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'Parks and
Recreation,' warming up

NBC sitcom fits well with 'The Office' and '30 Rock'

By Tom Conroy
Nov 19, 2009

“Parks and Recreation” draws heavily from two funnier comedies, “The Office” and “30 Rock.” But since it precedes those shows on NBC on Thursdays, it works nicely as an appetizer.

Sitcoms have a natural life cycle. As “The Office” enters what looks like a gradual decline, “Parks and Recreation” may mature into a worthy companion piece to “30 Rock.” Those of us who still go to NBC for our weekly dose of smart sitcom are depending on it.

From “The Office,” “Parks and Recreation” takes its workplace setting and mockumentary format.

Along with ABC’s “Modern Family,” it belongs to a sitcom subgenre: the self-deluded-people-who-are-being-filmed-by-a-documentary-crew-with-an-unbelievably-high-budget comedy. (We’re meant to suspend disbelief enough to imagine a producer who can not only tape continuously during work hours but can also afford to send two cameraman to cover a secondary subject’s Halloween party.)

Amy Poehler’s “Parks and Recreation” character, Leslie Knope, is a cross between Michael Scott, the idiot boss of “The Office,” and Liz Lemon, the frazzled, romantically frustrated character played by Poehler’s former “Saturday Night Live” castmate Tina Fey on “30 Rock.”

A scene in which Leslie took a speaker-phone call from her credit-card company and was asked about recent purchases of a “man pillow” and a product called “Bucket of Cake” could have been an outtake from “30 Rock.”

Sometimes the similarities are plain weird: On the Thursday before Halloween, both “30 Rock” and “Parks and Recreation” had scenes in which pretty straight girls talked about how they preferred attending gay men’s Halloween parties.

But since the show’s debut this spring, “Parks and Recreation” has come into its own. Leslie’s quixotic quest to turn an abandoned construction site into a new park for the fictitious town of Pawnee, Ind., captures the frustration that anyone feels dealing with corporate or bureaucratic inertia.

Though many of the characters seem to have been created to fit into slots created for “The Office” — for example, Mark (Paul Schneider) and Ann (Rashida Jones) are near clones of that show’s Jim and Pam — “Parks and Recreation” has wisely avoided many of the typical recurring sitcom themes. Thankfully, Leslie isn’t involved in an ongoing will-they-or-won’t-they flirtation.

The minor characters are growing nicely as well. Andy (Chris Pratt), Ann’s homeless ex-boyfriend, has provided some good recent subplots — although a storyline in which Don (Nick Offerman) became obsessed with his foot rubs was subpar filler.

Tom Conroy is a Connecticut writer and longtime TV critic.	© 2010 Media Life Magazine

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