Why I watch... Parks and Recreation.



I think I can say, without fear of recrimination or rebuttal, that we are in the Golden Age of Television.  Shoot, make that the Platinum Age.  Some of the best television shows in the history of the universe are being aired right now.  I'm sure I Love Lucy, the Honeymooners and the Dick Van Dyke Show were cool and all but I'm thinking the new millennium has them beat. That being said, I don't believe I would call NBC's Parks and Recreations one of these great shows of which I speak. 

I'm talking about shows like 'The Walking Dead', 'Mad Men', all those 'Spartacus' iterations on Starz, 'Game of Thrones, 'Sons of Anarchy', 'Boss'... and might I add that Frazier Crane is not very funny on that show... 'Breaking Bad', 'Dexter', and this is just to name a few because there are enough great shows out there right now to choke a pig.  Do you have any idea how difficult it is to choke a pig?  Damn difficult.  And we don't have time to weigh in on the shows that are airing  across the pond in Great Britain because they aren't joking around either.  Great Television.

I imagine 'The Sopranos' started this platinum television renaissance, followed by high other quality fare such as '24' and 'The Wire'... but here's the thing about all of these great shows... they are depressing as hell.  Almost every last one of them.  Man, after DVRing an episode of 'Breaking Bad' followed by 'The Walking Dead' all I want to do is have a drink, lie in bed and cry myself to sleep.  It's hopeless.  There's no hope for humanities survival in 'The Walking Dead' and there's no hope for the civility of humanity in 'Breaking Bad'.  But those shows are just so dang good.

Then there's 'Parks and Recreation' which makes everything all right once again.  People rarely die on this show, and when they do... it's funny.  Since the premise of the show is patently illogical, this being a camera crew that follows these loons everywhere they go.  Everywhere.  Almost anything goes on this show as long as it serves the bottom line of getting a laugh.  It's almost shameless the depths that Amy Poehler and company will go to get a laugh and we appreciate their shamelessness. 

And then there's Ron Swanson.

Those other shows we mentioned are great, no doubt, but Ron Swanson is the greatest single character in the entire history of recorded television.  The Fonz, J.J., Jack Bauer, Theo Huxtable, Hawk from Spencer, Barbarino, Barney Rubble, Nick from Big Valley, J.R. Ewing, Dederick Tatum, That dude from Manimal... they all have to take a backseat to the awesomeness that is Nick Offerman and Ron Swanson.  When a man appreciates the value of bacon like Ron Swanson does, then that is a wise man who probably has valued advice that should be paid attention to.  The readily available Swanson Pyramid of Greatness would be a good place to start your deserved appreciation of Ron Swanson.

All I'm really saying is I can watch  the controlled nonsense and lunacy of 'Parks and Recreation' and not want to slit my wrists after I watch it. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Wrong Teacher

Image
The Wrong Teacher All right then!  Got the most of the original Wrong crew back together again with Jessica Morris, Jason-Shane Scott, Eric Roberts, Dominique Swain and of course Ms. Vivica A. Fox in The Wrong Teacher.  Which is more The Wrong Student, but since we've used that one already, The Wrong Teacher it is.  Not that the title is completely off base because Charlotte (Morris), as an educator, isn't great. Our film opens with a woman (Swain) walking around her dark house in her lingerie, probably should put on a night gown or something, because she hears sounds.  Then she starts getting demanding texts from someone who she was obviously kicking it with, whom she wishes to kick with no more.  This person doesn't agree to this.  The woman walks around with her phone, hearing more sounds in her home because somebody's obviously in there, and I'm thinking this would be a good time to use the phones Dial Out feature to call the police, but it's not like s...
Read more

A Christmas Cookie Catastrophe

Image
  A Christmas Cookie Catastrophe (2022) - Hallmark Reviewed by Lisa Sue So the opening 10 minutes of this movie are promising. I came because of the word catastrophe in the title, but I stayed to learn who stole Grandma’s cookie recipe. I mean what Grinch of a person would do such a thing? Let me give you the set up.   Anne is a career focused MBA grad from the big city who’s just been handed the CEO role of her grandma’s cookie company, Cooper’s. Things aren’t great at Cooper’s, and Anne has been making the hard decisions like canceling the annual Cooper Christmas Light Up because they just don’t have the money, and Anne isn’t going to let Cooper’s go bankrupt, not on her watch. The day after the company holiday shin dig (which apparently wasn’t cut for budgetary reasons), Anne notices that Grandma’s cookie recipe, which had been prominently displayed without security, had been taken! The quick thinking assistant Jillian suggests they call the cops to investigate, but Anne pu...
Read more

The Wrong Cheerleader

Image
The Wrong Cheerleader Thirteen movies in I think we've kind of figured out what the Wrong Series wants to do, though I do miss the early Wrongs which featured some kind of cockamamie plan behind the psychosis.  Now the Wrong movies usually feature some unstable person, at varying levels of instability, trying to force somebody to love them via The Crazy, occasionally with a social issue buried within the almost always fractured narrative.  Today the social issue is domestic abuse, which I will say the creators did a much better job of handling than when they attempted to tackle sexual assault in 'The Wrong Friend'. Our film starts with a girl lounging by the pool at her home, minding her own business, while being observed by the ultimate representation of evil in a Wrong movie, a guy in a black hoodie.  The girl eventually retreats into her home when she hears some sounds, and like every movie ever made, she yells out 'Hello?  Is anybody there?' and like every movie...
Read more