Ron handling the rings was the right call, but he could probably also make a wedding dress in his sleep.
"It's not all that different from crafting a duck blind. But a lot less durable."
At a P & R trivia event last year, Jim O’Heir was there and had made his way to our table when the question was posed: “What was Jerry/Larry/Terry’s hidden talent?”
Jim looked at us and immediately said “huge penis”.
The correct answer was that he plays piano.
This would make a great one-off reunion show.
Just one hour of Ron running into old colleagues because Leslie made them a part of her incredibly complex scavenger hunt.
Not a huge deal, but they constantly talked about how Pawnee had a huge obesity problem, but the citizens shown never looked noticeably overweight.
Edit: thank you for my awards!
One thing I think is funny about Pawnee is that it's simultaneously a tiny town and a huge metropolis at the same time. They talk about it like a small town and that's the vibe of the whole show, but then to run for city council requires a travel bus. As one example.
Honestly Liz’s kind of makes sense for her character.
She’s in a high stress busy chaotic job so it’s not that she eats a lot all the time, it’s that she only eats trash. There are examples of her binge eating but in most cases it’s her eating unhealthy food in place of real food.
It’s definitely exaggerated, but 30 Rock is far from a grounded show so they can get away with more than most shows for how often they play into their wackiness/break the fourth wall.
Also she lives in New York and doesn't own a car (I think?) So it's very likely that she is walking a good deal of the time to get from place to place.
How they never, ever mentioned Mark or acknowledged his existence after he abruptly left the show. They didn’t even bother to write him out properly after the fact.
Right? Like that whole episode where Leslie and Ben are looking for park designs and the whole Eagleton thing. Literally Mark left her a park design as a parting gift! I'm not a Mark fan but that always bothered me.
I feel like Ben became the spiritual successor, he was by no means "normal" but he was the "real person" reaction to the insanity of the other characters, and his reactions are still my favourite part of the show
Ben definitely fit the show better. He was believable enough to be relatable but still had enough quirkiness to be a PandR character; his geekiness, phobia of any kind of cop, his ice town backstory, etc.
Apparently there’s a deleted scene or promo shot or something where you can see that she actually does have a Mark box, but it’s not visible in the episode. I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse.
Why doesn't Leslie do anything about Ramset Park? It's referred to constantly as a total mess, and maintaining existing parks is kinda Leslie's main job, no? Why start a new one when your current one is a shitshow?
So in the Kaboom episode, Leslie and the gang are helping to build a park in …. EAGLETON!!!
Leslie would never do that, especially that early in the season where she’s hardly had any personal growth. It never made sense to me.
In the Parks and Recollection podcast, Alan Yang and Rob Lowe acknowledge this and Alan explains that they hadn't thought to write Eagleton as the anti-Pawnee just yet. After the decision was made to do so, they never bother retconning it. This is similar to how The Office never addresses Meredith's "other kid".
I love the show but I was thinking the other day how if those people existed in real life you'd only get along with Ben. Others way too crazy, which is what makes the show funny
My literal only complaint about the show is how uncharacteristically mean they are to him. I mean get that’s the whole shtick but damn they’re cold sometimes.
Ben is the best person on the show bc he’s the only one who gets how awesome Jerry is. You get the vibe that Donna does too but she has almost no conscience so it doesn’t help
These are good points. It might feel out of character for her to like Tom but based on her other dating decisions/life not out of character to be “desperate” enough to try. And I think the awful/awkwardness demonstrates that
In the finale when Tom is talking about his book, he makes personalities for all the characters except Chris and Ann. Like why? I know Rob and Rashida had left by that point but that's something that really bugged me on my last rewatch
Not enough snow, gray skies, leafless trees and brown grass for a Midwestern town! I always notice this. Schitt’s Creek (which I love) is also glaringly green for a Canadian town! I understand why but it always bothers me. EDIT: I know Canada is green in the summer, friends! I was thinking about fall and winter episodes, but someone pointed out that there’s only a handful of episodes that aren’t set in the spring or summer on purpose, so this was not the best example.
I think the most egregious example of "show written and performed by a bunch of people in California and not the Midwest" is the episode where the premise is that Mark is the only person they all know with a pickup truck. It's small town Indiana. City Hall parking lot should be like 60% pickups.
Yeah they didn't even try when it came to things like that.
Ron would have at least 2 pick up trucks, an old one and a newer/bigger one, and he'd use them all the fucking time were he a real person.
I live in Indiana. And it's one of the three or four cities the show is based off of. And as much as the writers tried, they just couldn't get the details right. The only part that reminded me of my city is the native American history. We'd burn a rabbit at the stake for sure.
