The quality of Parks and Recreation has resembled its predecessor, The Office. Had it not been for a vote of confidence from NBC, The Office would have been scrapped after it’s short, poor first season, which was essentially a bad copy of the original British version. But it’s second season started with one of my favorite episodes, “The Dundies,” and never looked back on its way to becoming a big hit for NBC. Now, Parks and Rec has recovered from a lackluster short first season to be one of the funnier shows on TV. It still has room to grow, but it has come into it’s own and is starting to be what I had hoped it would be all along.
In their required by NBC Halloween episode, we had two equally funny and interesting plot lines. On one end, Leslie was trying to stop Greg Pikitis, a high school troublemaker who likes to vandalize a statue and park every Halloween. She enlists the help of her new beau, Dave, who is played awefully well by Louis C.K. and the ever desperate Andy to help her stake out Pikitis and make sure he doesn’t do anything this year. When they finally give up though, they find he’s trashed the Parks and Rec office, sending Leslie into a fit of rage. She detains him, encourages Andy (“I’m from the f**king FBI!”) to torture him to get an answer, and glowers at him whenever she has the chance. Pikitis gets out of it, thanks in part to an actress he’s hired to play his mom, but eventually gets busted. While he may not get the punishment Leslie thinks he deserves, she wins this battle.
The rest of our favorite state government officials attended a Halloween party hosted by Anne. Unfortunately, her festive Halloween party is filled with bored doctors and people not really in the spirit of All Hallows Eve. Then Tom shows up (“Tonight, T-Pain stands for Tom Haverford!”), turns off the lights, and gets the party started. Meanwhile, Mark (in an Indiana Pacers jersey!) gets “tested” by Anne’s friends and April lamments not attending a Gay Halloween (interestingly, 30 Rock ran with that too), but really didn’t do much else. I did however love her clown costume, accentuated by the painted on smile to go with her ever present frown.
This episode was comically spot on. The jokes landed (Dave correcting Leslie whenever she dolled out torture or punishment was priceless) and it even added depth to characters. Tom looked truly heartbroken when his wife talked to Ron about them getting divorced as soon as possible, and Ron himself even approached the subject very tentitively. Like I said, I think Louis C.K. has been terrific, and I hope we see more of him and don’t have a lot of “Leslie is lonely” like there is on The Office with Michael.
Overall, it was a solid episode, but as a whole, they still have some kinks to work out. One of the things the Office did so brilliantly was to start with a focus on just a few characters and bring in the rest of the gang as they went along to keep viewers interested. Parks and Rec on the other hand hand has seven main characters, right off the bat. Like Community, they need to figure out a way to keep all of them constantly involved. But like I said, a solid episode.
Mike’s Grade: 80
Grade: B+
Michael
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