If we lose Community, we all lose

TV is a communal activity. We watch TV with our families and with our friends. We'll even watch TV with complete strangers. TV gives us a shared experience. We laugh together over episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. We shake our fists at the TV when the last episode of a season of Mad Men airs and we have to wait months or even years until the next episode. We text each other when How I Met Your Mother makes our hearts break for Barney. These moments are often just the beginning of deeper conversations and longer friendships.

TV can say a great deal about who we are or who we want to be. If TV is reflective of society, what do we want it to say about us? Do we want to be successful people who speak in brilliant dialogue like the members of The West Wing? Or do we want to be the sloppy, can't-do-right husbands on King of Queens, According to Jim, Family Guy and half the other shows on the air? We've been broadcasting television signals into space since the invention of TV. When some alien civilization finally picks up those signals, what do we want them to think of us?

NBC released it's midseason schedule today, and it took just seconds for the Internet to come alive with the realization that Community was nowhere to be seen. 30 Rock, returning at midseason due to Tina Fey's pregnancy, would now occupy the 8 p.m. slot. From the Twitterverse came the reassurance that Community would be back after a "break," and that all 22 of its episodes for this season would be shot and eventually aired. If you know anything about how TV networks work, you're well aware of the fact that a shows that lose their slots midseason have a grim future ahead of them. Maybe NBC will air the rest of Community. It'll probably be in random slots after one of their midseason replacements inevitably crash and burn. They may even air them two at time just to get them out there. In the long run, Community probably isn't going to get picked up for a fourth season. And that's a shame.

NBC, you don't deserve Community.

Community is witty. Community is smart. Community expects a greater level of humor from itself than other shows. Sadly, that doesn't attract huge ratings. We've apparently decided that the lowest-common-denominator humor of Two and a Half Men is what we want to represent our society. A show like Community, a show with a creator who loves TV and has a super-talented and devoted ensemble cast never had a chance. Especially when NBC refused to ever shelter it behind The Office, instead airing it against behemoths like American Idol and The Big Bang Theory. This is the same network that lost Conan O'Brien. We shouldn't be surprised that they never understood what they had with Community.

If Community is doomed, then it's clear that there isn't a home for smart TV shows on network TV. NBC still has Whitney on its midseason schedule. It's bringing back Fear Factor. There are a dozen CSIs and NCISs. Network TV is a wasteland. Cheers and Seinfeld once told the world who we were. Now Ashton Kutcher speaks for us.

Dan Harmon, Community's creator and showrunner, hasn't formally made a statement on Community's current situation. I hope he fights back. I hope he rallies the Twitter troops. Fans have prolonged the lives of Arrested Development, Friday Night Lights and Chuck through social media and mailing campaigns. Donald Glover, Community's Troy Barnes, was the center of a social media movement to make him Spider-man just last year. If there's any show suited to fight for the right to have smart, passionate programming on TV, it's Community. We need to #savecommunity. I know people who say that they just don't get Community's humor. Even if that's the case, you should be rooting for Community. For every Community that we lose, we're going to get an awful reality show or, worse, The Jay Leno Show, in its place. Community may not be your thing, but if you love TV shows with heart, it should matter to you.

And if in the end the dark timeline wins out, Community can best be summed up with words from one of Glover's own songs: "Here for a good, not a long, time."