re: Just completed Parks and Recreation

Leslie Knope, April Ludgate, and Tom Haverford are brilliant characters.

quote:

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"Never half-arse two things. Whole-arse one thing."

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Ann Perkins: "Aren't you afraid to eat here?"

Ron Swanson: "When i eat it's the food that's scared."

P&R is the anti-Office. The Office started off with cute characters that were relateable and likable and by the end of the series you hated every one of them and couldn't root for any of their success (Michael excluded).

P&R started off with weird unlikeable characters that grew into fully formed people you really wanted to root for.

Parks and Rec was a better version of The Office.

While The Office characters dulled, Parks beefed up every main character and even had minor characters that The Office couldn't touch even with their sub-main characters.

Also, it's not like The Office invented the "Look at Camera, React" genre. Fresh Prince, Arrested Development and others did this before The Office.

I feel like The Office tackled more serious emotions and life issues. Parks never dug that deep. Office had some really great support characters but by the time they gave them the screen time to develop it was because all the main characters had run their course.

Parks did a much better job of blending the main and support characters better.

Both are in top 5 comedy TV shows for me.

The thing about the office was that early on you got to see shitty aspects of each character. Man I hated Pam early on, and Jim had some flaws as well. Michael was almost unbearable at times. That's what created the moments later because all the characters had their own flaws that you never knew when they would surface. Parks characters never went that deep without making it over the top.

Also Parks never had that straight man. Office had Jan early on and then David Wallace, Idris Elbas character Charles Minor, some of the minor characters early on. Parks never had that straight man who kept it grounded, everyone was over the top.

I thought Ben was pretty grounded. And Mark was also and they got rid of his arse quick. He didn't fit in that setting.They tried to be emotional with the Ben and Leslie stuff and the Ron and Leslie friendship. It was not nearly as effective, IMO. The show was wackier than The Office, but they made attempts at being emotional many times.

For me The Office had the best balance of the two. It was wacky at times, but still kept you caring about the characters more. I'm not saying that P&R failed in any way, it was a great show. I just feel like it will always be second best and compared to The Office. And that's not a bad thing, because I don't think there will ever be a show in that style that's better than either one of them.