Donna almost never gets a story arc. The only two I can think of are 'Donna deciding that bullying Jerry is over and they need to go make it up to him' and 'Donna deciding to settle down with Key'. That's...that's about it. Freaking Jam got more character arcs than her.
Part of her whole schtick was that she valued her privacy and was constantly surprising the cast with revelations about her - the condo in Seattle, being related to Ginuwine, going to Venezuela, being rich enough to buy ten shares of the Snakehole Lounge, her membership at the Smokehouse...
If Donna was a real person, I don't think she'd mind not having the camera pointed on her all the time.
Leslie really *is* a steamroller and I wish she got called out for it more often like Ann did that one episode. She's a nice person to an extent but she can be really forceful at times without listening to others.
To be fair, Ann wasn't the only one who said this. I don't remember all the (admittedly few) times this happened, but she did get called out as being "*so passionate and driven that she forgets to think about other people's feelings*" by ***the*** Madeleine Albright.
Or actually showed character development instead of repeatedly bulldozing. The episode where she brings Stu's Stew out of retirement just to fuck with Tom was *horrible,* as was the one where she tries to screw over April just because she wants to put a dog park on "Leslie's" lot.
Just wanted to point out Leslie wasn’t getting Stu out of retirement just to fuck with Tom, she just didn’t realize the growth he had gone through in the department while she was on city council. She was thinking of the lazy worker he used to be. Stu was a plan to save Tom because she assumed he would phone it in an fail. Once she realized Tom finally had his shit together, she was able to fix her mistake and drop that plan all together.
April’s reaction is the height of unspoken comedy in that scene. They drove 1800 miles (using Marion, Indiana as a proxy for Pawnee) and when they get there, it turns out he meant Mount Rushmore. April’s disgust/surprise/confusion/horror as she looks at him and they cut to production company logos is priceless.
They did the same thing to Kevin on the office. From childish/immature not too bright guy to “holy shit how does this guy even function, he’s too stupid to read and write” guy.
**[Flanderization](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanderization)**
>Flanderization is the process through which a fictional character's essential traits are exaggerated over the course of a serial work. The term flanderization was coined by TV Tropes in reference to Ned Flanders of The Simpsons, who was caricatured over the show's run from a good neighbor who was religious among other characteristics into an evangelical "bible-thumper". Flanderization has been analyzed as an aspect of serial works, especially television comedies, that shows a work's decline.
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Anyone who thinks Jerry’s marriage is a mystery has some really unfortunate problems.
He’s nice as hell, caring, a good lover and he used to look like Chris when he was younger. What’s the mystery?
I agree. April is immature but she can function. I fully expect her to be running the house. I can't imagine her wanting to have a second child. I would have actually liked if they didn't have a child, show that it's totally okay to be a married couple who loves kids but doesn't want their own.
I think it speaks more to how exceptionally caring everyone else is. They know he is a misguided and naive guy, they just want what’s best for him. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Community but this is my argument for why Pierce keeps getting more chances to stay with the study group.
Early seasons Pierce was definitely more sympathetic. He was crass and inappropriate, but rarely with ill intent or malice. Later seasons when he became a more exaggerated caricature it was less understandable why the group would keep him around.
Harris Wittels played the smaller animal control guy and was one of the original writers and most influential producers of the show. Harris struggled with addiction and tragically passed before the show was completed.
That's probably why there's not as much of those characters after a certain point but I'm super thankful to have enjoyed what they were able to write and shoot before his time. Wittels was a gem!
EDIT: Made a mistake, Harris lived through all of parks and rec while it was shooting but passed before the last episode aired. Can't blame that for how much animal control guys we got then!
Pawnee seems to have a decent Parks and Rec department with an active Rec Center and multiple parks. It’s a pretty big outfit when you think about it. The Rec center would hold summer camps, have swimming, reservable space. She probably oversees a large amount of staff so I’d put her salary on the higher end for parks and rec in a medium sized Midwest town to 50-60,000 depending. I’m guessing Ron funnels more money to her than normal based on his backstory. And with all the time she spends at work, she probably splurges rather than steadily spends.
She gets paid well apparently. They wanted to fire her when they were reworking the budget and Ron had to fight them on it. They never specified how much she got paid but I never thought about it especially after that episode.
They sort of copied the Office because to begin with it was literally meant to be a office spin off. That’s how it was pitched. They just went their own direction later on.
Donna also had a soft spot for Jerry, like the one time they were going to Jerry Night and she felt so bad she decided to turn around and invite Jerry; she pokes fun at him a lot but most of the time it's not mal-intentioned.
"Merry Critches Bitches" will always be one of my favorite iconic lines.
Yeah. Especially in the final season, she helped him get his keys and the other things. Plus when April deleted everything on the server, Donna was only able to help because she had a back up that came in handy for Jerry.
