Parks and Recreation

2000s tv comedy series

Being a deputy director of the Parks and Recreation Department in Pawnee, Indiana seems like menial job, for Leslie Knope it is something mora than just a job.

Leslie Knope is the deputy director of the Parks and Recreation Department in Pawnee, Indiana. When a man brakes his leg after falling into a pit on an empty lot, his girlfriend, nurse Ann Perkins, is determined to do something about the pit. Leslie realizes how much red tape she will have to cut through to actually have the pit filled, but her energetic nature will not be suppressed by the obstacles.

First of them will be her boss, Ron Swanson, who, despite being local government employee, feels that government should do as little as possible. Well, at least he personally should do as little as possible. But Leslie have her staff on her side, like intern April Ludgate, who can intimidate anyone, cynical Tom Haverford, inept Garry Gergich and Donna Meagle with colourful past.

Sitcom built around formula of mockumentary, which was popularized by The Office, which was one of the tough tests for Parks and Recreation - how to be like The Office without actually being The Office and build its own style. At the beginning it looked like creators, Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, who were involved in adapting The Office for American market, did not prepared a lot of elements that would make the series stand out among competition. With season two and three, when more characters were fully developed they finally have found their formula for Parks and Recreation.

However, just like in case of The Office, the workplace humour can’t be used for a long time without going stale. For fourth season Leslie Knope was running for higher office, which turns out to be not that great idea - with switching from local government into politics just did not worked for the series. Making seasons even longer (22 episodes instead of 16) did not helped either - there was more material, but it was lower quality. With seasons 5 and 6 the audience was melting away since the series lost its freshness, season 7 was cut short, just to close the story.

Overall it was interesting spin on the office humour formula, set in small local government office, with interesting characters for a while it was quite entertaining sitcom. Unfortunately once the characters stopped to evolve and focus was switched to politics the series just lost its magic.

Rating	5.6
Funny	4 / 10
Entertaining	4 / 5
Characters	4 / 5
Nonrepetitive	2 / 5