What a ride it has been for the show Community and its fans – and what a shame for so much drama to beleaguer such a fantastic, clever show.

At the tail end of last year, Community was put on “hiatus” for the 2011-2012 Fall season – with worried fans storming the internet to rally for its return. On March 15^th, it was back on the air with the premiere of Season 3 and was met with hugely positive reviews. By early April, though, news broke of the apparently vicious feud between show creator Dan Harmon and show co-star Chevy Chase – “leaked” voicemails, passive aggressive apologies via blog, the whole works. After that, things seemed to settle down.

This week, NBC announced that it was renewing Community but moving it from its cushy Thursday night time slot to 8:30pm on Friday night – plopping it between Whitney and Grimm. As far as ratings go, a Friday night time slot is not ideal, although fans and bloggers seem to be the only ones really upset by this. NBC executives are convinced loyal fans will follow the show to any time slot, while the show’s star, Joel McHale, is just glad to be on air at all and is sure that fans will still watch even if it’s just on DVR.

As for the animosity between Chevy Chase and Dan Harmon, the outcome is still up in the air. Harmon’s contract expired and Chase has been more than vocal about how un-funny he finds the show’s “voice” to be. But despite all the chatter going on about both topics, nobody seems to know anything about any of it with any certainty. As the creator of Community, we hope Harmon chooses to stay. And even if he claims he doesn’t think the writing is funny, Chase fakes it well enough for us to think it is. So we hope he stays too.