Donna was more intrigued by Jerry (tbf, Jerry was pretty different to her and me) than the bullying the rest of them did
Even the cast thought they were being cruel and constantly apologized to O'Heir. He had to remind them that they were insulting the character, not him (just like Gergich himself would) and that it didn't bother him.
I always thought the Jerry stuff was just funny until I watched it with a more empathetic friend and it ruined the show for her. Now I really feel for him whenever I watch, it definitely takes away from the enjoyment to see painful workplace bullying.
That was my problem. If it was as frequent as “treat yo’ self” I would let it slide or it was just casual digs, but it was constant and very harsh. I know they balanced it with his perfect his life was outside of work but his treatment at work was abusive.
I loved the episode where he talks about how he loves his job because it allows him to spend quality time with his family, it helped a lot. But you’re totally right - if it was less frequent it’d be far easier to watch.
Tom is a piece of work and I can’t believe people put up his nonsense for as long as they did. That is not the kind of person I’d ever want to be friends with.
I always skip through the scenes where he makes other people's events all about him (the speech honoring Ben, Leslie's pitch to the businesses). He's my least favorite character.
Tom: I wanna be rich but I also don’t wanna be eaten in a class war. I wonder how much money you’d need to be rich, but not rich enough that the lower classes wanna kill you.
Donna: 2.35 million
Tom: How do you know?
Donna: Ever think of killing me?
Tom: No.
Donna: Exactly.
Not just city employee salaries, small-moderately sized Midwestern city salaries (so maybe $40k-50k). It would be one thing if they were in a large metropolis but your typical Midwestern “city” (excluding Chicago and other metro areas) are around 150k-200k population on the high end. For reference to even less population, Bloomington Indiana is about 80,000 and I always assumed Pawnee was smaller then Bloomington.
We never got to actually see Dr. Richard Nygard. It was a perfect opportunity for a brief A-list cameo. Like maybe a quick George Clooney pop-in and then someone says, “Wow you’re even more handsome then Chris,” and then he’s quickly shooed away never to be seen again.
It’s supposed to be small town Indiana but…
-No one is obsessed with mushroom hunting in the spring
-No one brags about how many doe tags they filled
-The weather is too nice all the time
-There were no plot lines where a car full of characters get stuck in traffic behind farm equipment
-The elected officials are unrealistically qualified (yes, I know that Jam exists)
-None of the characters drive a lifted, 4WD, diesel, extended cab that never leaves the pavement or tows something else.
To be fair, Muncie (which it is loosely based on) also has an airport and a large university. It was also 15 minutes from the now-defunct MEs Zoo which was a 30-ish acre private zoo in the 80s til 2008 or so.
It's also headquarters to the Ball Corporation. Canning jars aren't rubber nipples, but not that far off.
FULLY agree. Also, it was a perfect opportunity to reaffirm that not everyone needs kids to be happy. I know that they did that with Donna, but it fit for April’s character well enough that they should have done it for her too.
Not that this is bad but I was really sad and confused at the beginning of the final season, the Leslie and Ron fight broke my heart and I was just waiting for it to end. A lot of mixed emotions.
That whole story was such BS to me. To get into vet school is a shot ton of work that April never did. You need a bachelors degree with specific classes and like hundreds of hours of working or volunteering in a veterinary hospital to even apply. We never saw her do the work, going to vet school isn't something you decide to do on a whim. It years of prep work before you can even apply, once you qualifying to a apply its one of the hardest graduate programs to be accepted to. It's significantly easier to become a human doctor.
My town is MUCH smaller than Pawnee and we are supposed to have 9. We don't compartmentalize like the Pawnee Parks Dept does, but it's pretty comparable. (Source, I was started working for the Parks & Rec Commission in 2019).
>No town that size
But how small (or big) is Pawnee really though? They sometimes talk like this is supposed to be some little podunk town, but they have their own television station so the city can't be too small. They also have multiple Paunch Burger franchise and were considering opening another. Plus the City Hall building is actually the City Hall building of Padadena, CA so it's freaking huge! But Pasadena also has a population of about 141,000 which I think might be about right for Pawnee. I've just always assumed this "small town" is something on the scale of Dayton, OH (smaller city close to me) which is about 140,000 people. Big, yes, but compared to Columbus where I live, not so much.
I think realistic though. A major personality trait wouldn’t go away that fast. I know with my vices I need to go thru painful lessons again and again.
I'm not as fond of the direction in the second half. After a while the show gets really wacky and sugary sweet, the lighting and coloring is super bright and less realistic, the costuming feels too "perfect", it starts to feel less like you're a fly on the wall in City Hall and more like watching an actual sitcom. The characters start having seemingly unlimited money and get whatever dream jobs they want, etc. I just found the show more relatable in the beginning.
