NBC Benches ‘Community’ For Midseason

As news dribbled out this afternoon about NBC's plans for midseason, one bit of information seemed to escape the very people it would horrify the most, and by that I mean that bloggers didn't know that NBC was planning to leave "Community" off the mideason schedule. Fans may be sad about the news (which probably means the likelihood of a fourth season of "Community" is very low), but they can't possibly be surprised: As Alan Sepinwall put it in his report for HitFix.com, "Community" has been "on a kamikaze mission for a long time now," given its scheduling opposite ratings winners like "The Big Bang Theory" and "American Idol." And qualified un-fans (hi) might observe that, since the show's very strong first season, it has become a slave to its penchant for gimmicky meta-commentary and turned into less of an entertaining sitcom than a deconstruction of the idea of what a sitcom is. So if you're in the latter group, you should stay off Twitter for a while; the response there to this development has already gotten pretty annoying. [HitFix]