User Reviews

I don't watch a lot of TV, but when I do, I watch entire seasons on DVD rather than through the commercial source. That's how I watched Parks and Rec this past week, and this review is based on the series as a whole.

The first two seasons were excellent in my opinion, and I'd give them 9 of 10 stars due to....

-Cast: Very strong, and even the weakest link STILL worked on the show. -Story: Quirky, comical, entertaining.

ENTER SEASON 3, AND THE DOOOOOWWWWNNNN SLIIIIIIDDDEEEEE.........

Season 3 kicks off with the addition of two new characters. Two new unfunny characters that is...

Rob Lowe may be a great actor, I don't know. I haven't seen much of anything he's done. I DO know, however, that he is a HORRIBLE comedic actor, and I know this because I've watched him on Parks and Rec, and he is awful. Rob Lowe lacks the timing, commitment, and delivery of his comedic peers, which makes watching his character almost unbearable.

Rob Lowe is just one unwelcome addition to the show starting in season 3 though. This is where the show starts to take itself too seriously, and instead of being a good smart comedy, it slowly starts to transition into something more along the lines of a straight up "chick show" soaked in drama and estrogen, and seemingly more concerned with "empowerment" than "comedy".

I made it through season 4, but won't be watching any further.

So, in summary.....

Season 1 and 2: 9 of 10 stars Season 3 and beyond: 6 of 10 at best

First off, I watched every episode of every season. This is not some hit piece, but a thought-out explanation of what was rubbing me wrong this whole time... rubbed raw by the end of it.

The comparisons to The Office are fine and well, especially in the first two season, but those two seasons were actually the best in the series... should have stuck with what worked. First the good: nearly ever single major supporting cast member. Pratt was Fantastic and lovable. Plaza was good weird. Ansari took many episodes and made them epic, especially whenever Ben Schwartz and Jenny Slate were involved. Ansari and Retta were also perfect together (treat yourself). Rashida Jones was the girl everyone wants to marry in real life. Rob Lowe eventually got going and really had some good moments, I never knew how funny he could be; his new DirectTv commercials take what he mastered in Parks and Rec to a whole new level. There are so many other supporting actors no one will read this if I list each one... so onwards and downwards.

Now the bad. The root of all issues lie with Leslie Knope, but I will come back to her character in a moment. Jerry/Gary/Larry - love this guy and how Jim O'Heir played him, I wish he was in my family... now why all the putrid bullying? If this character was a woman would anyone stand for this? It was out of left field many times with no reason given, just wrong. I thought maybe they were trying to find a "Toby" character to beat up on, but unlike Toby Gary/Jerry/Larry did NOTHING wrong EVER aside from being clumsy. It was strange and I think if the character was played by an overweight woman someone would have lost their job over the meanness of it all, what a double standard. Just go back and watch some of the bullying of him and mentally replace him with an overweight woman, you will see what I am saying.

Ben Wyatt. I have been a fan of Adam Scott since Party Down, and I think he did a good job here... but again Leslie Knope. The closer his character got to the Knope character the more emasculated he became, by the end there was no doubt who wore the pantsuit and who wore the pants. Too bad, I liked the board game obsession, the smart quirkiness, the general unique qualities to his character. It seemed all stripped away by the end and he was just some odd political husband without meaning. Also the entire romance was so unbelievable, absolutely zero chemistry.

Ron Swanson. He was great, Nick Offerman was great. The storytelling was awful. Ron is supposed to be the Anti-Knope. The libertarian/conservative reasonableness to the progressive pushings of Leslie Knope. But in every single standoff Ron Swanson gives in to his values and bends to Knope's wishes because she "really believes" or "really fights" or "really tries" to do something. I am sorry, but if you believe in the opposite of someone else, just because they are "really trying" hard doesn't mean you forsake all of your own beliefs. This was no more evident than the end when he gives in to Knope one last time to work for the Federal Government to essentially be a park Ranger. The Ron Swanson I would have liked to see would have somehow finagled the land from the Federal Government and opened up his own Wilderness park to teach kids not to be such sissies and depend on themselves and each other for survival, all the while respecting what he loves most... nature.

So let's get this over with... Leslie Knope was the biggest bully of them all. She bullied every single character to do her bidding, relentlessly, degradingly, sometimes with a smile, sometimes with a tantrum, sometimes in "their" best interest... but it got annoying real fast. If the series would have shifted away from her as a central character and instead someone they all had to deal with, that would have been ideal and would have let the truly exceptional characters shine. I could handle the antics 5 minutes an episode, way too many other characters I would have preferred seeing.

Keeping the Knope character in the spotlight quickly turned this series (which would have been great with the true ineptitude of government bureaucracies as a backdrop for hilarious people doing hilarious things) to a huge progressive love-fest with every progressive cliché and politician making a cameo.

Towards the end (seasons 6-7) it was very formulaic writing and was basically reduced to a bunch of small skits to get each one's shtick in, absolutely no effort or thought was put in to the overall story. The giant take away is that government rules best when ruled by people who really want to rule you...

