doubt will want to give time to build an audience. (Hell, even Fridays are full for the network. Fridays.)

·         This move also means that Awake (from Lone Star mastermind Jason Killen) is getting bumped from midseason, and reminds us that Parenthood, which only got 18 episodes this season, will end February 28^th, not mention that there’s still other shows – like Bent – that are still waiting in the wings.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that NBC has royally fucked themselves. So desperate for a show, any show, that can become an actual, honest-to-god, legitimate hit, it has filled up its warehouses with shows that it doesn’t even have space for on the schedule. And while having a backup show or two is standard practice for networks, NBC has overdone it, and they’ve spread themselves too thin.

I get that at the fourth-and-sometimes-worse-placed network (seriously, Univision beats them sometimes), NBC has got to do something in order to get ratings, and that means at some point things are going to have change in major way. But not like this. Take Tim Goodman’s advice, and start getting crazy with your programming; make so many shows so outside the box that people have to check you out, if only out of curiosity. But don’t just fill your lineup with knockoffs of currently popular shows (Smash), shows lazily cropped from old movies (The Firm), or ’safe’ police procedurals and reality shows (Fashion Star). Because Community dying so that you try out an equally original programming is one thing. But dying because you’re making the same stupid mistakes over and over is a tragedy I just can’t bear to watch.