Friday, April 15, 2011

VEGGIE LOAF, SWEETENED WITH FRUIT REDUCTION: I don't really have anything to say, but I felt like somebody should say something about how Parks & Rec consistently proves, including with last night's episode, how you don't actually need to choose between sweet and riotously funny. Long ago, before Seinfeld, all sitcoms ended with what Wm. Stephen Humphries called "the moment of shit" -- the two minutes at the end where every conflict miraculously resolved in a way that left everybody happy and everybody could still be friends. The miracle of Parks & Rec is that it can so often maintain fidelity to that formula -- good things happen and people like each other and problems get fixed in unrealistic ways -- without ever making it appear as if the formula dictates the events in the show, the same way that Shakespearean language doesn't feel dictated by iambic pentameter.

As originally conceived, the show set Leslie Knope's incurable optimism in opposition to the cynicism of everybody around her. Ken Tremendous & Co.'s stroke of genius after Season 1 was to make the real arc of the series the way that that cynicism ultimately yields to Leslie's optimism, and it continues to pay off in spades. Dour April, aloof Ron, scheming Tom, and clueless Andy could be largely one-note characters, great for comic relief in small doses but unsuitable for anything more. Instead, tempered by their affection for Leslie and swayed by her loopy sunnyness, the characters get to grow, and the actors get to shade them. April can drop her sarcasm for sincere moments with Leslie and Andy; Ron can be paternal for Andy and avuncular for April; Andy can grow out of his Season 1 selfishness; we can see both the benefits and the costs of Tom's ambition; Donna can reluctantly take over as Ann's flirting coach (just as Ann served in the same role for Leslie), and it's all because Leslie helped them out of their comfortable shells, bit by bit over two years. So the tidy endings feel earned, not forced.