I will admittedly eat all the crow for having taken so long to finally watch this show. My brother has been recommending it to me for years and it was always just a few shows too far down on my “stuff to watch” list – the prospect of seven seasons’ worth of episodes was daunting to me, and there was always something shinier and more compact to catch my eye. But now that I’ve finally gotten my butt in gear to watch it, I see all the many ways it was tailor-made for me to adore it.
In the small city of Pawnee, Indiana, Leslie Knope is the deputy director of the Parks and Recreation department. While many of her coworkers are coasting through their jobs, biding their time until something better comes along, or filled with cynicism about what government can do, Leslie is constantly brimming with enthusiasm and optimism. She walks the halls of Pawnee City Hall as if they’re the U.S. Senate chamber, and she’s ready to do anything and everything to make Pawnee better.
Befoe I get too far into it, I’ll mention that Louis C.K. guest-stars in a handful of episodes in the show (ironically, his first appearance also introduces a city-council character who known for his frequent sex scandals,) which isn’t a good look in hindsight.
Most anyone who watches Parks and Rec will tell you that its first season is a bit of a Mulligan, and that’s fair. It’s clear that the show is still finding its feet early on, and it goes through some major adjustments over the course of season 2 to become an utterly-winning little gem of a series. Created by Greg Daniels (the U.S. version of The Office) and Mike Schur (The Good Place,) it’s easy to how its Office-ish roots of over-the-top characters in a mundane setting give way to the Good Place-ish sense of whimsical wordplay and and enormous heart. The humor is spot-on, the throwaway gags are terrific, and the continuity is a delight.
Most of all, though, I love the characters and the ethos. This is a show to add to a particular subset of favorite shows of mine, and that’s Good Shows. I don’t mean “good” as a measure of the quality, I mean it as a virtue, as goodness. It’s fitting that I was just talking about Supergirl, because that’s another Good Show for me (also throw in Doctor Who and Pushing Daisies.) In a TV landscape where so much of what we consume is dark, “gritty,” and/or cynical, I love to sometimes escape into shows that are just about good people who care about each other and are trying to do something good. Parks and Rec still has a little bite to it, salty as well as sweet, but with Leslie at its center, it’s ultimately always going to come down to kindness, helping others, and a determination to do what’s right.
I always loved Amy Poehler on SNL, but she’s just a treasure in this role. She inhabits Leslie, ridiculous in how seriously she takes her outwardly-inconsequential job and yet inspiring in how hard she works purely for making people’s lives better. A wonderful comic heroine who’s inspiring, flawed, proactive, and hilarious. But as great as she is, she’s surrounded by a host of splendidly-funny cast members, many of whom have since blown up in their own rights (i.e. Chris Pratt, Aziz Ansari.) I came to Aubrey Plaza a little backwards, since I first saw her on Legion, and I now completely get why she was such a revelation on that show after having played April for so long. I’ll also highlight Nick Offerman, whose Ron Swanson is every bit as scene-stealing as the memes would suggest. And the biggest discovery for me here was Adam Scott as Ben, an endlessly-funny straight man amid all the craziness.
Warnings
Language, sexual references, drinking/smoking, scenes of violence, and thematic elements.
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