PARKS and RECREATION aka "Everything's coming up Amy"

I just want new episodes to talk about.

I'm not gonna complain about the prevalence of the mockumentary format as long as it's helping kill off laugh tracks/studio audiences as a sitcom standard.

The best and most original comedy here comes from pride, motivation and positivity (sadly spoiled by the whole Gerry thing). Every major character in this show is good-natured. We like them all, we enjoy their achievements, and we're nearly always laughing with them, not at them.

(sadly spoiled by the whole Gerry thing)

if jerry didn't get treated like jerry, the positivity would be way too much (it still sort of is, but not enough to be a real detriment)

The Jerry thing rules imo

The positivity is already way too much for a lot of viewers. It's a very warm and fuzzy show.

btw I read an interview with Michael Schur in which he said Gerry is allowed to be the punching bag because he's the only one who's happily married, owns a nice house, has loads of artistic talent etc etc. I don't know that I agree with the sentiment, but his contentment with life does help balance the office bullying.

xxxp yeah I suppose it provides a contrast and helps the characters feel more real, but even without that it doesn't feel at all like a mawkish show to me.

and we wouldn't laugh *with* the main characters so much if they weren't constantly reflecting on/making fun of/complaining about the doofishness of the population of pawnee

On the whole they seem to like the doofishness of Pawnee. They don't aspire to move to e.g. NYC and thrash out a high-rolling career, they're quite happy to stay in a small town and make a difference.

So yeah, fut0re of comedy = (a) being nice and (b) familiarity with strong characters allowing deeper humour

and then i read on vulture like every other week that the show is up to some final-season-of-Drew-Carey meta hijinks on every other episode
― moonshit journey to caca (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, September 19, 2011 4:36 AM (18 hours ago) Bookmark

you sure you're not thinking of Community?

cuz they do that fucking meme bait shit every goddamn episode now

xp well they might not hate it but pawnee is generally the brunt of a joke. and it's not like a deep-abiding love for the town's flaws, it's mostly just leslie knope rolling her eyes at the camera. it's pretty mean-spirited, that's just masked by the general likableness of the main cast and the fact that we typically empathize with them in these cases.

community has just as much a claim to "future" of comedy (imo two and a half men is the future of comedy) and that can be mean-spirited as hell.

leslie loves pawnee!

why must comedy have a future

it does make fun of the townspeople but leslie's devotion to them sort of mitigates the potential sneering.

yeah leslie loves pawnee in spite of everything she sneers at, though some of that is obviously political posturing. and most of the other characters are all sneer. point is, even when the characters aren't making fun of the townspeople, the script is, and you the viewer are meant to laugh at (not with) them.

whiney WAS talking about community, he was pretty clear about that if you read the post before that

i don't think that's true. like, the recurring joke about the town is that it's fat, and you get the crazies at the town meetings, yes, but leslie's devotion to staging events/beautifying public spaces for the people of Pawnee is about genuine affection and i think that's the general vibe of the show.

xp

ah ok cool, should've trusted wgw

i think pawnee also works as a stand-in for everybody's/the viewer's own shitty quirky kinda awful hometown that you inevitably still harbor some affection for because, you know, you grew up there. it's hard to hate the place, you just know its flaws and a pretty important part of you loves it regardless.

point is, even when the characters aren't making fun of the townspeople, the script is, and you the viewer are meant to laugh at (not with) them.

― witchho (zachlyon), Tuesday, 20 September 2011 09:40 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

None of the townspeople are major characters. They're a source of conflict, which is fine because without conflict there's no narrative. Also, Leslie's driven by her love of Pawnee as a whole, not the dozen or so froot loops who keep turning up to town hall meetings.

All the major characters (including Gerry in some way) are one giant clique, and imo reacting to the difference of the outside world is part of what makes any clique work.

i don't think that's true. like, the recurring joke about the town is that it's fat, and you get the crazies at the town meetings, yes, but leslie's devotion to staging events/beautifying public spaces for the people of Pawnee is about genuine affection and i think that's the general vibe of the show.

xp

― horseshoe, Monday, September 19, 2011 7:44 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yesss one thing i love about this show is its devotion to the idea of an active government *even when* citizens are horrible monsters who dont appreciate it. its a welcome message to hear on tv!!