Leslie is a passionate government worker whose enthusiasm is seen as unique. Mark, a handsome man in the office, is a potential love interest until he ends up leaving for the private sector. Ann, a nurse whose boyfriend fell into the pit, asks the City to fill in the hole. Ann ends up breaking up with Andy after finding out he could've gotten his cast off earlier but chose not to. April is an eccentric intern and ends up crushing on Andy.

The team ends up getting closer over the years and we are introduced to Ben and Chris, auditors from the state. Slowly Ben ends up falling for Leslie and after a business trip they hook up.

We also get to see the futures of each of the characters in the last episode. This is not done in many shows and it is nice to not have to guess what happened.

Leslie and Ben end up both being sought out. They have been asked to run for Governor of Indiana. Ben announces for Leslie that she is running to the team. She smiles at him knowing he sacrificed for her. Leslie ends up giving a speech at the university in the year 2035. She ends up working with people like Biden.

Donna has become a successful real estate agent and states she loves her teacher husband but also likes her diamonds.

April and Andy are on the fence about kids. April tells Leslie that they were so lucky in that they just had sex one time and had three children at once. Leslie gives wise words saying it is not about making your life perfect but having a good team and wanting to add more team members. They end up having a son named Jack.

Ann and Chris have two kids - a girl and a boy. They are Leslie and Oliver.

Jerry lives to be 100 years old with many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. At the funeral, Ben comments how good Gayle still looks.

Ron's three kids have grown up. One of the girls got into Stanford University. Ron is lost in life and seeks Leslie for advice. She gives him a job taking care of the new park where there is a beautiful lake.

Tom ends up going broke and writing a successful book about it.

As many other reviewers have pointed out, the first season and a half is fairly weak. You can tell the writers are trying to figure out a direction for the show, trying not to make it a knockoff of The Office (and mostly failing). But around the episode with the telethon, something magical happens. More jokes strike their mark. The characters become more human, more lovable. The show stops following the brokenness of government and starts following the brokenness of its cast.

For a couple seasons, anyway.

Now, when I say the show loses its balance, I don't mean it stops being funny, or the quality of writing plummets. Far from it. The writing remains consistently strong, the jokes are hilarious, and the characters just get better and better. No, I mean that the show becomes less politically balanced as the series goes on.

The writers loved Obama. This becomes apparent sometime around the fifth season, when Leslie stops being a well-meaning bubbly liberal whose schemes to help her town sometimes succeed and sometimes backfire; and starts being an Obama stand-in who is harassed from every side by meddling Republicans who want her gone because they don't like her personally. And I'm not going to say the writers didn't have a right to do that; but I will say that this decision was to the show's detriment.

Take the episode where Leslie decides to save the local video store as an example of the balanced Parks and Rec. It's a perfect grey situation: The store does have community value, but it's also failing. Leslie has a point when she says that it should be preserved for its historical value, but Ron also has a point when he says it's best to let a failing business die. When it blows up in Leslie's face, it proves Ron right, but Leslie proves herself right by preserving the video store's community and historical value a different way. It was a great episode: funny, timely, and most of all, balanced.

Now take the soda tax as an example of the unbalanced Parks and Rec. This, too, is a good grey situation: Leslie wants to curb obesity in Pawnee, so she places a tax on soda. In reality, a tax on soda would be a sin tax-a tax ostensibly to curb negative behaviors, like the one on cigarettes. The people who object to sin taxes aren't mad that the government is "restricting our personal freedoms," but rather that the sin tax doesn't restrict anything at all. It just makes indulging a sin more expensive, and who reaps that extra profit? Yep, the government. The storytelling potential was ripe here. We could have gotten citizens saying that rather than restricting the size of sodas sold, Leslie chose the move that allowed the government to profit off of bad behavior. Ron could have pointed out that people are going to buy giant sodas if they're available, no matter how much they cost. Perd Hapley could have talked to people who found the move a shady one, who accused Leslie of not caring about obesity at all because the government would soon be dependent on the revenue generated by the soda tax. But Leslie is now our Obama stand-in, and we can't have her opponents looking reasonable, now can we?

Additionally, the writers seem to forget that Leslie is not the mayor, but the most junior city council member, and so she would not have the authority to merge Pawnee and Eagleton, or to unilaterally institute a soda tax.

It's just frustrating. I'm going to continue to watch this show because I love the characters, but the political storylines are getting worse. In the beginning, you could tell the writers leaned left, but they were more than willing to critique their own ideas. Now, they only seem interested in talking up Obama and using Jamm as an amalgamation of every Republican they despise.

Quite honestly has the greatest ending to any television sitcom. Room for additional content, but also allows it to be complete. Even with two main characters leaving toward the end, additional screen time for smaller characters was done perfectly.

Parks and recreation allows you to travel with the group on a journey and come to a stop that shows how's the characters end. It completes and complements their character development.

The creators have been part of some of the greatest Tv shows of all time but this arguably IS the best! Perfect choice of the actors and development of their characters.

Ron Swanson is literally the greatest fictional character of all time.