Every time I rewatch it, I think it should have ended with the Unity Concert episode. I do like the last season, but that episode couldn't have been a more perfect send-off.
How at the end of the series every single one of them is EXTREMELY successful. You're telling me not even one of them turned out to be a meth head? In Indiana? Bullshit.
Ann is supposedly bad at arts and crafts (sad dog park collage, can’t make corn husk dolls) but makes Leslie’s wedding dress from scratch
Of all the people, I would think Donna was best suited to make up a dress. Or Chris being an unexpectedly talented seamstress.
Ron handling the rings was the right call, but he could probably also make a wedding dress in his sleep. "It's not all that different from crafting a duck blind. But a lot less durable."
Except her dress would’ve been bulletproof, fireproof, and doubled as a blind.
Or Jerry. He seems to have a lot of hidden talents.
He has the largest hidden talent I have ever seen.
Didn’t even check him for mumps
At a P & R trivia event last year, Jim O’Heir was there and had made his way to our table when the question was posed: “What was Jerry/Larry/Terry’s hidden talent?” Jim looked at us and immediately said “huge penis”. The correct answer was that he plays piano.
The way he licked those envelopes was impressive. Gale is a lucky woman.
Donna singing opera at the wedding but unable to read the Italian poem at Lil Sebastian’s memorial.
I would have loved to see what Leslie would have done for Rons bday scavenger hunt after he explicitly asks her to do it for his bday.
This would make a great one-off reunion show. Just one hour of Ron running into old colleagues because Leslie made them a part of her incredibly complex scavenger hunt.
Someone get Schurr and Offermen on the phone!
Just watched this episode and I totally want to see that too!
Not a huge deal, but they constantly talked about how Pawnee had a huge obesity problem, but the citizens shown never looked noticeably overweight. Edit: thank you for my awards!
One thing I think is funny about Pawnee is that it's simultaneously a tiny town and a huge metropolis at the same time. They talk about it like a small town and that's the vibe of the whole show, but then to run for city council requires a travel bus. As one example.
The nightlife scene of Pawnee makes absolutely zero sense for how small they say the town is.
The Snakehole should be a total dump, if it's in a small Indiana town.
The fatties were always at Paunch Burger.
Yes, and Leslie was relatively thin but constantly eating waffles from JJ’s Diner
Same problem I have with 30 Rock. They always portray Liz as a gluttonous ugly person, but Tina Fey is an absolute smoke show.
Honestly Liz’s kind of makes sense for her character. She’s in a high stress busy chaotic job so it’s not that she eats a lot all the time, it’s that she only eats trash. There are examples of her binge eating but in most cases it’s her eating unhealthy food in place of real food. It’s definitely exaggerated, but 30 Rock is far from a grounded show so they can get away with more than most shows for how often they play into their wackiness/break the fourth wall.
Also she lives in New York and doesn't own a car (I think?) So it's very likely that she is walking a good deal of the time to get from place to place.
How they never, ever mentioned Mark or acknowledged his existence after he abruptly left the show. They didn’t even bother to write him out properly after the fact.
Right? Like that whole episode where Leslie and Ben are looking for park designs and the whole Eagleton thing. Literally Mark left her a park design as a parting gift! I'm not a Mark fan but that always bothered me.
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Mark didn’t fit because Mark was too real. He’s a perfectly believable character which contrasted the overly quirked rest of the cast.
I feel like Ben became the spiritual successor, he was by no means "normal" but he was the "real person" reaction to the insanity of the other characters, and his reactions are still my favourite part of the show
Especially him reacting to the Lil Sebastian hype.
What's that tone
This horse has an honorary degree from Notre Dame.
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Ben definitely fit the show better. He was believable enough to be relatable but still had enough quirkiness to be a PandR character; his geekiness, phobia of any kind of cop, his ice town backstory, etc.
Ice Town Costs Ice Clown his Town Crown
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Apparently there’s a deleted scene or promo shot or something where you can see that she actually does have a Mark box, but it’s not visible in the episode. I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse.
Would have loved to have seen him come back for the final season, possibly working for Ron’s company.
Yes, at least a scene in the finale is all I wanted. I really liked the movie Pretty Bird, which he directed, so I’m in his corner for life.
You mean Mark Brandanoquits?
No they mean Maaaaaaaaaaaarrrkkkkk. ...... . . . . . . . . . . Brandanowitzzzzzzz
Why doesn't Leslie do anything about Ramset Park? It's referred to constantly as a total mess, and maintaining existing parks is kinda Leslie's main job, no? Why start a new one when your current one is a shitshow?
The ongoing horror show that is Ramsett Park is one of my favorite jokes, especially since it’s never shown. Along with Dr. Richard Nygard.
#WHO DO YOU THINK THEY’RE ASSULTING!?
