Parks and Recreation: Season 4 Spring Premiere

Does anyone remember what Parks and Recreation was like when it first premiered back in 2009? Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt) was barely even present, functioning only as the annoying boyfriend for Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones), whose character was blasé at best. Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari) and Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) were merely shells of characters, and instead of Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) and Chris Traeger (Rob Lowe) we had Mark Brendanawicz (Paul Schneider) as the most boring co-star in the show’s history.

The point is, Parks and Recreation started as a dull knock-off of The Office without any sense of identity. But watching the “mid-season premiere” (or whatever you wish to call Parks and Rec’s return from a month long hiatus), it occurred to me what the problem was when the show first premiered: character development. A good show thrives on interesting characters, and it took P&R about a year before they started to really figure things out. Now it’s one of the best comedies on television, and the latest episode truly highlights how far these characters have come.

As Leslie approaches the final weeks of her campaign for city council, she catches a glimpse of the difficult task in store for her if she’s elected when her desire to prevent budget cuts to the Parks Department causes an animal shelter to be shut down. Her selfless solution to the problem places even more importance on next week’s debate against the rich-boy Bobby Newport, which will feature the triumphant return of a stupendously casted Paul Rudd.  But where the episode truly excels is providing each of its characters their due screen time in even the most minute and insignificant capacities.  We begin with a narratively unessential though comically gratifying voyage into Tom’s apartment. Tom and Ann have been dating off and on throughout the season in one of the weirdest pairings in TV history—so absurd you can’t help but love it—and what better way to start off a show than to have Ann confess her love…to his apartment, which Leslie accurately describes as “girl heaven”: coconut water, endless blankets and throw pillows, cheese platters, chocolate covered almonds, lip exfoliator, and Sudoku are among the many amenities…

In addition to its hilarity, the brief encounter with Tom’s apartment demonstrates the tremendous evolution of the show and its characters. Though every character now has a uniquely crafted identity loaded with various amusing quirks, the underlying sincerity that unites them makes these odd-couple storylines so compelling (and plausible). For example, one of the B-stories of the episode entails Chris offering Ron the chance to be Assistant City Manager, a position that intrigues him only in furthering his goal of “eliminating reckless government spending” by “taking down traffic lights” and “eliminating the post office,” among other things, of course. In order to get the job, Ron must agree to spend the day with Chris at his yoga clinic, which is about as far from Ron’s comfort zone as he could get—other than one of PETA’s “free the whale slaves” rallies. Yet somewhere between Ron achieving a “thoughtless meditative state” and Chris sharing a glass of Scotch with him, we understand how these two people who could not be more different somehow connect on the must fundamental level.

The approaching election within the narrative show seems all but allusive to the series’ own campaign to stay alive for another season as the network contemplates cutting the whole line-up and starting from scratch. Though I would likely place myself in the #sixseasonsandamovie following of Community, the loss of Parks & Rec would be a different level of devastation. Many of the characters have reached iconic status almost without realizing it—Ron Swanson alone has an almost cultish following (most of whom are ironically quite liberal). In television, shows will frequently live or die not so much due to intrinsic quality but simply due to circumstances outside the writers’ control. But nailing the characters and their dynamics is a good start that gives any show a fighting chance, and no comedy seems to grasp that better than Parks and Recreation.