Spoilers for tonight's hilarious episode of
"Parks and Recreation"
- and if you're not watching what may be the best comedy on TV rightnow, you really should - coming up just as soon as I use politicalsavvy and shushing...
There have been over 100 episodes of "TheOffice," and now 14 episodes of "Parks and Recreation," and I'm notsure a talking head segment on either show has made me laugh asmaniacally as that one did. I had to pause it at one point to catch mybreath, then rewind and start over, only to begin cackling all overagain. (Eventually, several co-workers wandered over to see if I wasokay.)
What made that monologue work - really, what made allof "Tammy and Ron" work so well - was that Nick Offerman and the "Parksand Rec" writers have combined to turn Ron F'ing Swanson into a man whocan say completely demented things with absolute certainty, as if theywere the most natural thing in the world. Dwight Schrute carrieshimself similarly, but with Dwight there's never any doubt that he'sinsane. Whereas when Ron goes on about his love of breakfast foods(*),or his absolute hatred of the town library system, he sounds reasonable- even admirable.
(*) "Parks and Rec" co-creator MikeSchur says the poster, and the talking head about it, were came from ahappy accident of sorts. In season one, Ron had a poster of BobbyKnight up in his office, which they had to remove for legal reasons, sothe production team spent a long time combing through the Corbis imagelibrary, "just typing in things we thought Ron would like. I saw thatpicture of the woman holding breakfast food and thought: perfect." Andthen it came in handy for this episode.
All throughout"Tammy and Ron," Offerman says these completely ridiculous and/orsurreal things - saying of his ex-wife "I honestly believe that she wasprogrammed by someone in the future to come back and destroy allhappiness," or describing sex with Tammy as "like doing peyote andsneezing slowly for six hours" - but there's this incredible convictionto it all that makes it seem both rational and incredibly funny. (Iswear, I'm having trouble going back over my notes for this one withoutlaughing. If this show should ever become a big enough success forsomeone to publish "The Quotable Ron Swanson," they need to devote awhole chapter to this episode.)
Or maybe it's just the mustache that gives him the credibility.
Andwhere some real-life spouses can have problems connecting on camera,there were no issues between Offerman and wife Megan Mullally as Tammy.Mullally won a couple of Emmys for playing way over the top on "Will& Grace," but she shows here that she's perfectly capable of comingdown to a more realistic level (as in her first scene with Leslie),then getting ridiculous in a way that still matched the tone of thisshow. (Mike Scully's script also gave her a few awesome lines ofdialogue, like Tammy telling Ron that Leslie is "jealous of me - andthe things I got to do to your body and face.")
Though Ron andTammy dominated the episode, Leslie played an important role in thestory, getting played by Tammy at first - because Leslie takes peopleat face value until they give her a reason not to - and then triumphingbecause her innate selflessness woke Ron from his stupor. (And I lovethat we didn't actually see what happened during the couple's finalconfrontation, but just saw Ron running from the building missing partof his 'stache.)
Much like last week's vendetta against GregPikitis, Leslie and Ron's shared hatred of the library was a funnyreminder of just how small-scale this world is - Leslie's two bigenemies are a 16-year-old kid and the head librarian. The Ron/Tammyring of fire relationship overtook the library hatred for a while, butLeslie's suspicious glance at the camera crew while Tammy was trying tomake nice was a perfect moment from Amy Poehler in the middle of anepisode where she was largely in support of Offerman.
A great episode for an increasingly-great comedy.
Some other thoughts:
•Chris Pratt is too funny for the show to abandon just because he andAnn aren't together and he no longer lives in the (non-existent) pit,so the writers are smartly bouncing him around different jobs in andaround the parks department. My favorite joke of the Andy subplot hadnothing to do with the shoeshine job, or his obsession with getting Annback, but the gag of Ann explaining that Andy used to film lots ofaudition tapes for "Survivor" and "Deal or No Deal," followed by avideo of a shirtless Andy gutting a fish and declaring that he'd be agreat contestant on "Deal or No Deal." Structurally, that's an ancientjoke, but very nicely-executed.
• Speaking of the pit (or lackthereof), it seems to me that filling it in has taken a lot of urgencyaway from the committee. Ann, after all, never really care about apark; she just wanted the dangerous hole in the ground taken care of.It's not a big problem for the series (we've seen this season thatthere are tons of stories to tell that don't involve the pit), but itdoes open up some story possibilities - like Ann trying to back awayfrom the sub-committee now that the problem is solved to hersatisfaction. I did like her confession that she'd prefer a librarybranch in the neighborhood to a park, followed by her trying to playalong with everyone else's raging library hatred.
• Just as"The Office" slowly started giving personalities to people like Stanleyand Kevin and Oscar, we're seeing minor characters like Jerry and Donnastart to develop. Donna had a nice moment where she slowly affixed the"Told ya so" post-it to the window of Ron's office while Lesliewatched. And, like Ann's nursing buddies, she clearly prefers Andy toMark.
What did everybody else think?
