Tag Archives: Amy Poehler

March 26, 2011 · 12:42 pm

Parks and Recreation – “Camping”

“Camping”

March 24th, 2011

Let’s get this out of the way, folks – this was an average episode of Parks and Recreation.

This does not mean it was terrible, nor does it mean it did not have its moments. And heck, I would even argue that it was purposefully average, allowing the in-story awkward post-Harvest Festival lull to be reflected by the episode itself in order to transition into the back end of the season.

I like parts of what that transition says, and I very much enjoyed parts of this episode, but I feel we need to be willing to say that this was below the standard that was set this season (even if that doesn’t mean that it was close to being anything beyond a slight disappointment).

Continue reading →

3 Comments

Filed under Parks and Recreation

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

February 10, 2011 · 9:03 pm

Parks and Recreation – “Ron & Tammy: Part Two”

“Ron & Tammy: Part Two”

February 10th, 2011

The most basic approach to a sequel is to make everything bigger: by taking everything one step further, you therefore make everything one step better.

However, I don’t know if this principle works for Tammy Swanson. I love Megan Mullally in this role, and I even enjoy this character and its impact on Ron Swanson, but the execution in “Ron & Tammy: Part Two” just didn’t connect like I think the show thought it did. It’s funny enough, I guess, but it feels like a trope: like one of those sequels where they just repeat what worked before and add a few bells and whistles (or, in this case, some cornrows and a genital piercing).

I actually thought the rest of the episode worked pretty well, and the show is still in good shape, but it felt a bit regressive if I’m truly being honest. The show is better when it’s subtle, at least for me, and the balance of this episode seems to have been a bit out of whack.

But just a bit.

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Parks and Recreation

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 27, 2011 · 9:00 pm

Parks and Recreation – “Flu Season”

“Flu Season”

January 27th, 2011

“That was Leslie Knope.”

I don’t want to suck the fun out of what was the most particularly hysterical episode of those I’ve seen from Parks and Recreation’s third season, but there is a structural logic to “Flu Season” which wasn’t immediately clear on first or second viewing. When I watched the episode initially, it was a comic tour de force for both Amy Poehler and Rob Lowe, and some strong pairings (April/Ann, Andy/Ron) which tested out some dynamics which the show has not really dealt with in the past. Watching it earlier today, however, I realized that the episode is just really well organized from top to bottom, focusing around a central question from a wide variety of angles.

What happens, precisely, when we get sick? “Flu Season” not only mines the comic depths of flu-ridden characters struggling to control their mental and bodily functions, but it also uses illnesses to draw characters closer together, to further integrate both Ben and Chris into the realities of Pawnee and the Parks department in particular, and just to make us laugh for twenty minutes. It looks at how people respond to illness both in terms of broad comic efforts of isolating the infected party and in terms of basic sympathy, the latter growing into a mutual respect which continues to serve the show and its characters extremely well.

Continue reading →

3 Comments

Filed under Parks and Recreation

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 20, 2011 · 9:00 pm

Season Premiere: Parks and Recreation – “Go Big or Go Home”

“Go Big or Go Home”

January 20th, 2011

“We’re back.”

According to Leslie Knope, the job of the Parks department of Pawnee is to “make this town fun for the people who live here.” Of course, considering that the Pawnee government was shut down at the conclusion of the series’ second season, this is a more difficult job than it used to be – there’s only one program, and the rest of the department is in “maintenance mode.”

Leslie Knope does not do maintenance. She needs a project, somewhere to channel her earnest energy towards the betterment of her town. Leslie needs a pit to fill, a gazebo to save, or a Freddy Spaghetti concert to rescue from a government collapse. She didn’t marry two gay penguins because she wanted to make a statement, she did it because it would be cute, and because it could be something fun. What the second season of Parks and Recreation established so wonderfully was why Leslie Knope does the things she does, and that it all boils down to making Pawnee a great place to live is what makes her so likeable.

Alan Sepinwall has already written about how the storyline introduced in “Go Big or Go Home” served as a metaphor for the season as a whole, with the Parks department on hiatus much like the show itself, so I want to focus more on how this episode is structured to make this show fun for the people who watch it. Even while being “burdened” with the set up for the Harvest Festival arc, and reestablishing the series’ balance following the arrival of Adam Scott and Rob Lowe, “Go Big or Go Home” is unabashedly fun in a way that signals a truly great series that continues to swing the hardest.

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Parks and Recreation

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 20, 2011 · 9:43 am

A Plea for Pawnee: The Return of NBC’s Parks and Recreation

A Plea for Pawnee: The Return of Parks and Recreation

January 20th, 2011

Parks and Recreation was my favorite show on television last year.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably already know this. Despite the series’ absence from NBC’s fall schedule, the series has loomed large in both year-end lists and in week-to-week discussion of every other comedy on television. History will remember Outsourced as the show which bumped Parks and Recreation from the 2010 Fall schedule, if it remembers it at all. Even as Community has put together a string of winning episode  and Cougar Town has gained a certain cult following, Parks and Recreation was hanging around like the ghost of DJ Roomba, replacing the endless loop of the Black Eyed Peas with instantaneous access to the sterling second season on Netflix.

