This post is brought to you by Milk. Who needs imitations when you can have the real thing? Check out gotmilk.com. Workplace-centric sitcoms have been a TV fixture since the days of Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, when it was discovered that basing a show around a group of oddballs who are forced to work together can be a successful formula for scoring laughs. As with most shows and movies, entertainment is the top priority, not realism, and that’s very much the case with the workplace comedy, where accurately depicting a job environment takes a backseat to amusing audiences.
Last night’s season finale of Parks and Rec is the most pivotal and important episode in the show's history. Showrunner Michael Schur and his writers have always kept their characters moving forward into new and exciting territory, but last night’s show brought about more change than ever before, as pretty much all of the main characters faced life-changing decisions in one way or another. Leslie has a line during her speech, “Let’s embark on a new journey together and see where it goes,” which could easily double for Parks and Recreation’s motto.
The action for the past four seasons of the show has centered on the titular Parks and [...]
Things are looking good for Leslie Knope as she enters the home stretch of her City Council run – until she accidentally insults her opponent’s recently deceased father, that is. This week, Leslie and her staff find themselves reeling from an unfortunate remark she makes during a campaign stop that could cost her the election.
While Leslie spent the episode trying to recover from the faux pas she makes about Bobby Newport’s father, the rest of the staff spend the day before the election in a variety of hilarious subplots. Tom, Ron, and Donna try to claim the vans they’ve rented from “a guy who’s only asset is 22 [...]
Before we go any further, it's important that you know this is not a Parks & Rec webisode, but an American Express commercial starring Aziz Ansari as himself. And a pretty funny one at that. I don't know what this "Jessica's" problem is, by the way. Dude bought a kayak for this date and she isn't impressed? That's gotta be at least number three on the oh-no-no list.
Not even the writing staff of Parks & Recreation know if Leslie will win her campaign for Pawnee City Council. At the show's Paley Center panel, Michael Schur said that they've actually shot three different endings for the season 4 finale. "We wrote it in such a way that everything up until the moment we played that scene, it could go either way," he says. We have the ability to choose Path A, Path B or Path C. We'll wait to edit it, see how it plays, see how we all feel about it and then we'll make our choice." It's like they're waiting to see what really [...]
Craig Ferguson is in Scotland this week, hosting his show and doing Scottish things with celebrities that look out of place. The result is Craig sitting shoeless (don't get your hopes up, foot fetishists, only he is barefoot) with Rashida Jones on a particularly scenic beach. They talk about smelly flamingos and vacations and Scotland. One thing is clear, do not compare anything to sausage around Rash-Jo, or she'll get mighty pissed, like a hot flamingo.
Over the past two decades, Amy Poehler has amassed one of the most impressive resumes in comedy history. Not only did she play a significant part in America’s largest comedy institution, Saturday Night Live, she also co-founded the UCB, a venerable comedy institution in its own right and one that grows in influence every year. If those were Amy Poehler’s only accomplishments, it’d still be pretty damned impressive, but, for the past three years, she’s produced and starred in Parks and Rec, arguably the best sitcom on TV. Throw on top of that recurring roles on Arrested Development and Late Night with Conan (before it was a hit) and [...]
As Parks and Recreation barrels towards the Election Day finish line of its fourth season, the show’s approaching a potential plot shift that would be the biggest change it has ever faced. Parks showrunner and co-creator Michael Schur told the press last month that they shot three different endings to cover all the possible outcomes for Leslie’s City Council bid, but an election win for Ms. Knope could see the show take a whole new direction as she leaves the titular Parks and Recreation Department behind in favor of climbing the bureaucratic ladder. In the ramp-up to the finale, the folks behind the show are pulling out all the stops [...]
Get your refresh button ready, 'cause Aziz Ansari's Reddit AMA begins right about now. Ask him smart enough questions and maybe he'll convince you to buy his new standup special, or teach you how to be as swag as Tom Haverford. Well, almost as swag. Nobody can really be as swag as Tommy H.
It’s been a rollercoaster of a city council campaign so far for Leslie Knope, and this week, the ups and downs continue. While her incompetent opponent Bobby Newport has made things easy for Leslie by going into hiding, his costly new campaign manager Jennifer Barkley (played by guest star Kathryn Hahn) is making things hard for her. Newport fleeing the country also made things easy on busy movie star Paul Rudd, who plays the character, allowing him to sit this episode out. He’ll be back later on this season, relax.
Leslie and campaign manager Ben have made great strides to recover from the mini-scandal the two were involved in, [...]
Remember when you started college and you didn't really have friends yet so you just walked around looking for parties, hoping some cool dude (with an attitude) would see you and invite you into some idyllic rager, featuring a keg of beer, if not multiple kegs of beers? (Yes? Ok, great. Than keep on reading) Well, Adam Scott and Nick Offerman are just like you and I in that regard. The two of them had a very similar experience – no, not while they were in college – recently, as TV stars. I literally cannot fathom someone not wanting to drink beer with Nick Offerman. It's unthinkable. Try to [...]
We reported earlier in the evening that Anne Heche's Save Me and Ryan Murphy's The New Normal were joining Matthew Perry's Go On in NBC's fall schedule. Even later last night, NBC picked two more single-camera sitcom pilots, 1600 Penn and Animal Practice. 1600 Penn is a White House-set family sitcom, co-created and starring Josh Gad. Animal Practice is a comedy set in the office of a curmudgeonly veterinarian (Justin Kirk). Also announced was that Greg Daniels's Friday Night Dinner, Sarah Silverman, Hilary Winston, and Roseanne's Downwardly Mobile no longer have a shot to be picked up.
Will these new comedies affect our old favorites? Yes, pretty significantly. To make [...]
Parks & Recreation is back on Thursday – hazah! If you remember, when we last left our government drones, Leslie had to step down from her position at the Parks Department, to focus completely on her campaign. April was the surprise choice to fill the giant, smiling void. In this preview, it seems like the job is exactly the barrel of 0 monkeys (which is just a barrel, a boring, not fun barrel) April expected; there is a lot of working and talking and dealing with Chelsea Peretti being an asshole. How do you think she'll handle the job and Chelsea?
Yes, sadly, the time has come for Parks and Recreation to take a midseason hiatus to clear way for Community in adherence to NBC’s policy of only having one great sitcom on the air at a time. Last night’s episode, “Lucky,” wasn’t intended to be a midseason finale, but it didn’t leave us with any major cliffhangers either. I was excited to see the momentum of Leslie’s campaign continue, but Community deserves a spot on the schedule as that show’s three-month hiatus easily trumps the five-week one Parks and Rec just kicked off.
