'Community' and 'Whitney': Is NBC bringing them back?

'Community' and 'Whitney' have had their premiere dates postponed from their original air dates of Oct. 19.

This week NBC brought good news for fans of their new shows, when they gave full season orders to Revolution, Go On and The New Normal. But now the network has bad news for fans of a couple returning comedy series.

Today the peacock network announced that they would be delaying the season premieres of both Community and Whitney from their original scheduled air date of October 19th, and did not offer alternate return dates.

TV Line has a statement from NBC saying:

Given the success we’ve had for the past four weeks – including winning the first week of the season in [the] A18-49 [demographic] – we’ve decided to continue to concentrate our promotional strength on our new NBC shows that are scheduled Monday through Wednesday and have therefore decided to hold ‘Community’ and ‘Whitney’ from their previously announced premieres of October 19th.

Without having to launch these comedies on Friday at this time, we can keep our promotion focused on earlier in the week — plus we will have both comedies in our back pocket if we need to make any schedule changes on those nights. When we have a better idea of viewing patterns in the next few weeks, we will announce new season premieres of ‘Whitney’ and ‘Community.’

Now that end part does sound a bit suspicious – considering the already shortened 4th season of Community and its seemingly inevitable cancellation – but this might also be good news. Both comedies had been moved to Fridays, which doesn’t usually work out for shows (Fringe being the most recent exception to the rule). However, this statement seems to indicate that if schedule changes need to be made, likely with low-rated comedies like Animal Practice and Guys with Kids, these two shows could take their place on Wednesdays.

Either way, it’s sad news that the new semester of Community – and the second season of Whitney – won’t be coming as soon as fans expected.

 However, there’s good news for Community, as TV Line also has word that Brie Larson (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, 21 Jump Street) will guest star in season 4. Larson will appear in the seventh episode of the season, where Dean Pelton is holding a “Sadie Hawkins” dance at school. However, details on her character are currently being kept secret. Could she cause a love triangle between any of our would-be study group romances? We’ll have to wait and see.

Ethan Anderton blogs at Screen Rant.