Episode 1 - Go Big or Go Home
6 March 2012
It's good to see Parks back on TV and I'm pleased that it's going on after The Office, giving it the best chance to get an audience and establish itself. Some critics think it is the best comedy on TV but I have never been one of them.
I've always felt that the show came up with good ideas but then squandered them. This episode didn't really change my opinion of that.
Let's start with Andy and April who were building a really subtle love story at one point. The writers couldn't seem to leave them alone and escalated the relationship to the point where we now have the opposite of what we started with. In the beginning we had oblivious Andy not realizing that April had a crush on him. Now we have Andy making the romantic comedy style big declaration of interest in her and promising to do that every week until she changes her mind. I'll admit that could be fun but it does feel like the writers scrambling to put the "will they or won't they" idea back on course having botched it in season two. Andy remains an endearing figure, here being a useless but enthusiastic basketball coach.
Then there's Ron Swanson, who had carved out a nice niche as the anti-government, ultra-rightwing, all-American man. Again the writers didn't leave Ron as a subtle figure. They had to keep emphasizing his love of meat, his moustache and his hatred for government to a cartoony extreme. Here he introduces us to the Swanson Pyramid of Greatness which seems to imply that the only way to live, dress and behave is the way he does.
He is now in a relationship with Wendy, Tom's former green card-wife. Tom still has feelings for Wendy and his jealousy leads to the ridiculous refereeing decisions which ruin the basketball match. I really didn't like that scene for a couple of reasons. One being that Tom clearly didn't know the rules of basketball which should have led Ron (as his boss) to remove his authority and stop the match. Second is just the handling of Tom's character. He seemed to have real feelings for Wendy yet when he finally told her how he felt (216) he did it using his usual sleazy shtick which made him look pathetic in more ways than one. Those feelings were never explored again which makes their return slightly odd. We don't know why she means so much to him or whether his feelings are genuinely noble or just based in jealousy. We haven't been given much of a chance to see him with Lucy either so I'm ambivalent about his story until I see more.
The writers wisely chose to flesh out Chris's (Rob Lowe) character and give him some humanity to cover for his cartoon enthusiasm. And they did a good job with that. Not only did he explain his blood disorder but he then seemed genuinely happy to welcome Leslie and Ben along on the date, buy drinks for some gay men just because they were friendly and tear up at Leslie's pitch for the Harvest Festival.
Leslie's enthusiasm is undimmed and looks set to play well off Ben's deadpan sensibleness. I do like the Harvest Festival being the story arc which presumably saves the parks department and drives plots forward this season. I think we are dealing with both talented writers and actors here but it seems finding balance is the key to success. A balance between reality and cartoon in particular.
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