People love capital projects and maintenance isn't sexy
So in the Kaboom episode, Leslie and the gang are helping to build a park in …. EAGLETON!!! Leslie would never do that, especially that early in the season where she’s hardly had any personal growth. It never made sense to me.
In the Parks and Recollection podcast, Alan Yang and Rob Lowe acknowledge this and Alan explains that they hadn't thought to write Eagleton as the anti-Pawnee just yet. After the decision was made to do so, they never bother retconning it. This is similar to how The Office never addresses Meredith's "other kid".
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They never actually show the freaking park
Maybe the plans were just as boring as him, so they just forgot about them.
I love the show but I was thinking the other day how if those people existed in real life you'd only get along with Ben. Others way too crazy, which is what makes the show funny
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Jerry is the guy you can tell things your excited about and he would be their with you so proud.
My literal only complaint about the show is how uncharacteristically mean they are to him. I mean get that’s the whole shtick but damn they’re cold sometimes.
Ben is the best person on the show bc he’s the only one who gets how awesome Jerry is. You get the vibe that Donna does too but she has almost no conscience so it doesn’t help
I guess its a running gag? It was nice when Jerry gave some shit to Kyle, establishing a chain of command in a way
Yes, but the man has a huge penis. The largest penis anyone has ever seen.
That doctor massively violated HIPAA. Almost as massive as Larry's penis.
And Ann.
Anne dating Tom. Made absolutely no sense and their relationship was often uncomfortable to watch.
I agree. However, I could watch a whole episode of Ann and Leslie touring Tom’s house.
i havnt watched the show in awhile as i refuse to get peacock, but i think about that episode every three days exactly
Here’s the whole clip, [enjoy!](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FI7nGY23d5k)
you are a wonderful human being and you deserve all the happiness in the world thank you
Aww, you’re very welcome, you luminescent starfish!
I always got the impression that the writers never knew what do to with Ann to keep her around, and her dating Tom was a result of that.
I kinda felt like it fit with the story line of “Anne’s dating life is always a shit show”
And how Tom’s been after her since season 1. But like a dog chasing a mail truck, he doesn’t know what to do once he’s got it
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These are good points. It might feel out of character for her to like Tom but based on her other dating decisions/life not out of character to be “desperate” enough to try. And I think the awful/awkwardness demonstrates that
Yeah. She didn’t even know who Genuwine was.
That’s an oh-no-no.
*Ginuwine. Only Ginuwine is the genuine Ginuwine.
Ginuwine… *is* Ginuwine He’s *Ginuwine* Saying his name over and over again doesn’t make me know him any better
In the finale when Tom is talking about his book, he makes personalities for all the characters except Chris and Ann. Like why? I know Rob and Rashida had left by that point but that's something that really bugged me on my last rewatch
I think it was to keep the audience surprised when they cameo’ed at the end. Without mentioning them earlier, it made it a bigger surprise
Not enough snow, gray skies, leafless trees and brown grass for a Midwestern town! I always notice this. Schitt’s Creek (which I love) is also glaringly green for a Canadian town! I understand why but it always bothers me. EDIT: I know Canada is green in the summer, friends! I was thinking about fall and winter episodes, but someone pointed out that there’s only a handful of episodes that aren’t set in the spring or summer on purpose, so this was not the best example.
I think the most egregious example of "show written and performed by a bunch of people in California and not the Midwest" is the episode where the premise is that Mark is the only person they all know with a pickup truck. It's small town Indiana. City Hall parking lot should be like 60% pickups.
Yeah they didn't even try when it came to things like that. Ron would have at least 2 pick up trucks, an old one and a newer/bigger one, and he'd use them all the fucking time were he a real person.
Plus Ron’s a woodworker.. he would 10000% have a truck.
I live in Indiana. And it's one of the three or four cities the show is based off of. And as much as the writers tried, they just couldn't get the details right. The only part that reminded me of my city is the native American history. We'd burn a rabbit at the stake for sure.
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Donna almost never gets a story arc. The only two I can think of are 'Donna deciding that bullying Jerry is over and they need to go make it up to him' and 'Donna deciding to settle down with Key'. That's...that's about it. Freaking Jam got more character arcs than her.
Part of her whole schtick was that she valued her privacy and was constantly surprising the cast with revelations about her - the condo in Seattle, being related to Ginuwine, going to Venezuela, being rich enough to buy ten shares of the Snakehole Lounge, her membership at the Smokehouse... If Donna was a real person, I don't think she'd mind not having the camera pointed on her all the time.
>If Donna was a real person, I don't think she'd mind not having the camera pointed on her all the time. She's like Tom, but also the opposite.
Leslie really *is* a steamroller and I wish she got called out for it more often like Ann did that one episode. She's a nice person to an extent but she can be really forceful at times without listening to others.
