Parks and Recreation and Mediocrity

[annakovsky]

I wrote this whole thing after last week's Parks episode, and it might be a really unpopular opinion but whatever, I'm going to post it now before tonight's because I am pretty concerned about the direction the show is going and I don't knowwwwwww, you guys. There hasn't been an episode I super loved and instantly wanted to rewatch since The Treaty

Comments

[sophia_helix]

Yeah, I've been starting to feel this way as well. I think I liked last week's episode more than you did, but it occurred to me afterwards that I just wasn't feeling the giddy sense of joy this season, and that the characters were starting to sift down into caricatures, just like the Office. It maybe just is the sitcom peril -- things are awesome when they're new, and it's amazing the first few times they do callbacks, but then it becomes predictable and one-note when the same things repeat themselves. It's possible to pull a Simpsons and come back around to meta-jokes about the show's cliches, but I can't really think of a show that's done that. Or you have a show like HIMYM where you just give up on anything creative or new getting established and just enjoy hanging out with some characters you like once a week. Sadly I would have a hard time doing that with P&R because it once was so much better than that

[annakovsky]

Ugh yes, the lack of joy! So depressing. And oh God, "sift down into caricatures" is such a perfect and depressing way to put it. It's just really true -- I feel like unless they make a HUGE EFFORT to find new depths in the characters that sifting is going to happen. And in this case the focus on Leslie/Ben feels to me like it's eating up screentime that could be used to give the rest of the ensemble more depth.

unless she stays in a shitty job with a bunch of people she hates in a town she doesn't like and Ben buys his parents' depressing and terrible house and they get knocked up twice in two years by accident and Ben also hates his job and they just make smug jokes about their coworkers (who they hate) all day...NOTHING could be as bad as the Pam Beesley travesty.

Ahahahahaha, y-you make a depressingly accurate point. And you didn't even add that the show was character assassinating her and ret-conning that she's not funny and she's bad at pranks!!! UGH. STILL SO ANGRY AND SO SAD.

[sophia_helix]

The Office was SO BAD about turning their supporting cast into one-note jokes, and it makes me want to cry seeing it happen again. And Rashida Jones should be a big movie star and it makes me squirm to see her stuck in a dead-end role that they can't seem to find a direction for. I want to tell her to not waste her all-too-brief years as a Hollywood starlet on a fun but low-rated show that doesn't know what to do with her!

The last time I tuned in Pam was crying because now she was "JUST A FAT MOM." Then my brain exploded and I died and I'm writing this from heaven. Women get pretty good roles on TV here in the afterlife, more people should check it out!

[annakovsky]

I KNOW, RASHIDA. It still makes me so sad that the show CANNOT for the life of them figure out what to do with Ann, because Rashida is so great and Ann is so boring most of the time! Oh well, at least her movie she wrote sounds like it's pretty good and did well at Sundance, maybe she will go off for an awesome career after this!!

OH MY GOD I KNOW, THE FAT MOM THING, THAT WAS TOTALLY MY LAST STRAW WITH THAT SHOW. Thanks for going ahead and putting a cherry on top of your Pam humiliation sundae, show!

[sophia_helix]

Yeah, I'm not terribly worried about Quincy Jones's daughter falling off the Hollywood radar, but honestly Hollywood only gives women a certain number of years and I don't want hers to be wasted just making sad faces at people all the time! She's too awesome to just be a straight woman forever.

The terrible thing is that I hadn't even watched the show in a couple of years at that point but my husband kept trying to get me to watch, so I was like fine, just one cold open AUGH GOD NO WHY. Even he was like "oops, okay, sorry, god, what the hell was that" and never made me watch it again.

[zarahemla]

This convo makes me so glad I quit the Office before I saw any of this bullshit, because I would have to drive up and kill me some writers.

[sophia_helix]

I have had a couple of drinks since my original post and now my brain is just reeling sadly saying "whyyyyy." I'm not anti-relationships or anti-kids or anti-people doing what makes them happy, but I sometimes wonder what the producers actually thought they were doing with those characters. I think maybe it was supposed to be funny? Or "realistic"? Instead of just crushingly depressing.

[moireach]

Can't wait to build my time machine and rescue that girl who did the coal walk. Before she was terminally infected by halpertitis.

[cleversimon]

Oh my god. That's what happened to Pam?

I haven't actually watched The Office since -- wow, I think since Jim proposed? It's been forever, anyway. They got married and had a baby, that was all I'd heard, and I don't know what I was hoping for, but it was something a hell of a lot better than that.

I am legit bummed out now. :(

[sophia_helix]

Yeahhh, that was a good time to stop watching. That season finished up wobbily, with Pam trying to do her design school thing, then transparently quitting to come back and be with Jim all the time, and the episode where he bought his parents' awful house was just... awful. I think they were trying to be realistic, or treat those characters as carelessly as they treat their other characters, and maybe I was too invested, but I felt pretty stomped on. Things devolved from there. I quit watching after they had baby #1 and wished I'd quit earlier.