Friday, November 18, 2011

Dear NBC: About Community


No rational human could deny that our world is a very sick and broken place. (Well, maybe some dead white guy could.) Wars rage; people are beaten and raped; children die of preventable diseases; vast social and economic injustices crush lives in every way, from the smallest microaggressions to the ongoing famine no one is talking about in the Horn of Africa.

Yea, this brief tragic life is a vale of tears.

And yet, in the midst of all this horror and suffering, there arise, like shimmering soap bubbles on the wind, tiny glimmers of hope and beauty. These small moments of grace must be cherished like the fragile butterflies of love and happiness they are – not trampled under the jackboots of dream-crushing.

Community is one of these delicate flowers of blessing putting forth tentative blossoms of joy on the dung-heap that is this world. Last year I proved, using the most stringent scientific method, that Community is the best sitcom on television, and everything I said then holds true with cherries on top.

NBC, I understand that you are a business. Profits are your priority, and in comparison to the other three big networks you are struggling. But please, spare a thought for the bigger picture. In these times of unprecedented corporate greed, when the spiritual and artistic aspect of human existence has been almost entirely subsumed by the money-grubbing of the wealthiest among us, it is absolutely vital that Art be fostered wherever it raises its precious head.

Will future generations judge us on the profits we posted for this quarter, or on the lasting legacy of sublime emotional truth we produced?

Community is a flickering candle-flame in the long dark night of the collective human soul. For all our sakes, don't snuff it out.

2 comments:

  1. Amen sistah. I'm devastated. I'd held off from watching Community until last year, in part because I try to avoid new TV for the simple reason that THIS HAPPENS! Hopefully there'll be a big enough social media outcry to show NBC some proof that Community has a stronger (maybe not bigger) audience than most of its shows and keeping them happy matters.

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  2. A shows brilliance is directly proportional to the odds it will be canceled.

    It is because there's a huge number of people that say. "I'm tired of thinking. I'll just watch TV. Derp." And that number outweighs the people who watch TV because it is a form of media and has potential artistic value.

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