One lesson of “Parks and Recreation,” a new sitcom starring Amy Poehler, is that getting public projects built requires a very specific kind of temperament. But that’s why there are people like Leslie Knope, the naive and hyperactive Deputy Director of “P&R” for Pawnee, Indiana. When it comes to improving her town’s recreational facilities, Miss Knope just doesn’t know how to take “nope” for an answer.
Knope, played by Poehler, is compared by one colleague to a “little dog with a chew toy” and identifies Sarah Palin as a major personal influence within her first few minutes on camera. But her daunting persistence and unfailing enthusiasm for “small town America,” however annoying, are quite sincere.
The pilot episode follows Knope’s efforts to turn an abandoned lot–the result of a local condo developer’s false start and subsequent bankruptcy–into a new public park. Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones) brings the matter to Knope’s attention at Pawnee’s Monthly Community Outreach Forum. Leslie immediately makes the restoration of the Sullivan Street lot her life’s mission, dreaming out loud, “This could be my Hoover Dam!”
On her first trip to the lot, Leslie dons high heels and an unnecessary hard hat, and poses in numerous self-important photo opps. “The key to any fact-finding mission, is to get right into the battle zone,” she instructs her bored-looking intern. “Like George Bush when he flew over New Orleans. Or Richard Nixon when he went to China to see what the Chinese were up to.” Leslie then proceeds to lose her footing and tumble down the twenty-foot dirt pit, screaming that she has broken her clavicle.
The political jokes in “Parks” seem to come straight from Poehler’s last gig at SNL, with Knope borrowed heavily from Tina Fey’s Palin. It’s also clear that the Parks Department in Pawnee is just a stone’s throw from a certain paper company in Scranton, PA. Created by producers of “The Office,” “Parks” combines a signature ‘no laugh track’ timing and an interest in small town life that is both ironic and genuine. At this point, the show is nowhere near as funny or well executed as “The Office”–the humor is uneven and strained at times–but given Poehler’s comedic gifts, there is plenty of reason to think it can improve.
In “Parks,” the only person who truly believes that she can actually get anything done is too stupid to know better. Leslie Knope’s blissful and remarkable ignorance of Pawnee’s political realities is possibly her strongest asset. After moderating a Monthly Community Outreach Forum, Leslie reflects, “What I hear when I’m being yelled at is people caring loudly at me.”
“Parks and Recreation” airs on NBC, Thursday nights at 8.30pm ET. The pilot episode is available online: http://www.hulu.com/parks-and-recreation.
April 16th, 2009 at 7:22 am
Great analogy. I never really thought about it like that before.