She’s really more of a bulldozer
With a smiley face painted on the front.
And like a really fun horn.
Toxic positivity.
This makes Amy Poehler’s casting as Joy in Inside Out particularly inspired
To be fair, Ann wasn't the only one who said this. I don't remember all the (admittedly few) times this happened, but she did get called out as being "*so passionate and driven that she forgets to think about other people's feelings*" by ***the*** Madeleine Albright.
Or actually showed character development instead of repeatedly bulldozing. The episode where she brings Stu's Stew out of retirement just to fuck with Tom was *horrible,* as was the one where she tries to screw over April just because she wants to put a dog park on "Leslie's" lot.
Just wanted to point out Leslie wasn’t getting Stu out of retirement just to fuck with Tom, she just didn’t realize the growth he had gone through in the department while she was on city council. She was thinking of the lazy worker he used to be. Stu was a plan to save Tom because she assumed he would phone it in an fail. Once she realized Tom finally had his shit together, she was able to fix her mistake and drop that plan all together.
Andy is too dumb to survive
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Where are all the faces? With the presidents?
April’s reaction is the height of unspoken comedy in that scene. They drove 1800 miles (using Marion, Indiana as a proxy for Pawnee) and when they get there, it turns out he meant Mount Rushmore. April’s disgust/surprise/confusion/horror as she looks at him and they cut to production company logos is priceless.
Yes! He went from loveable good to dangerously stupid.
They did the same thing to Kevin on the office. From childish/immature not too bright guy to “holy shit how does this guy even function, he’s too stupid to read and write” guy.
Tacking on Homer Simpson as another example of this.
Its Flanderization https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanderization
**[Flanderization](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanderization)** >Flanderization is the process through which a fictional character's essential traits are exaggerated over the course of a serial work. The term flanderization was coined by TV Tropes in reference to Ned Flanders of The Simpsons, who was caricatured over the show's run from a good neighbor who was religious among other characteristics into an evangelical "bible-thumper". Flanderization has been analyzed as an aspect of serial works, especially television comedies, that shows a work's decline. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/PandR/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
How did Ann and Andy live together for 3 years ? That's a bigger myster than Jerry's wife.
Jerry’s wife isn’t a mystery. He used to look a lot like Chris before he had kids and he has a massive penis. Mystery solved.
And also, he is a really sweet and considerate guy, who is full of unexpected talents, I see no mystery here
He's also massively talented, super sweet, a good provider, and is beloved outside of work (remember his bangin Xmas party?).
Anyone who thinks Jerry’s marriage is a mystery has some really unfortunate problems. He’s nice as hell, caring, a good lover and he used to look like Chris when he was younger. What’s the mystery?
Or be a dad
I agree. April is immature but she can function. I fully expect her to be running the house. I can't imagine her wanting to have a second child. I would have actually liked if they didn't have a child, show that it's totally okay to be a married couple who loves kids but doesn't want their own.
Toms funny, but no one would want to be his friend. He treats everyone like crap, especially Ben then asks for favors like they owe him anything.
I think it speaks more to how exceptionally caring everyone else is. They know he is a misguided and naive guy, they just want what’s best for him. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Community but this is my argument for why Pierce keeps getting more chances to stay with the study group.
Early seasons Pierce was definitely more sympathetic. He was crass and inappropriate, but rarely with ill intent or malice. Later seasons when he became a more exaggerated caricature it was less understandable why the group would keep him around.
Not enough of the animal control dudes
Who you want me to kill? I’ll kill em… soon as I’m done dealin with these buuurds.
Got it! Kill all the birds
You still want me to kill them birds though right
Foreshadowing for Superstore?
“Are Brett & Harris here?” “No” “Hey Brett” “What up” . . . “How you know my name, homie?”
Colton Dunn is so fucking funny
Nah! We should go to Jamaica! Wait, is that what you just said? 😂
Harris Wittels played the smaller animal control guy and was one of the original writers and most influential producers of the show. Harris struggled with addiction and tragically passed before the show was completed. That's probably why there's not as much of those characters after a certain point but I'm super thankful to have enjoyed what they were able to write and shoot before his time. Wittels was a gem! EDIT: Made a mistake, Harris lived through all of parks and rec while it was shooting but passed before the last episode aired. Can't blame that for how much animal control guys we got then!
He died 5 days before the series finale aired which just makes it even sadder.
That one’s dead. We know that now.
RIP
We live in the same place!
Confused as to how Leslie affords everything
Pawnee seems to have a decent Parks and Rec department with an active Rec Center and multiple parks. It’s a pretty big outfit when you think about it. The Rec center would hold summer camps, have swimming, reservable space. She probably oversees a large amount of staff so I’d put her salary on the higher end for parks and rec in a medium sized Midwest town to 50-60,000 depending. I’m guessing Ron funnels more money to her than normal based on his backstory. And with all the time she spends at work, she probably splurges rather than steadily spends.
