NBC is in this difficult position where everything it puts on television — at least everything that doesn’t involve singing or a bunch of very large men in brightly colored outfits throwing a piece of inflated leather around and trying to maim each other — is just tanking miserably. Especially on Thursday nights, where its revamped comedy block (featuring big investments like The Michael J. Fox Show and Sean Saves the World) is not performing as well as executives had hoped, and has already seen one casualty. It’s a difficult spot to be in, to be sure, and it’s undoubtedly left the network feeling like it has to do … something … to keep its head above water.
Fine. But this crap right here? This is some Grade-A malarkey.
According to TV Line, NBC will bump the next three episodes of Parks & Recreation — including the second episode with Tatiana Masalany from Orphan Black, and the Halloween episode that was actually set to air on October 31 — in favor of two episodes of The Voice and a Halloween-themed Saturday Night Live special. And one of those episodes of The Voice was originally set to air at 9 p.m., where it would have preempted The Michael J. Fox Show and Sean Saves the World, but was moved up to 8 to bump Parks instead. Nope. Nope nope nope. This will not do at all.
Anyway, please make a note in your calendars. As long as NBC doesn’t screw around with the air dates or episode order after today, the Halloween episode of Parks & Rec will air just in time for Thanksgiving. If we want to be positive here, at least that’s better than last season’s Halloween episode of Community airing on Valentine’s Day. (We do not want to be positive.)
