NBC told us all summer long that our great and powerful TV series Community would return to us for its fourth season on October 19, 2012. They worked out their fall schedule. They announced it to the press. They promised.

Mere days before the 19th arrived, NBC broke its promise and informed a despairing geek nation that the return of Community was placed on indefinite hold because the network was perfectly happy with their schedule as-is and didn’t feel the need to satisfy any more viewers. Having won three straight weeks of competition against the other networks, NBC was feeling pretty sure of themselves and decided to coast on this temporary victory, especially since commitment to fans is obviously for chumps.

Before this brazen betrayal, fans were already unhappy with the present state of affairs. Not all of it was NBC’s fault. The Nielsen commoners were already against us, having spent the 2011-2012 TV season ignoring America’s greatest for-geeks-by-geeks series in favor of Fox reality TV, lukewarm ABC leftovers, and CBS’ geeksploitation minstrel show. NBC responded to the show’s crippled ratings performance by firing creator Dan Harmon, relocating it from Thursdays to Fridays, reducing its next season’s order to just thirteen episodes, and forcing it to share an hour with Whitney. But at least it wasn’t canceled. It was cold comfort, but we all agreed to look away from the gift horse’s mouth.

Now we find that our gift horse was in fact a bullying tease. They dangled the show in front of us on a string, but just as we prepared to set eyes upon it, the executives yanked it away and taunted us with cries of “Does this bug you? We’re not canceling Community. Does this bug you?”

The same announcement also informed us that Whitney was likewise postponed indefinitely. Again, cold comfort was ours for the taking…but not for long. In the very same week that Community was punched in the face, NBC decreed that the new series Animal Practice had been removed from the schedule because they refused to believe that they ever agreed to air it in the first place. That sensible retraction left a thirty-minute gap in NBC’s lineup for some promising, unscheduled show to fill. NBC, in their finite wisdom, awarded the vacancy to Whitney, a show about a couple who constantly talk about sex because they’re afraid that if they stop, they might say something funny instead.

Alas, Community remains in the NBC waiting room, reading through decades-old home-decor magazines, chugging all the Keurig coffee it can without paying, and pacing back and forth until its captors release it to the custody of its tiny but awesome fan base on a day that will eventually be celebrated forevermore as the one true October 19th.

In response to the crisis, the cast gathered and filmed the following video to assure us that they had not been murdered, fired, or replaced by the cast of Men Behaving Badly. In a very special installment of “Troy & Abed in the Morning”, imaginary morning talk-show hosts Troy Barnes and Abed Nadir provide us bullied fans with words of actual comfort, encouraging us to remember that when the show returns on October 19th, it shall be a glorious October 19th indeed, even if the calendar insists it’s actually some day other than the real October 19th. Clearly the calendar is in cahoots with NBC and is to be treated with extreme skepticism.

Thank you, Troy and Abed, for keeping hope alive.