If NBC Cancels Community and Replaces It With a Dane Cook Sitcom, I Quit

NBC has gone and done it: they’re giving Dane Cook his own sitcom. Yes, Dane! (not really the title, at least not yet) is on track for a premiere in the 2012-13 season. Cook has been given a development deal, so it’s still very early in the process and may not actually happen. But hey, let’s keep an open mind. It could be great, right? Maybe he’ll take a cue from his new buddy Louis CK and become TV’s next experimental comedy auteur. Or maybe he’ll make a multicam sitcom about him being the only single bro left of all his buddies, who are now totally whipped by their wives and kids. Either way!

Not to jump to the worst possible conclusions, but it’s tough not to think this way after seeing last Thursday’s NBC ratings. The numbers just aren’t there for the last-place network, so they’re probably going to want to make some changes. And god help us, those changes might involve canceling Community or Parks and Rec and replacing it with a Dane Cook show.

But who knows, maybe on Friday morning we’ll wake up to Community or Parks and Rec having added a couple million viewers each. Stranger things have happened! And with both shows approaching the season count needed to go into syndication and make NBC some more money, both having near-obsessive fan bases (hello!) and both being critical darlings, they’ve got a better chance of surviving the season than, say, Free Agents. So hopefully all my doom and gloom is totally off base. Here’s to the 2012 season, where Community can provide a strong lead-in to Dane!

If NBC Cancels Community and Replaces It With a Dane […]