Parks and Recreation Season 1 Overview

Set in the fictional Indiana town of Pawnee, Parks and Recreation is a newly devised comedy from part of the creative team behind NBC’s The Office, Greg Daniels and Michael Schur. It follows the day to day drudgery of the parks council as they bid to improve their lowly town by making small changes to the local surroundings.

Making up the cast is a selection of Saturday Night Live alumni, including the bubbly Amy Phoehler as Leslie Knope, the ever-enthusiastic ring leader who smiles in the face of rejection and adversity; alongside the likes of Aziz Ansari, as Tom Haverford, the joker of the pack and Nick Offerman, the belligerent and serious Ron Swanson, a man who takes great care and pride in his work.

With a show that relies on its mockumentary style of presentation, comedy and its overall sense of unpredictability, it lacks any real originality within the television market. With programmes like The Office and Modern Family offering superior reactive dialogue and dysfunctional character work, it’s hard to see Parks and Recreation ever beating either of its main rivals to the punch.

One of the highlights of the show itself is the acting from Rashid Jones (I Love You, Man; The Office) who portrays the gentle Ann Perkins, a local resident whose husband falls foul within a desolate dumping hole, an area she wants to fill in, leading to her joining the committee. Jones brings to the show a sense of comfort, for she fits the ‘girl next door’ role to a tee, and always seems to represent the mindset of the viewer, playing perfectly off the wacky try-hard in Knope.

Perhaps my major issue with ‘Parks…’ is the forced reaction shots featuring Knope, a character the writers clearly want to emphasise as the hard-working and resilient force behind the committee, namely the one character who actually cares about the position she holds and the significant effect she believes she can have on the town. Whilst this in itself is understandable and Phoehler fits well into the role, it is outdone by Steve Carrel in The Office, a programme which effectively created and dominates ‘awkward’ comedy. In trying to emulate the same exact characteristics, the writers seem to shoot themselves in the foot, for it is not a strong enough character to carry the show on its own, whereas The Office has magnificent support from other areas of the show, meaning it was able to extend its reach across several seasons. ‘Parks’, it seems, does not.