However, let’s get real for a moment. You might not be a regular reader of this blog, and you might not have any idea what a “DJ Roomba” even is. You might be one of those people who watched some of the series’ inconsistent episodes early in its short first season and decided that it wasn’t worth your time. It’s also possible that you just never found the show, limiting your NBC Thursday viewing to The Office and whatever happens to air after The Office. And, who knows, you might have no idea what any of this means, and just got here by randomly searching “Black Eyes Peas instantaneous access.”

Whatever category you fall into, however, you really need to watch Parks and Recreation. It is returning to television as part of an extended NBC comedy block, allowing for a certain degree of promotional attention, and it is finally nestled comfortably behind The Office where it should have been all along. And, as if that weren’t enough, the first six episodes of the third season are enormously confident, delivering big laughs while seamlessly transitioning into a new ongoing story arc. There has never been a better time to watch this show, and that’s saying something considering that there is never a bad time to watch this show.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under Parks and Recreation

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

August 25, 2010 · 8:00 am

2010 Emmy Award Predictions: Lead Acting in a Comedy Series

Lead Acting in a Comedy Series

August 25th, 2010

There is nothing particularly progressive about the Lead Acting awards on the comedy side: with Modern Family’s cast choosing to submit in supporting across the board, and with Lea Michele and Matthew Morrison both submitting poorly, the big comedy battle of the year really isn’t relevant here, which means that we’re left with less interesting battles.

Or, more accurately, some less heartening battles: the reality is that these awards are unlikely to go to new faces, with previous winners dominating both fields. I’d like to believe that someone like Amy Poehler or Jim Parsons could walk away with these awards, but only the latter really has a chance, and even then something big, boring, and potentially enraging stands in his way.

Continue reading →

3 Comments

Filed under Emmy Awards

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

July 15, 2010 · 9:20 pm

And Your Winner, by Submission…: Analyzing 2010’s Emmy Tapes

And Your Winner, by Submission…: Analyzing 2010’s Emmy Tapes

July 15th, 2010

Last week, I wrote a piece for Jive TV which described the next step in the Emmy Awards process, and the ways in which this post-nomination period is honestly more interesting for me than the pre-nomination period: as my Twitter followers have noted, I’m a bit obsessive about the submissions process, where the nominated series and performers choose episodes to represent their work over the past season.

It fascinates me because of how unnatural it is: performers can’t simply put together a reel of their strongest moments from throughout the season, they need to find a single representative episode (which, for supporting players, is cut down to only their scenes), and so what they choose is incredibly telling. For example, the cast of Glee have very clearly been instructed to submit episodes which feature big musical performances: Chris Colfer submitted “Laryngitis” because of the show-stopping “Rose’s Turn,” while Lea Michele submitted “Sectionals” based on her take on “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” These might not be their more consistent episodes in terms of overall material, but musically they are character-defining performances, and Glee has decided that this will be its Emmy focus. And yet, for Matthew Morrison and Jane Lynch, their submissions don’t work as well when oriented around their most show-stopping musical performances, and so sometimes a series’ approach doesn’t match with each performer.

It’s a delicate balance, and one which I think best captures the equally maddening and addictive nature of this process, which is why I will now take a closer look at the submissions strategy from a number of series: for a look at how they look as categories, and for more submissions I don’t talk about here, check out Tom O’Neill post at Gold Derby.

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Emmy Awards

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

July 8, 2010 · 12:18 pm

The Trick is to Actually Watch TV: The 2010 Emmy Nominations

The Trick is to Actually Watch TV: The 2010 Emmy Nominations

July 8th, 2010

The Emmy nominations (which you can find in full here) are less a sign of what’s truly great on television and a more a sign of what the Emmy voters have actually been watching.

Series and performers are nominated for Emmys for one of two reasons: either the Academy members watched episodes carefully and saw them deserving of an award, or they looked at their ballots and chose a familiar name, a much buzzed-about series, or the first name on the ballot. And, frankly, most years the latter seemed to be their modus operandi, to the point where I’ve started to disassociate voters with any notion of television viewership – I’m not even convinced most of them own televisions.

However, for once, I’d say that the 2010 Emmy nominations seem to have been made by people who actually enjoy the medium, with plenty of evidence to demonstrate that voters actually watched many of the shows they nominated and discovered not only the most hyped elements of that series but also those elements which are truly deserving of Emmys attention. There are still plenty of examples where it’s clear that Emmy voters didn’t truly bother to watch the series in question, and all sorts of evidence which indicates that the Emmy voters suffer from a dangerously selective memory and a refusal to let go of pay cable dramedies, but the fact remains that this is the most hopeful Emmy year in recent memory.

It isn’t that every nominee is perfect, but rather that there is evidence of Academy voters sitting down in front of their television and watching more than a single episode of the shows in question, making them less like soulless arbiters of quality and more like actual television viewers – it might not stick, but for a few moments it’s nice to finally see some nominees that indicate voters aren’t so much different from us after all.

