If Amy Poehler is the face of NBC’s Parks and Recreation, the supporting cast – Nick Offerman, Aubrey Plaza, Aziz Ansari, Chris Pratt – are the mind, body, heart and soul.
What started out as a run-of-the-mill comedy vehicle for the ex-SNL cast member has slowly evolved into one of the funniest, quirkiest and widely adored shows on television, thanks in large part to its tremendous supporting cast. But Parks and Rec was not always the critical and commercial darling that it is today. In fact, in its early days, it seemed like it was going to be a one-and-done flop.
The first season portrayed Leslie Knope (Poehler’s character) as a ditzy, downright incompetent bureaucrat in the fictional town of Pawnee, Ind.'s parks department. The show’s early episodes were at times amusing but other times hard to watch. Any regular viewer surely remembers the second episode, where Leslie and her best friend Ann (Rashida Jones) partake on the worst display of canvassing in human history, then lead an equally cringe-worthy town hall meeting. Leslie was awkward to the point that she was more caricature than character, and most viewers ended up feeling sorry for her instead of laughing.
Viewership declined every week of the first season, critics dismissed the show as a poor offshoot of The Office and many started to wonder if six episodes would be all there was. And then in Season 2, something changed. The writers responded in a big way to all the criticism, giving the show a more focused direction and the supporting cast more airtime. Most importantly, they brought Leslie Knope back down to earth – while still retaining all of the quirks that made her funny.
That’s when Parks really took off. As the show unfolded, the writing got funnier and the characters started to round out. The usually passive Ann started to find her voice when dealing with Leslie. The constantly pessimistic April (Aubrey Plaza) and the lovable loser Andy (Chris Pratt) found love – with one another. Ron Swanson (Offerman) and Tom Haverford (Ansari) proved to be consistent sources of gut-busting laughs, both channeling the same successful formula they used in their stand-up routines; Offerman with his deadpan delivery and Ansari with his energetic sarcasm. And Leslie proved not to be the dimwit we all thought she was at the outset (for the most part).
Now, Parks is in its seventh and final season, set in – gasp – the future. Yes, the writers have ventured to the far away land of 2017, where Andy has his own TV show, Kevin James was cast as Jason Bourne in a franchise reboot and – wait, what? – Ron Swanson has quit the parks department to manage his own building and development company, with a name that couldn’t be more Swanson-esque: the Very Good Building and Development Company. “I wanted to convey the quality of our work without seeming flashy,” he says. Some things simply never change.
Ron’s company has teamed up with Grizzl, a particularly obnoxious Facebook-like startup (with Blake Anderson from Workaholics at the head) that wants to buy a piece of land to build a campus. Naturally, Leslie wants that same land to build a park, but Ron and Grizzl have a whole lot more money. So, after years of internal battles between Leslie and Ron, they now have the opportunity to hash it out as real live enemies.
As for the rest of the team? Tom Haverford is still his self-consumed, narcissistic self, now a restaurant owner and businessman. At a gala, instead of introducing Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) as the Pawnee Man of the Year like he was supposed to, he ends up droning on about himself, forcing the committee to cut out Ben’s speech. Ben is still his same socially awkward self, failing once again to get the credit he deserves for his impressive accomplishments. Andy and April fear that they are getting old and take steps to preserve their youth, including stripping naked at the aforementioned gala and buying a haunted house.
As a whole, the first episode hits all the right notes. Things have changed – it’s 2017 now, for God's sake – but all of the characters still have their same lovable quirks that made the show such a hit. If these trends continue, the final season will be everything that a fan could ask for.
For the rest of the season, expect the Leslie-Ron Swanson conflict to be the main plotline. Expect more awkward public forums, more Swanson-isms (“I’ve never known what bangs are, and I don’t plan to learn!”), more of the same quirky humor that made the show a hit for so long. If you’re anything like me, your Tuesday nights will soon become an empty, Pawnee-less void. Enjoy it while it lasts.