Gillian Jacobs and Joel McHale sit at a study desk in NBC's 'Community.'
Lewis Jacobs/NBC

NBC decided to preview the fall comedy Community (featuring Gillian Jacobs and Joel McHale) online. Results were mixed.

One of the fall pilots currently getting a decent amount of positive attention is NBC's Community, a comedy starring Joel McHale, the very funny host of the E! wrap-up show The Soup.

Trying to ramp up the positive word of mouth, NBC decided to post the pilot online for a few days to give people a chance to see it early. In keeping with the idea that you should start and end with the good stuff, let's sandwich the bad news in between the pieces of good news.

The limitations of social media, the importance of functionality, and the pleasures of a good joke, after the jump...

 

Good news: As a general matter, it's probably smart to put your pilot online ahead of time; you're not likely to hurt yourself, particularly if you have confidence in the product.

Bad news: They only posted it on Facebook. Not Hulu, not NBC.com. Only Facebook. So if you're not a Facebook user, you're entirely out of luck.

Bad news: It's only available to U.S. residents. Not especially important to your domestic ratings prospects, but it makes Canadians in particular really angry.

Bad news: You have to become a "fan" of the show in order to watch it. This is going to subject you to future communications from the show — which presumably could include cross-promotional messages from NBC making sure you watch the rest of their fall shows. While you can certainly "un-fan" something you've become a fan of so they don't bother you anymore, this isn't really the way the function is meant to be used. It makes people nervous when you force a tool they're accustomed to into some odd use — like, "Please say you're already a fan of this thing you haven't yet seen, so you can see it."

Bad news: It didn't work reliably. While the pilot played perfectly well for some, it stopped part of the way through — just stopped outright — for others. (This happened to me and has been reported by many.) You can have the best, savviest marketing plan anyone has ever devised, and if your video cuts out halfway through, people just get annoyed. It eventually worked for me, but most people won't keep trying.

Good news: It's good. There's a reason they're trying to sell it by having you see it; it's funny. There are solid jokes, there are plenty of oddball characters to keep the supply of stories stocked, and it's just weird enough to fit well with 30 Rock, The Office, and Parks & Recreation on Thursday nights. So if none of the bad news scares you off and you want to try it, have a look.