Continue reading →

8 Comments

Filed under Emmy Awards

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

June 25, 2010 · 5:01 pm

Handicapping the 2010 Emmys: NBC’s Parks and Recreation

Handicapping the 2010 Emmys: NBC’s Parks and Recreation

June 25th, 2010

[This is the first in a series of posts analyzing individual show’s chances at the Emmy Awards ahead of the nominations, which will be announced on July 8th. You can find all of my posts regarding the 2010 Emmy Awards here.]

I think there are many who doubt Parks and Recreation’s chances at this year’s Emmy awards, and I understand where they’re coming from: the show’s weak first season left a poor impression last Spring, and the lack of starpower beyond Amy Poehler makes it tough for the series to really break through.

It’s tough to assess its Emmy chances without comparing it to past NBC comedies, and the comparisons don’t really do the show any favours. While The Office also had a weak, and ignored, first season which failed to register any Emmys attention, Steve Carell became a movie star between seasons and the series had the UK series’ pedigree to build from. And while 30 Rock was also a low-rated NBC comedy series with a female lead from Saturday Night Live, it was also a low-rated NBC comedy series which pandered to industry-types with both its movie star male lead (Alec Baldwin) and its show business-centric premise. Amy Poehler did not become a movie star this past summer, nor did the Academy suddenly become experts on small town government, which means that Parks and Recreation’s surge in quality between seasons has every chance of being ignored by voters.

However, I do think that Parks and Recreation will grab itself an Emmys foothold this year, if perhaps not quite as large a foothold as The Office found when it won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series in its second season. The Office didn’t grab a whole slew of nominations in that year: only Carell grabbed an acting nomination, and the show picked up just two editing nods and a writing nod (for Parks showrunner Michael Schur, in fact) to go along with them. I think there’s an outside chance of Parks and Recreation matching that total number of nominations when you factor in the technical awards (which I can’t really predict, but I have to hope those awesome murals don’t go unnoticed): Amy Poehler has to be considered a contender in Lead Actress in a Comedy Series after back-to-back nominations for Supporting Actress on Saturday Night Live, Megan Mullally has a great shot at grabbing a nod for her guest turn in “Ron & Tammy,” and the Outstanding Comedy Series category is unpredictable this year that there’s no way you can count out a show as good as this one.

And when it comes to Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, I think it’s safe to say that Nick Offerman has already won the award for many of us, as Ron Swanson was the season’s breakout television character by a country mile. Precedence says that Offerman’s a long shot: not only is he not quite a household name, but Rainn Wilson and Tracy Morgan didn’t even get in for The Office’s second seasons, so the supporting players are often the last to be recognized when a show is making a name for itself. However, I have faith that either Emmy voters will have seen enough of his performance to see its genius or that they got wind of the fact that he’s married to seven-time nominee Mullally and luck their way into a brilliant decision.

Parks and Recreation is unquestionably, and unfairly, fighting an uphill battle, and I don’t expect it to break through as The Office and 30 Rock did in their first major Emmy seasons. However, I think it’s important to acknowledge that the show has some things going for it, and that quality is not always absent from Emmy races: Two and a Half Men got bumped from Outstanding Comedy Series by Flight of the Conchords and How I Met Your Mother last year, so it’s not as if there’s no room for a dark horse. It doesn’t have the strongest ratings, or much buzz outside of highly vocal critical circles, but it has a whole lot of heart, and I have to hope that meant something to voters when they cast their ballots.

Contender in:

  • Outstanding Comedy Series
  • Lead Actress in a Comedy Series (Amy Poehler)
  • Guest Actress in a Comedy Series (Megan Mullally)
  • Writing for a Comedy Series

Dark Horse in:

  • Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (Nick Offerman)
  • Guest Actor in a Comedy Series (Rob Lowe)

Should, but Won’t, Contend in:

  • Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series (Aubrey Plaza)
  • Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (Chris Pratt, Aziz Ansari)

1 Comment

Filed under Emmy Awards, Parks and Recreation

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

June 5, 2010 · 2:36 am

Handicapping the 2010 Emmys: Official Ballot Miscellany

Official Ballot Miscellany

June 4th, 2010

Earlier this evening, Emmy voting officially began; this isn’t particularly important to us non-voters, but it does mean that the official ballots were released (PDFs: Performers, Writing, Directing), which means that we know who submitted their names for Emmy contention and can thus make our predictions accordingly. In some cases, this simply confirms our earlier submissions regarding particularly categories, while in other cases it throws our expectations for a loop as frontrunners or contenders don’t end up submitting at all.

For example, Cherry Jones (who last year won for her work on 24) chose not to submit her name for contention this year, a decision which seems somewhat bizarre and is currently being speculatively explained by her unhappiness with her character’s direction in the show’s final season. It completely changes the anatomy of that race, removing a potential frontrunner and clearing the way for some new contenders (or, perhaps, another actress from Grey’s Anatomy). Either way, it’s a real shakeup, so it makes this period particularly interesting.

I will speak a bit about some surprising omissions and inclusions in the categories I’ve already covered this week, but I want to focus on the categories that I haven’t discussed yet, including the guest acting categories, writing, and direction, which are some interesting races this year.

Continue reading →

12 Comments

Filed under Emmy Awards

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,