That seems likely, only Tracy Morgan's prolonged absence last season made it less obvious.

I think they've reduced the number of appearances by secondary characters in order to reduce costs. In this episode Grizz and Dot Com were conspicuous by their absence.

As a point of comparison, in the 18-49 demo this handily beat the premiere of Smash the Monday after the Super Bowl on NBC (4.2 vs 3.8).

In the UK, years and years ago Channel 4 used to show Everybody Loves Raymond at around 8am in the morning between repeats of Friends and Scrubs. I'm pretty sure it was the first time it was broadcast in the country.

Either Scrubs or Malcolm in the Middle deserve the credit for bringing single-camera sitcoms back into the mainstream in the US and, of the two, I'd rather credit Scrubs because it did more with the format.

I suspect the biggest influence of Community is that to encourage sitcom writers to do elaborate concept episodes and push the boundaries of the medium. I think it's also notable that Community has character depth and development without sacrificing comedy, plus it eschews the crutch of cut-away gags.

Shows usually get an initial order of 13 episodes and like to wrap up their threads in a satisfactory way in case they don't get a full season.

NBC are looking at NBCing The Voice:

NBC used the same strategy with Whitney as they have with Smash: inescapable blanket promotion to the point of it becoming grating. That's why Whitney debuted to a solid 3.2 before falling away.

Since when has anyone on TV read books?

To put this in Community/NBC context, if The Voice starts depressing the ratings of Monday's CBS comedies then I suspect they'll move them to Thursday after TBBT.

The Voice pulled 6.6 in 18-49, Smash pulled 3.8 in 18-49.

Actually, 25,000 is a huge sample size. Political polls tend to be accurate based on much smaller sample sizes.

NBC won Monday night in households, beating the CBS sitcoms.

NBC officially have their best night ever.

NBC: From the cast of SNL, The Hangover and Bridesmaids

The director may have simply found Jeong's dance in the Season 3 opening number funny.

If that's the case then we should all chip in to get Todd VanDerWerff a walk-on part on Glee or 2 Broke Girls.

I meant to convey that I hated Justin Long. I found his character so unsufferable that I skipped the last episode he was in.

New Girl is a perfectly decent show that made it to series and got good ratings because of a crap-but-attention-grabbing premise (i.e. Look! Zooey Deschanel is doing stuff!).