The show also gets criticised for its idealistic portrayal of local government but tbh I think that's missing the point. It's not a documentary ffs.

It's Jerry not Gerry

http://www.nbc.com/parks-and-recreation/about/bios/jim-oheir/

This threw me:

http://cehowell.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/gerry-piano.jpg?w=500&h=312

um

http://cehowell.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/gerry-piano.jpg

does leslie really sneer at things? she usually just seems mildly embarrassed or frustrated

no i was saying she doesn't sneer! (she is my hero, btw)

okay, gotcha! one of the reasons i don't like s1 is that they kept making aziz sneer at things in a jim-from-the-office fashion, and they didn't leaven april's relentless sarcasm with much reason to like her. i much prefer the "too much positivity" of s2 and s3

Yeah s1 was a bit leaden all-round. The pit thing was more Leslie's gritty determination to finish what she started than working toward any greater good.

yeah season 1 was trying too hard to be bleak and horrible like the office, which i enjoyed for the first couple of seasons of the office, but i like that they just made leslie awesome instead of sad.

no i was saying she doesn't sneer! (she is my hero, btw)

― horseshoe, Monday, September 19, 2011 9:24 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

i love leslie and she has every right to sneer. not a LITERAL sneer, (what are we even talking about), but she has an awareness of the faults of pawnee's people and her facial expressions at the town hall meetings, her shame wrt to the paintings at city hall, etc, say a lot. I'm saying that her claims of adoration for pawnee aren't 100% sincere because it's more complicated than that; she's trying to convince herself (and everyone else) that she is in blind love with the town but nearly every interaction she has with it is less than perfect.

None of the townspeople are major characters. They're a source of conflict, which is fine because without conflict there's no narrative. Also, Leslie's driven by her love of Pawnee as a whole, not the dozen or so froot loops who keep turning up to town hall meetings.

yeah that's the point -- the town is one giant character that serves as the butt of a lot of the shows' jokes. a giant version of jerry.

also, come on "Gerry Grgich" is clearly a typo, because why the hell would they spell his name right? it's jerry.

Yeah definitely a typo, I just went with it because it's all I'd seen.

I'm saying that her claims of adoration for pawnee aren't 100% sincere because it's more complicated than that; she's trying to convince herself (and everyone else) that she is in blind love with the town but nearly every interaction she has with it is less than perfect.

Yeah. She's a career politician, so really it could be any town, but her attachment comes from her duty to it (which ultimately is about progressing her own career). The bind is that her strong responsibility ties her to the one place – Pawnee is her pet project now.

http://i56.tinypic.com/hv0z04.jpg

looool i love that

We're also led to believe that there's something intangible about Pawnee that draws fondness from its people (e.g. the whole Lil Sebastian thing), which I understand because I live in a city with a character that's very strong but also hard to get a grip on.

xxp aaaaahahahahaha

why must comedy have a future

― conrad, Tuesday, September 20, 2011 12:38 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

who let the lex on a sitcom thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMRUf8ykPhI

Oh man that is a treat

ha ha, jerry didn't know he was adopted.

"anchors aweigh, ladies!"

i guess they felt extra bad about what they've done to jerry, since they gave him the largest penis anyone's ever seen

solid ep I thought. Are they waiting to explain Rob Lowe's hair in this episode?

"I have something important to tell you."
"Yes, but wait, before you start, I want to show you this."
"No, let me go first, I need to ––––"

I hate that kind of crap about as much as I hate manufactured love interests on sitcoms.

I was really hoping Upside Down Triangle Head would die this episode. It's the only way it can work out.

ann, you beautiful naive sophisticated baby

also perd hapley will never not make me laugh

"and now for the female perspective, a woman"
"i DON'T know what you mean, but it had the cadence of a joke"

yeah perd is the best. ya heard?

"there you have it, where "it" is the thing leslie knope just said about this situation."

Clarkson fucking killed it in ~2 mins screentime, holy shit next week should be amazing