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 Parks And Recreation

(April 10th, 2009.    Editor)  Amy Pohler, Aziz Ansari, Nick Offerman, Paul Schneider and Aubrey Plaza star in the half hour situation comedy spin-off of "The Office", Parks And Recreation.

From Emmy Award-winning executive producers of "The Office" comes a new mockumentary that looks at the exciting world of local government. In the pilot episode, the documentary cameras follow Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) a mid-level bureaucrat in the Parks and Recreation Department of Pawnee, Indiana. In an attempt to beautify her town Leslie takes on what should be a fairly simple project. To help local nurse Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones) turn an abandoned construction pit into a community park. Leslie is alternately helped and undermined by her colleague, Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari), who cheerfully exploits his government position for personal gain. She is also thwarted by her boss Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman), who is philosophically opposed to government in any form. Helping Leslie and Ann navigate the Pawnee bureaucracy is charismatic city planner Mark Brendanawicz (Paul Schneider), whose outlook has been soured by 15 years of public service. If they can pull it off, Leslie hopes that she also will have inspired her uninterested college intern April (Aubrey Plaza) and April's whole generation, all the while moving one step closer to her ultimate goal of becoming the first female president of the United States.

The only real similarity between this new series and "The Office", is that the characters are speaking to an unseen film crew, who are there to chronicle the events of their department for some unknown documentary. In the pilot episode, it is these moments that offer the viewer some insight into the motivations and opinions of each of the new characters we are meeting. The deadpan monologues of the staff are supposed to be dry, sometimes ironic statements about their own lives and careers. But once the small cast of characters has been established, this style of interaction with the audience becomes less and less funny.

An experienced comic like Amy Pohler will soon be wanting more laughs from her writers and her cast. If they to stick to the worn-out format they inherited from their "Parent" show, it will spell disaster for this spin-off. If she is allowed to take this show in a direction that better utilizes her talents, she can make this show a success. Pohler herself is in a great situation. If this comedy does succeed, it will in a large degree because of her talent and her appeal with the audience. If it does not, it will be because the show's creators failed to properly utilize the talent they had on their set.

 

Editor

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