It looks like the doors of Greendale Community College are closing forever.

Today any hope for intelligent, innovative comedy finding a home at NBC was almost permanently nuked like a microwaved gremlin as the network has announced the long-dreaded yet tragically inevitable cancellation of the cult favorite comedy series Community only a few weeks after the conclusion of its fifth season.

Fans of the NBC comedy Community will be able to see their favorite characters as puppets in an upcoming episode of the show, which is set to air some time this spring.

In the episode, the study group goes on a wild balloon ride and end up crashing in the woods, and spending some time with a friendly mountain man. The experience has everyone feeling a bit awkward, so in order to speak about it freely, they all use puppet versions of themselves to share the tale.

Good news for fans of the hit NBC sitcom Community, as the entire cast has been confirmed to be returning when the show goes into production on season 4.

Returning cast includes Joel McHale, Alison Brie, Donald Glover, Yvette Nicole Brown, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Jim Rash, Ken Jeong, and Chevy Chase.

All but Glover, Chase, Rash, and Jeong are set to appear at Comic-Con next month.

The second of the three Community animated shorts has been released. You can watch “Abed’s Master Key Part 2” here below.

Other than a couple of nice running gags involving Super Soakers and Danny Glover, I didn’t get much laughs out of this cartoon. I understand that the purpose of these shorts is to help increase awareness of Community before the show returns next week, but shoddy Flash animation is hardly the way to go. Despite having the participation of the show’s cast there’s just not much life or even hilarity to be found here. Plus they’re too damn brief; each short runs less than two minutes and that’s not including the intros and outros. I would have preferred live-action webisodes with sharper writing. Maybe the final part of “Abed’s Master Key” will make it all worthwhile.

On Monday we brought you the news that NBC would be producing a series of animated shorts to mark the return of Community from its mid-season hiatus.

The first of the shorts has premiered online today. You can watch “Abed’s Master Key Part 1” here below.

Featuring the voices of the Community cast, “Master Key” finds Abed (Danny Pudi) becoming Dean Pelton’s (Jim Rash) “depu-dean” and being given a master key to all of Greendale Community College, something the rest of the gang will likely attempt to exploit in the next two shorts.