The Fox network’s decision to renew its Emmy-winning comedy series Arrested Development has made a lot of people very happy — the promise of seeing (Toronto boy) Will Arnett swaggering arrhythmically with a knife between his teeth and Europe’s "The Final Countdown" on the soundtrack is enough to make getting up in the morning seem worthwhile. But please, spare a thought for the poor television critics who spent the last six months spit-polishing their rants about the precipitous decline in North American broadcasting standards. Sure, they’ll feign happiness at their darling’s deliverance but the all-important "told-you-so" factor — the motivating impulse for all critics, whether we like to admit it or not — has been eliminated.

So now that the tireless championing thing is basically moot, there’s nothing left to do but add two more cents to the pile and say that Fox did the right thing. The company line is that the network had been behind Arrested Development all along despite its low ratings. That’s unconvincing given Fox’s past trigger-happiness with regards to such critically adored but commercially unviable shows as Futurama, Wonderfalls and Andy Richter Controls the Universe.

At this point, it’s arguable that Fox is defined more by the shows that it chose to cancel than what’s actually left in its lineup. In 2002, they axed Joss Whedon’s idiosyncratic sci-fi series Firefly despite a Buffy-level outcry from its devoted fan base, who retaliated by flooding the internet with complaints and buying scads of DVD sets. The latter gesture only served to reward Fox for their error, a Catch-22 that obviously meant less to Firefly fans than the chance to replay all 14 of the show’s episodes in perpetuity. Still, heads might roll if Serenity, Universal’s feature-length extension of the Firefly brand slated for theatrical release in September, delivers a sizable cult-hit payload. (Incidentally, Whedon’s movie gets a sold-out, fans-only screening at the Paramount June 23.)

Then there’s the strange case of Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy, also cancelled in 2002 because of low ratings. You know the rest: the show was lamented by its diehard supporters and was subsequently snatched up by the Cartoon Network, where it anchored the profitable Adult Swim lineup. Add the fact that the DVDs were massive hits and it’s easy to see why Family Guy was renewed by Fox this past spring to a chorus of media approbation. If you can’t remember the last time a network second-guessed itself three years after the fact, that’s because it’s never happened before. TV executives aren’t usually tapped for their harsh self-criticism: if they were, UPN’s offices would be fully automated by now.

It’s easy to speculate that l’affaire MacFarlane was a motivating factor in Fox’s decision to keep Arrested Development on the air: had it been dropped, it might have been picked up by another network, and not just for reruns. Fox couldn’t have been happy to see the Cartoon Network getting props for recycling its intellectual property but wouldn’t it be far more horrifying to sit back and watch, say, HBO, sign the Arrested Development ensemble for a successful run, bragging about the joys of unbridled artistic freedom?

If anxiety over lost profits and crippled street cred are what it takes to keep decent shows on the air, so be it. NBC decided to give its unfairly reviled remake of The Office another shot, even though its ratings aren’t even in the same league as Arrested Development’s. The show’s not in the same league, either, but while Steve Carell’s gregarious boss-from-hell character doesn’t compare to Ricky Gervais’ work on the original BBC series, when the American Office started to deviate from its source material after several episodes it found its own comic voice. This upswing culminated in a sly Survivor spoof that put the series’ mock-documentary conceit to brilliant use. NBC’s patience is encouraging, even if there are a whole lot of us who wish they’d exercised it a few years back and given Freaks and Geeks a stay of execution.

Whether Fox and NBC are showing that they’ve learned the lessons of primetimes past or simply acting out of cold, reptilian fear, they’ve done their bit to stave off the death of the medium with a commitment to programs that make up in ambition what they lack in cozily laugh-tracked certainty.

I know, you’re still worried about the TV critics. Don’t. They’re a resilient group and they’ll roll with it. My guess: an alarming spike in the number of impassioned think-pieces addressing the misunderstood beast that is Joey.

Nobody said paradigm shifts were pretty.