First off, I watched every episode of every season. This is not some hit piece, but a thought-out explanation of what was rubbing me wrong this whole time... rubbed raw by the end of it.
The comparisons to The Office are fine and well, especially in the first two season, but those two seasons were actually the best in the series... should have stuck with what worked. First the good: nearly ever single major supporting cast member. Pratt was Fantastic and lovable. Plaza was good weird. Ansari took many episodes and made them epic, especially whenever Ben Schwartz and Jenny Slate were involved. Ansari and Retta were also perfect together (treat yourself). Rashida Jones was the girl everyone wants to marry in real life. Rob Lowe eventually got going and really had some good moments, I never knew how funny he could be; his new DirectTv commercials take what he mastered in Parks and Rec to a whole new level. There are so many other supporting actors no one will read this if I list each one... so onwards and downwards.
Now the bad. The root of all issues lie with Leslie Knope, but I will come back to her character in a moment. Jerry/Gary/Larry - love this guy and how Jim O'Heir played him, I wish he was in my family... now why all the putrid bullying? If this character was a woman would anyone stand for this? It was out of left field many times with no reason given, just wrong. I thought maybe they were trying to find a "Toby" character to beat up on, but unlike Toby Gary/Jerry/Larry did NOTHING wrong EVER aside from being clumsy. It was strange and I think if the character was played by an overweight woman someone would have lost their job over the meanness of it all, what a double standard. Just go back and watch some of the bullying of him and mentally replace him with an overweight woman, you will see what I am saying.
Ben Wyatt. I have been a fan of Adam Scott since Party Down, and I think he did a good job here... but again Leslie Knope. The closer his character got to the Knope character the more emasculated he became, by the end there was no doubt who wore the pantsuit and who wore the pants. Too bad, I liked the board game obsession, the smart quirkiness, the general unique qualities to his character. It seemed all stripped away by the end and he was just some odd political husband without meaning. Also the entire romance was so unbelievable, absolutely zero chemistry.
Ron Swanson. He was great, Nick Offerman was great. The storytelling was awful. Ron is supposed to be the Anti-Knope. The libertarian/conservative reasonableness to the progressive pushings of Leslie Knope. But in every single standoff Ron Swanson gives in to his values and bends to Knope's wishes because she "really believes" or "really fights" or "really tries" to do something. I am sorry, but if you believe in the opposite of someone else, just because they are "really trying" hard doesn't mean you forsake all of your own beliefs. This was no more evident than the end when he gives in to Knope one last time to work for the Federal Government to essentially be a park Ranger. The Ron Swanson I would have liked to see would have somehow finagled the land from the Federal Government and opened up his own Wilderness park to teach kids not to be such sissies and depend on themselves and each other for survival, all the while respecting what he loves most... nature.
So let's get this over with... Leslie Knope was the biggest bully of them all. She bullied every single character to do her bidding, relentlessly, degradingly, sometimes with a smile, sometimes with a tantrum, sometimes in "their" best interest... but it got annoying real fast. If the series would have shifted away from her as a central character and instead someone they all had to deal with, that would have been ideal and would have let the truly exceptional characters shine. I could handle the antics 5 minutes an episode, way too many other characters I would have preferred seeing.
Keeping the Knope character in the spotlight quickly turned this series (which would have been great with the true ineptitude of government bureaucracies as a backdrop for hilarious people doing hilarious things) to a huge progressive love-fest with every progressive cliché and politician making a cameo.
Towards the end (seasons 6-7) it was very formulaic writing and was basically reduced to a bunch of small skits to get each one's shtick in, absolutely no effort or thought was put in to the overall story. The giant take away is that government rules best when ruled by people who really want to rule you...
The comparisons to The Office are fine and well, especially in the first two season, but those two seasons were actually the best in the series... should have stuck with what worked. First the good: nearly ever single major supporting cast member. Pratt was Fantastic and lovable. Plaza was good weird. Ansari took many episodes and made them epic, especially whenever Ben Schwartz and Jenny Slate were involved. Ansari and Retta were also perfect together (treat yourself). Rashida Jones was the girl everyone wants to marry in real life. Rob Lowe eventually got going and really had some good moments, I never knew how funny he could be; his new DirectTv commercials take what he mastered in Parks and Rec to a whole new level. There are so many other supporting actors no one will read this if I list each one... so onwards and downwards.
Now the bad. The root of all issues lie with Leslie Knope, but I will come back to her character in a moment. Jerry/Gary/Larry - love this guy and how Jim O'Heir played him, I wish he was in my family... now why all the putrid bullying? If this character was a woman would anyone stand for this? It was out of left field many times with no reason given, just wrong. I thought maybe they were trying to find a "Toby" character to beat up on, but unlike Toby Gary/Jerry/Larry did NOTHING wrong EVER aside from being clumsy. It was strange and I think if the character was played by an overweight woman someone would have lost their job over the meanness of it all, what a double standard. Just go back and watch some of the bullying of him and mentally replace him with an overweight woman, you will see what I am saying.
Ben Wyatt. I have been a fan of Adam Scott since Party Down, and I think he did a good job here... but again Leslie Knope. The closer his character got to the Knope character the more emasculated he became, by the end there was no doubt who wore the pantsuit and who wore the pants. Too bad, I liked the board game obsession, the smart quirkiness, the general unique qualities to his character. It seemed all stripped away by the end and he was just some odd political husband without meaning. Also the entire romance was so unbelievable, absolutely zero chemistry.
Ron Swanson. He was great, Nick Offerman was great. The storytelling was awful. Ron is supposed to be the Anti-Knope. The libertarian/conservative reasonableness to the progressive pushings of Leslie Knope. But in every single standoff Ron Swanson gives in to his values and bends to Knope's wishes because she "really believes" or "really fights" or "really tries" to do something. I am sorry, but if you believe in the opposite of someone else, just because they are "really trying" hard doesn't mean you forsake all of your own beliefs. This was no more evident than the end when he gives in to Knope one last time to work for the Federal Government to essentially be a park Ranger. The Ron Swanson I would have liked to see would have somehow finagled the land from the Federal Government and opened up his own Wilderness park to teach kids not to be such sissies and depend on themselves and each other for survival, all the while respecting what he loves most... nature.
So let's get this over with... Leslie Knope was the biggest bully of them all. She bullied every single character to do her bidding, relentlessly, degradingly, sometimes with a smile, sometimes with a tantrum, sometimes in "their" best interest... but it got annoying real fast. If the series would have shifted away from her as a central character and instead someone they all had to deal with, that would have been ideal and would have let the truly exceptional characters shine. I could handle the antics 5 minutes an episode, way too many other characters I would have preferred seeing.
Keeping the Knope character in the spotlight quickly turned this series (which would have been great with the true ineptitude of government bureaucracies as a backdrop for hilarious people doing hilarious things) to a huge progressive love-fest with every progressive cliché and politician making a cameo.
Towards the end (seasons 6-7) it was very formulaic writing and was basically reduced to a bunch of small skits to get each one's shtick in, absolutely no effort or thought was put in to the overall story. The giant take away is that government rules best when ruled by people who really want to rule you...