TV Review: Amy Poehler Brings the Funny to ‘Parks and Recreation’

Television Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – The Emmy Award-winning team behind NBC’s massively successful “The Office” returns to the mockumentary format with the similar “Parks and Recreation,” an effective comedy starring Amy Poehler of “Saturday Night Live,” Rashida Jones (“I Love You, Man”), Aziz Ansari (“Observe and Report”), and Paul Schneider (“Lars & the Real Girl”).

Poehler plays the overly optimistic but socially challenged Leslie Knope, a mid-level bureaucrat in the Parks and Recreation Department in Pawnee, Indiana. Like a lot of people in low-level government, Leslie means well but she’s forced to deal with a daily flow of red tape.

Parks and Recreation Photo credit: Mitchell Haaseth/NBC

Leslie’s unusual colleague Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari) sort of helps her in her regular battle with angry townspeople and her troublesome superiors. For example, Leslie’s boss Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) doesn’t even believe in government and essentially tries to do as little as possible. Leslie regularly has to turn to the cute city planner Mark Brendanawicz (Paul Schneider) for help.

The season premiere features what will clearly become a passion project for Leslie after she meets local nurse Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones). Ann’s boyfriend fell in an abandoned construction site and Leslie promises her that she’ll fix the situation by building a park on the giant pit. Easier said than done.

With its awkward pauses, workplace setting, and dry wit, “Parks and Recreation” has been cut from nearly the same cloth as “The Office”. Poehler’s Leslie often feels a bit too much like an alternate universe version of Steve Carell’s Michael Scott with a little less idiocy and a little more charm and it almost feels like the two shows could not only share jokes but entire plotlines.

But is that a horrible thing? Don’t go to this park looking for originality, but Poehler, Jones, Ansari, and Schneider are very talented people and it seems a little like nitpicking to rip one well-written show for being too much like another well-written show.

Parks and Recreation Photo credit: Mitch Hadadd/NBC

Like a lot of episodes of “The Office,” “Parks and Recreation” is not as much laugh-out-loud as it is a regular smile. It’s enjoyable, not hilarious. It’s also an expertly-paced, well-done premiere that hints at great potential. Of course, I could point at dozens of comedies that went downhill after their premiere, making it way to early to tell if “Parks and Rec” will be as consistent a show as Greg Daniels and Michael Schur’s other hit program.

“Parks and Recreation” is not great, but it’s also not bad and it displays enough talent both on-camera and off in its series premiere to give this show a shot. Much like Leslie herself, as she dreams of being the first female President and gives her all to projects her co-workers loathe, “Parks and Recreation” could surprise you.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com