What if you took The Office's subpar first season, kicked out any characters worth caring about, and took out anything that could be mistaken for comedy? Well, you'd have Parks and Recreation, a lame, laugh-free Office knock-off that wastes its very talented cast.
Like The Office, Parks has the same documentary-style shooting, the same confessionals, and the same cluelessly dorky protagonist, this time Amy Poehler's bureaucrat Leslie Knope. The shows are from the same people, so this is less about ripping off than how badly the show pales in comparison . Leslie Knope may have some differences, yet the whole time I kept thinking "female Michael Scott." Amy Poehler deserves better.
One source of difference though is that Parks seems to rely more heavily on its plot, slight though it may be. In a town hall meeting, Rashida Jones' Anne (might as well be Karen, it's the same character she played on The Office) demands Leslie fill in a big hole in their Indiana town. Leslie takes it as a personal mission, quickly developing way unreal expectations, with Karen and co-worker Aziz Ansari (Scrubs, Observe and Report) at her side.
It's a pretty lame premise for a series, but that's only a problem because we're actually supposed to care about Leslie's quest. That's like if The Office was actually about paper. Worse is how every other word seems to be "government," as around 15 speeches about "the place of government" are fit into 22 minutes. I guess the joke is supposed to be that this branch is so minor that small government philosophy is irrelevant, but it wasn't funny the first time and certainly not the fifteenth.
The bottom line is it's just not funny. If I laughed once in the entire half hour, it was probably due to Aziz Ansari, who, though completely out of place here, still has the power to find funny in otherwise lame projects (a point I'll bring up again when I review Observe and Report). The Office had a rough start too, and didn't really get good until season 2, so maybe Parks just needs time to grow. But I didn't see anything in the pilot to suggest there's potential to grow into anything worth seeing. If the show proves me wrong, let me know.
1 comment:
Yeah, I just watched it, and I wasn't impressed.
Ditto female Michael Scott (even her mannerisms and speech inflection) and ditto Rashinda Jones as the same character.
I might give it a few more chances...but it's not looking so good at this point.
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