Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Parks and Recreation: ‘Pawnee Commons’

‘Pawnee Commons’ saw the welcome return of several great things of Parks past: the Pawnee/Eagleton rivalry, Wamapoke County Public Radio, Bert Macklin, and of course DJ Roomba. It’s pretty amazing that this show has established its settings and characters so well that they can have an episode where essentially not much happens and old moments are rehashed but despite that it was still another near masterpiece of joy.

Leslie will thankfully always be skeptical of the neighboring of Eagleton and because of it we got so many great moments from her and Ben’s trip across the border. I especially enjoyed the bit about how Eagleton was somehow able to miraculously have palm trees despite being in the middle of Indiana which was an excellence use of the fact that the show is filmed in California. I will say that I’ve never been a fan of the sitcom character not being to get words out of their mouths to admit they were wrong or to apologize, but I did appreciate Amy Poehler’s effort to try and make it work.

We also got the final mission for special FBI agent Bert Macklin who comes to the tough realization that after 40 years on the force, and being undercover without being able to see his family during this time either, it’s time to hang up the shades. It’s always fun to see April and Andy goofing around and getting to play the ridiculous characters they create, and it never hurts if the payoff results in one or both of get to learn a life lesson along the way.

The rest of the Parks Department was off helping Tommy Fresh spruce up the store property he just bought for his new business “Rent-a-Swag.” This was probably a bit of a sub-par plot, I think I either would have like to see less time devoted to this or much more as a couple characters, Ron and Chris in particular, didn’t get much to do here. But the store seems to be up and running and it will undoubtedly provide some interesting stories going forward.

Other favorite moments:
  • ‘Jazz + Jazz = Jazz’ is pure radio gold.
  • Now Entering Pawnee: Good Luck With That.
  • “We asked for help and they claimed they weren’t home. An entire town claimed they weren’t home.”
  • “They call their boogers Pawnee caviar.”

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

No comments:

Post a Comment