One of the most anticipated events of the fall television season is this weeks’ return of NBC’s Thursday night comedy line-up.

At 8 p.m., the line-up kicks off with the third season of last year’s break-out hit “Community”  in its third season. The show is a juggernaut, an ensemble sitcom centered on a group of unlikely friends attending community college together. The show has peerless writing and one of the funniest group of actors working on television today, but the real genius of the show is in the television/film history prowess that its writers demonstrate. “Community” is heavy on the pop-culture references, but also plays with conventions. One episode was created in documentary style, to poke fun at shows like “The Office” and “Modern Family,” and an episode composed of ‘clips’ of scenes that the audience never got to see. Additionally, there was an episode parodying student filmmakers,  an episode which centered around a game of Dungeons and Dragons, and a clay-mation Christmas special. Did I mention that every season so far has included episodes in which the entire school turns into a paintball warzone? And amidst all the looney-tunes zaniness, the show manages to find a stable emotional grounding and excellent character-based humor to balance the high-concept stuff. To date, the best episode of the show involved a character coming to terms with aging. The episode is set at a bar and touches upon drinking in a very real way—and there was still time to spend way too much time talking about “Farscape.” Must see TV indeed.

Next up we have “Parks and Recreation.” Like “The Office,” “Parks and Rec” is shot in a faux-documentary style, but instead of following  Dunder Mifflin employees, it follows the parks and recreation department in the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana. If “Community” fires on every cylinder for breaking ground, “Parks and Rec” is the comfort food of the sitcom world: self-assured and warm. The show casts any idea of cynical calculation aside. It is upbeat as hell and has been getting lots of comparisons to “The Simpsons” for the way it develops the town as a character, piecing together an ensemble of recurring cast members which simulates a very real, very kooky, town. Hell, I can describe it as ‘kooky’ and still love it.

I’m going to take a break from my format here and give a plug for these two shows. I wanted to write about them because they’re funny, and they have great characters, and I figured other people would want to know. The only problem is that they’re in danger of being cancelled. I know so many people who love these shows,  but on the business end, it seems to be dumb luck that they got renewed.  And as mean as it is that men in suits don’t count Netflix views or illegal streams—or even legal ones—into their numbers yet, it just means that being a fan of something now, more than ever, means advocating for it, championing it. As long as TV is made to make money, they need ads and ads people want people seeing their ads. I don’t want to see these great sitcoms go the way of other shows canceled before their time (“Freaks & Geeks,” “Firefly”) due to the greed of network executives. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

In the 9 p.m. slot we have “The Office,” in its god-knows-how-many-th season, returns with…that thing it does. Sorry, I never liked the show. After “The Office” is the debut of “Whitney”—a throwback to sitcoms of the late 90s and early 00s, showcasing a comedian as a fictionalized version of himself in the tradition of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” “Roseanne,” and a billion other shows. It’s one of two sitcoms Whitney Cummings is creating this season, so if you want to get some of this ‘it-girl’ (in the Sarah Silverman vein), this is your chance. Personally, I’ll be pining for perennial favorite “30 Rock” while Tina Fey is on baby leave—Alec Baldwin and Co. won’t be returning until mid-season.

And that’s pretty much it. I know where I’ll be Thursday night.