Josef Adalian of Vulture.com

No. That is not how this fanbase works, and if you don’t know that —as clearly, NBC and Sony don’t know that— then you are sorely, sorely uninformed.

Community doesn’t work like other sitcoms. It’s not just a show about appealing to the lowest denominator with the most blunt jokes. Community already has its own sense of humor, and it’s not one that everyone gets. We know that, and that’s part of why we love this show with the passion that we do. It’s our kind of humor. Its our kind of show in a sea of shows that are everyone else’s.

The other reason we love this show is the insane, ridiculous, alienating, passionate, nigh-incomprehensible amount of heart that it has. None of us have stuck around this long just because of the jokes. None of us. We stuck because this is a show makes us cry and scream and lose our minds with the characters and the stories that it’s built up, and the building up is the important part.

We are attached and long since have been, and that’s what makes the emotional backbone of this show what it is. Unless the new writers are willing to go all in with doing what’s right by the story and the characters that kept us here, it won’t matter how funny other people find the new episodes. The show would lose us if it lost its heart, and we’re the ones who fought the hardest and the longest to keep this show in the first place.

Now, I know that there’s a chance this isn’t a disaster. Harmon could continue to contribute and keep it on track and/or the new writers could actually do right by the world that’s been set up already. It’s not impossible. I’ve seen Happy Endings, and while it’s not exactly my kind of show, it’s well done for being what it is. If the new guys are willing to adapt, this could go well enough. Some of my favorite shows have gone through similar power changes and survived. Hell, some of my favorite television ever is the third/third-and-half/fourth season of Due South, and that show went through a whole mess of changes.*

I’m not saying that this can’t go well, but it just won’t go well if “Needs to be funnier to more people” is the only direction from which this new run is approached. That is just not how this show works.

(via imaginearianne)