A situation oddly similar to the current Community debacle.

After this weekend, with show creator Dan Harmon fired from Community by Sony Television and with much of writing staff exiting, one wonders why NBC bothered to renew the show at all.  The abbreviated 13-episode renewal was clearly meant to be a sort of 'we'll give you time to wrap up' olive branch extended towards 30 Rock and Fringe, but the last episode of this season served as such a fitting series finale that the show as we know it could arguably be done.  And that's a good thing in light of this news.  Come what may, the things that made Community special generally came from the mind of Mr. Harmon and at least some of the departing writers, of course aided by what appears to be a fully-returning cast.  So if the fourth and presumably final season of Community, without the behind-the-scenes people who made it worthwhile, ends up being lackluster and/or a shell of its former self, then we should be grateful that the Greendale gang saw fit to so explicitly tie up the show several days ago.  Point being, if the fourth season of Community is terrible, we can just pretend it never happened, or at least that it existed in some alternate timeline ("darkest timeline" perhaps?).  If this all seems familiar, it's because the pattern followed by Community was also set forth in the late 1990s by, of all things, an afternoon animated action drama.  Whatever Dan Harmon is feeling right now, I'm sure Greg Weisman is quite sympathetic.