Parks and Rec Review!

Alright! After watching the Office, I moved on to what I had heard was like a sister series to the Office; Parks and Rec. Both series are created by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, both are filmed in a mockumentary type format, and both have Rashida Jones in them. I'm not going to discuss which one's better. That's for a different post.

But, for the record, both do have a pretty lackluster first season. I had actually started watching the first two episodes a while back, but I kinda stopped, off put by the humor. The first season, like the Office, is not the best. It was still finding a personality. While the Office was trying to differentiate itself from the British Office, Parks and Rec was trying to differentiate itself from the American Office.

At first, the main character of the show, Leslie Knope, is practically a knock-off Michael Scott, albeit a bit more productive. The second season paved the way for Leslie Knope's true personality, however; An anal retentive but loving person who over plans everything but gets away with it by being such a caring person. It's a good twist on the "Lazy, mildly incompetent boss" stereotype that is so prevalent in television.

Amy Poehler as Leslie Knope

Other characters also have their time to shine; Aubrey Plaza's scene stealing April Ludgate is often the funniest character in the show. Chris Pratt is a lovable adult child named Andy Dwyer, who was semi realistic in the first season before being dumbed down to childish levels in later seasons. Season 7 Andy would never have survived what Season 2 Andy went through. Ben Wyatt's definitely my favorite character in the show. 

My three favorite Parks and Rec characters; Ben Wyatt, April Ludgate, and Andy Dwyer

The other main lead, Rashida Jones's Ann Perkins, was also pretty cool in the first three or so seasons. After that, she started to be defined by whomever she was dating at the time - Mark, Tom, Chris, that weird arc with herself, everything. Luckily the writers did spot this and tried to develop the character from it, but so much of Ann's character was just relationship stuff. Pretty boring and repetitive. I was actually kind of glad when she left the show. 

Anything else for characters? Let's see... Ron Swanson was absolutely hilarious, never becoming too weird to be real like Dwight Schrute, Larry/Gary/Merry Gergich or whatever was so beaten upon it stopped being funny and more sad, Tom Haverford's character development from young and headstrong entrepreneur to restaurant bistro was well done, any scenes with Tammy were... the type where you stare at the wall and hope mom doesn't walk in the room... and Chris Traeger was hilarious every time he was on screen. Except when he was having a baby with Ann. That was just drama. 

Wasn't a huge fan of this relationship. Or any of Ann's pregnancy arc. It wasn't funny.

But other than the characters? Any comments on the show? 

Sure.

Season 1 wasn't all that great. Season 2 and 3 were pretty great. Season 4 and 5 were overblown by Leslie Knope for Councilwoman stuff, to where it was basically a macguffin for every episode's drama. Season 6 and 7 are a return to form with some of the funniest episodes in the series. I liked that they would randomly grab pretty big names like Bill Murray, Paul Rudd, Kristen  Bell, and John Cena and put them in episodes. It was funny. 

It also had cameo appearances from Michelle Obama and Joe Biden

The other thing I would say about the show is that it stays consistently funny throughout the show's entire 7 season run. Which is impressive. Not a lot of shows can say that they kept a consistent quality for every season. Except for Firefly.

Even though the show is about the inner working of the government, it was rarely unfunny dated in-jokes. It kept it as accessible a humor as possible.

Overall, I give Parks and Rec an 8/10, "While mostly serving as nice palate cleanser after rewatching the Office, there's a lot to love about Parks and Rec, from the relatable and clever humor to the real characters and development."

Also, this is my first post I've written entirely on the New Blogger. Blogger updated it's system it's been using for the past 15 years, and it's getting rid of the old one on the 24th of August. Unfortunately, this new Blogger is not the best Blogger. 

Importing images has gotten infinitely more complicated to do. You can't break text around images and it's near impossible to move them without the entire post glitching out. So should you have noticed that most of the images are centered with captions, that is why.