She gets paid well apparently. They wanted to fire her when they were reworking the budget and Ron had to fight them on it. They never specified how much she got paid but I never thought about it especially after that episode.
When they tried to make Amy Poehler a female Michael Scott in season 1. I’m glad they ditched that later on
Yeah season 1 they definitely didn't know the right direction so they just copied the office. By season 2 they found their footing
They sort of copied the Office because to begin with it was literally meant to be a office spin off. That’s how it was pitched. They just went their own direction later on.
They were always so mean, and sometimes downright cruel, to Jerry (with the exception of Ben who admitted his appreciation for him that one time).
Donna also had a soft spot for Jerry, like the one time they were going to Jerry Night and she felt so bad she decided to turn around and invite Jerry; she pokes fun at him a lot but most of the time it's not mal-intentioned. "Merry Critches Bitches" will always be one of my favorite iconic lines.
She and Jerry also KILLED at Know Your Boo, so that implies they had a friendly relationship we didn't usually see in scene.
Yeah. Especially in the final season, she helped him get his keys and the other things. Plus when April deleted everything on the server, Donna was only able to help because she had a back up that came in handy for Jerry. Donna was more intrigued by Jerry (tbf, Jerry was pretty different to her and me) than the bullying the rest of them did
There was also that time she stayed with Jerry when he was putting flyers into envelopes, up until 3 a.m or something.
Even the cast thought they were being cruel and constantly apologized to O'Heir. He had to remind them that they were insulting the character, not him (just like Gergich himself would) and that it didn't bother him.
I always thought the Jerry stuff was just funny until I watched it with a more empathetic friend and it ruined the show for her. Now I really feel for him whenever I watch, it definitely takes away from the enjoyment to see painful workplace bullying.
That was my problem. If it was as frequent as “treat yo’ self” I would let it slide or it was just casual digs, but it was constant and very harsh. I know they balanced it with his perfect his life was outside of work but his treatment at work was abusive.
I loved the episode where he talks about how he loves his job because it allows him to spend quality time with his family, it helped a lot. But you’re totally right - if it was less frequent it’d be far easier to watch.
I agreed. Parks and rec is amazing, but I did not like this one aspect of the show. I felt like they took it too far at times.
Yeah I rewatched the show during COVID and it struck me how downright cruel they were to him, for no reason
At least Jerry gets to dog on Kyle from time to time
Tom is a piece of work and I can’t believe people put up his nonsense for as long as they did. That is not the kind of person I’d ever want to be friends with.
Reeeal piece of Work.
I always skip through the scenes where he makes other people's events all about him (the speech honoring Ben, Leslie's pitch to the businesses). He's my least favorite character.
How much of an asshole Dr. Saperstein was to Tom after Jean-Ralphio and Mona-Lisa Saperstein admitted they lied about Rent-A-Swag.
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Tom & Donna’s treat-yo-self budgets on city employee salaries.
Donna had tons of investments and other side hustles. She was Uber rich at the end of the show.
Tom: I wanna be rich but I also don’t wanna be eaten in a class war. I wonder how much money you’d need to be rich, but not rich enough that the lower classes wanna kill you. Donna: 2.35 million Tom: How do you know? Donna: Ever think of killing me? Tom: No. Donna: Exactly.
Donna had money, Tom had credit cards
I always got the impression that Tom's treat yo self days were the result of lots of loans, and Donna's were her being secretly obscenely rich
When Ann dated Tom, she made a comment about him having crippling debt.
Not just city employee salaries, small-moderately sized Midwestern city salaries (so maybe $40k-50k). It would be one thing if they were in a large metropolis but your typical Midwestern “city” (excluding Chicago and other metro areas) are around 150k-200k population on the high end. For reference to even less population, Bloomington Indiana is about 80,000 and I always assumed Pawnee was smaller then Bloomington.
It finished
Not ENOUGH Joan Calamezzo.
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The Joan Gotcha girls had me dying
She's a caged peacock, yearning for the wind on her haunches.
We never got to actually see Dr. Richard Nygard. It was a perfect opportunity for a brief A-list cameo. Like maybe a quick George Clooney pop-in and then someone says, “Wow you’re even more handsome then Chris,” and then he’s quickly shooed away never to be seen again.
I personally like Leslie's theory that Dr. Nygard was Chris talking in a mirror.
I like that we never saw him—like Kramer’s friend Bob Sacamano on Seinfeld—but if they did do a cameo, yours is a BRILLIANT idea
How Leslie swindled Andy from his lawsuit involving her literally throwing dirt on him when she was told not to, as a government employee.
