Parks & Recreation - Wait a minute, I think I've seen this show...

There was a rumour a while back that NBC picked up a spin off of The Office and it was going to star Amy Poehler, in presumably a rival paper company or some crap like that. That idea was dropped. They weren’t going to spin off the Office. They were going to make an entirely new show. It was still going to star Amy Poehler and it was to be called Parks And Recreation.

And it’s exactly the same as The Office.

I know people have mentioned this before but I’m late getting to the party and like the eighth person to say “oh did you get a haircut?” let me say “oh so this is exactly the same as the Office is it?”

Amy Poehler plays Michael Scott who works for the Parks Department on the local council. She’s a doofus. She gets in awkward situations. She believes her own hype. Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

Rashida Jones (FROM THE OFFICE) has a boyfriend who fell in a hole and broke his legs. Amy Poehler is going to fill in the hole and build a park. Embarrassing hijacks and looks to the camera ensue.

Okay now the thing is: it’s not BAD. It’s not great, it’s not the Office, okay so it’s probably a little bit like the horrible first season Office. Some bright spots and a lot of ‘what?’. I like Amy Poehler, a lot, usually, not so much in this. The rest of the cast is kind of ‘meh’ – like a group of people wandering around looking forlorn because they didn’t get a spot as an extra on the real Office. Word on the street is that Aziz Ansari is awesome... that must happen later on.

I have to keep coming back to The Office though. It’s not my fault, it’s the shows. It’s from a pair of guys who worked on the Office, it stars one of the ex-Office members, and they go to every single effort to make it look and sound and behave like the Office. You don’t want anybody to make the comparison THEN DON’T COPY THEIR DOCUMENTARY ANGLE. For craps sake, why NOT make a spin off? Where along the way did they say “hey, let’s not make a spin off, instead let’s get some old cast members, keep the same tone, play the same jokes and just make a brand new show that’s exactly the same.” That is a spin off.

Okay. Oh well. That’s what’s happened, but what about the show itself? Is it any good?

Not really. Sort of. Maybe. It could be good. I’m going to stick around cause I like Amy Poehler and The Office took a season to get good so maybe this will too.

Before I wrap this up let me again mention The Office, I know, you get it, this show is like that show, but it differs in a very important way:

Jim & Pam.

There’s no Jim & Pam in Parks & Recreations. There’s a Michael Scott, and there’s like a half dozen Stanley’s but there’s no likeable loveable Jim & Pam at the centre of it all. If the clued in pair are Aziz and Rashida – they’re more assholish and depressing than cute & loveable. So maybe they should work on that.

If things don’t get any better than they are after this first episode there’s really no point in sticking around. Fingers crossed they do.

Good, Average, Bad or Ugly?
Average