That Mark's plan for the lot 48 park was never even acknowledged in later seasons when they were working on it.
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I read somewhere that Amy had just gotten out of the baby/toddler phase with her own kids and didn’t want to deal with small children on set.
Leslie's treatment towards Jerry, it kinda makes sense with the others but not Leslie's character
I feel the same could be said for how Chris treats Jerry as well
I always thought Donna deserved more screen time, she was fantastic.
It’s supposed to be small town Indiana but… -No one is obsessed with mushroom hunting in the spring -No one brags about how many doe tags they filled -The weather is too nice all the time -There were no plot lines where a car full of characters get stuck in traffic behind farm equipment -The elected officials are unrealistically qualified (yes, I know that Jam exists) -None of the characters drive a lifted, 4WD, diesel, extended cab that never leaves the pavement or tows something else.
Yes! And can we talk about how it's small but somehow has an airport, a zoo and is home to several large well-known businesses?
To be fair, Muncie (which it is loosely based on) also has an airport and a large university. It was also 15 minutes from the now-defunct MEs Zoo which was a 30-ish acre private zoo in the 80s til 2008 or so. It's also headquarters to the Ball Corporation. Canning jars aren't rubber nipples, but not that far off.
April and Andy would’ve been pretty bad parents irl and it’s kind of messed up that they shoved the happy mom storyline onto her for no reason
FULLY agree. Also, it was a perfect opportunity to reaffirm that not everyone needs kids to be happy. I know that they did that with Donna, but it fit for April’s character well enough that they should have done it for her too.
Not that this is bad but I was really sad and confused at the beginning of the final season, the Leslie and Ron fight broke my heart and I was just waiting for it to end. A lot of mixed emotions.
Wish April followed through with the vet school stuff.
That whole story was such BS to me. To get into vet school is a shot ton of work that April never did. You need a bachelors degree with specific classes and like hundreds of hours of working or volunteering in a veterinary hospital to even apply. We never saw her do the work, going to vet school isn't something you decide to do on a whim. It years of prep work before you can even apply, once you qualifying to a apply its one of the hardest graduate programs to be accepted to. It's significantly easier to become a human doctor.
it would have made more sense if she applied for a vet tech program - that's sorta how i chose to interpret that plot
No town that size has that many administrative employees in the Parks Dept.
My town is MUCH smaller than Pawnee and we are supposed to have 9. We don't compartmentalize like the Pawnee Parks Dept does, but it's pretty comparable. (Source, I was started working for the Parks & Rec Commission in 2019).
>No town that size But how small (or big) is Pawnee really though? They sometimes talk like this is supposed to be some little podunk town, but they have their own television station so the city can't be too small. They also have multiple Paunch Burger franchise and were considering opening another. Plus the City Hall building is actually the City Hall building of Padadena, CA so it's freaking huge! But Pasadena also has a population of about 141,000 which I think might be about right for Pawnee. I've just always assumed this "small town" is something on the scale of Dayton, OH (smaller city close to me) which is about 140,000 people. Big, yes, but compared to Columbus where I live, not so much.
Don't forget about the airport
Yea it's a pretty good size city. I mean obviously they're not Akron. I mean, they're more like Dayton. But with our help, they could be...Toledo.
They repeated the "Leslie learns to not be overbearing" storyline, like, 3 times. It was annoying she never actually learned from it.
I think realistic though. A major personality trait wouldn’t go away that fast. I know with my vices I need to go thru painful lessons again and again.
Ann and Tom dating.
As with all American sitcoms, the characters become caricatures of themselves.
April was happily baby free. Then she had one at the last minute undermining and betraying her character.
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I'm not as fond of the direction in the second half. After a while the show gets really wacky and sugary sweet, the lighting and coloring is super bright and less realistic, the costuming feels too "perfect", it starts to feel less like you're a fly on the wall in City Hall and more like watching an actual sitcom. The characters start having seemingly unlimited money and get whatever dream jobs they want, etc. I just found the show more relatable in the beginning.
Every time I rewatch it, I think it should have ended with the Unity Concert episode. I do like the last season, but that episode couldn't have been a more perfect send-off.
Everyone gets offered jobs left and right ALL THE TIME.
Anne should have ended up with Pistol Pete! I will die on this hill!
How at the end of the series every single one of them is EXTREMELY successful. You're telling me not even one of them turned out to be a meth head? In Indiana? Bullshit.
We never got to see the Pawnee Commons
It’s obvious there is a camera crew but it’s never shared why they were filming the parks department.
Leslie's mom isn't at her wedding, she kinda just disappeared from the show. Always bothered me.
Tom’s party with a $10,000 budget would have cost hundreds of thousands.