A love letter to "Parks and Recreation"

To the creators, writers, actors, and crew of “Parks and Recreation:”
When news of your show first started showing up on NBC commercials
between “The Office” and “30 Rock,” many of us got nervous. The faux-documentary style, along with the appearance that it was about a group of strange personalities working together in a probably un-enjoyable environment under an eccentric boss played by a well known face from the comedy world, let us to believe that this was going to be an arbitrary and redundant knock-off of “The Office.”

How wrong we were.

You are now in your fourth season, going strong and making us all laugh. You are better than ever “The Office” was, and are possibly the best thing on TV right now, with the possible exception of “Modern Family.” Indeed, I see things on your show each week that I believe prove it to be not only great comedy, but revolutionary television.

I’ve enjoyed “Parks and Recreaton” ever since its first season, but it’s only been within the past month or two that I’ve begun to realize how special the show really is. Unlike “The Office,” your show likes each of its main characters. It doesn’t have the cynical outlook that makes each joke at the expense of someone, which is so prevalent in “The Office.” These characters enjoy working together and being around one another. It’s clear that your show believes in something better than laughs taken from awkward or offensive situations: it believes in the good (and the hilarity) that can happen when a community of people work together and help one another.
However, you don’t whitewash the characters, regardless of how much you care for them. These are real people with real problems and real flaws. Tom is generally selfish, and a major player. April is hopelessly negative. Andy often doesn’t listen and gets in the way frequently. There is not one character on the show who doesn’t have some kind of flaw that would make them difficult to be around at one point or another. You never let those flaws define them, though. Tom’s womanizing comes off as endearing, and we get the feeling that he communicates in the languages of “doin’ it” because he just doesn’t know how to express deeper feelings in another way. We see a playfulness in April that comes out with almost everyone, but especially with Andy and Ron. Andy’s childish excitement and naïveté make it difficult to be frustrated with him for long about anything. Ron cares very much for everyone in the department. For all his talk about how well Leslie treats everyone, he has made sacrifices for and offered sage council to almost all of the people working under him, particularly Leslie, April, Andy, and Tom. What got me thinking about how remarkable the show is, though, is what you did with Leslie in one of the more recent episodes, “The Smallest Park.” We have always known that Leslie is headstrong and will often “steamroll” people to get what she wants. She does this to several people in this episode, and Ann calls here out it (again demonstrating a healthy friendship in which honestly and forgiveness are important). What’s caught my attention most was that Leslie acknowledged what she was doing, understood that it was hurting people she cared about, and expressed a desire to change and acted on that desire. Question: how rare is it that in any show, let alone a sitcom? Answer: extremely rare, if not altogether unheard of. In “30 Rock,” for example, the characters of Liz, Jack, Tracy, and Jenna all have their flaws, but those flaws haven’t gone anywhere and are not likely to go anywhere because they are what make the show work, and it’s hilarious and that’s fine for that show. It would have been easy to keep Leslie as the “steamroller,” and it probably would have worked, too, but you took a major risk by having the lead character in your show address one of her deepest flaws head on. Now she has to change, and in addition to having one of the funniest shows on TV, you have a situation comedy in which the situations are not going to be approached by in the same way all the time by this character. She is growing and moving forward. It was a huge risk to take (can you imagine “30 Rock” if Liz decided to stop being pathetic or if Jack began to focus on people instead of money?), but I am glad you did, and it started paying off even in that episode. And when conflicts like this arise, the characters treat one another with grace! They forgive each other. You clearly believe that there is something more to be found in comedy than just laughing at the discomfort of others.
Another major strength of the show is that its main focus is not romance. From the first episode of “The Office,” we knew that Jim and Pam were going to end up together, and the show has never been about anything other than that relationship. This worked until they got married, and then there was no more tension between the two of them and it just became about how cute they are together, which can only last for so long. In “Parks,” you made friendship, not romance, the relational center of the show, which has allowed us to get the know the characters as individuals. This makes it much more exciting when two characters enter a relationship (Leslie/Ben, April/Andy). We care more when we like the people for being themselves, not the couple for being a couple.

I’ve been talking a lot about how the show works dramatically, but it is a feat comedically as well. If there has ever been a cast assembled from so many actors with strong backgrounds in stand-up or improv, I haven’t heard of it. There is no weak link in the cast, and the chemistry they have with each other is unbelievable. I hope the day comes where at the very least Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman, Aubrey Plaza, and Aziz Ansari have all received some sort of award recognition for their work, but frankly all cast members are brilliant and deserve it.

It is refreshing and glorious to see a show that knows how to be funny without being cruel, and is about people who care for one another.


All my love,
Erik Naydiuk

PS
Those are the general reasons why I love your show. Here are some more specific ones:
-How you handled the obligatory wedding episode that all shows must at some point have.
-How you handled the obligatory death episode that all shows must at some point have.
-The ending of “Citizen Knope.”
-Jerry Grgich (the butt of many jokes, but clearly loved.)
-Ron f*****g Swanson
-Tammys 0-2
-Burt Macklin, FBI
-Jean Ralphio
-Leslie’s sugar addiction
-Ron and April’s relationship
-Leslie and Ann’s relationship
-Joan Callamezzo
-Perd Hapley
-Crazy Ira and the Douche
-The universal hatred of the library
-etc
-etc
-etc

Somedays I feel like I am a little kid asking God: "Please, please, can I do this? And this too?"

The fact that it seems like he might be starting to say "yes" is terrifying and wonderful.

An Interpretation of Fergie's Rap from "Boom Boom Pow"

"I like Batman comics
Chickens are stealing my clothes
And imitating everything that I do
I am standing on a piece of poop

I am a robot
You are really late
I like explosions
Explosions in the future."

4/2/11

I've been asking who I am lately. Who am I at my core? What makes me come alive? How can I claim those things and use them to further God's kingdom and benefit those around me? I saw two movies tonight, both of which I had seen before: Rango and True Grit. This was my second viewing of Rango and my third of True Grit. I like Rango a heck of a lot more than I thought I did and I am in love with every frame of True Grit. Watching both of these movies tonight was a profound experience. I saw pieces of myself, ugly and beautiful, in characters in both movies: People asking themselves who they are. People realizing that they have no idea. People finding out the answer to that question. People discovering things in them that they didn't know were there, that surprise them, sometimes in good ways and sometimes in bad ways. People learning that they love. People getting what they want and realizing that they're not ready for it, that they're even scared of it. People being given what they need even though it hurts like crap and they don't want it.

Movie watching is sacred to me. I am beginning to realize what may have been obvious to those around me for a long time now: Movies are part of what makes me come alive. They speak to my deepest core in a language I, for some reason, know very well. Perhaps that is why a good movie will usually put me in an exceptional mood while a bad one often offends me deeply. The best ones invite me to sink into their story, to know and love their characters, to go on a journey, to feel danger and boldness and wildness and beauty. When I get to talk about movies, I feel an excitement that I seldom feel elsewhere. When I get to watch them, forget about it. You've lost me for the next 120 minutes. Within movies, I often find myself: my deepest fears and insecurities, my wildest hopes and craziest dreams. Within movies, I often find hope and grace and justice and love. Within movies, I often find God. For that, I am grateful. I used to want to make movies. Maybe I still do, I'm not sure. I don't know that a film set is a place I would do well on or thrive in. In fact, I know from experience that even when things are going well and I like the people I'm working with, a movie set is a place that has a draining effect on me. I do wonder though: Could something that effects me so deeply be a part of my vocation in life? Now that I type the question out, the answer seems to be an obvious, 'yes'. I guess I just don't know how. Part of me still believes that that would be too good to be true. Maybe the point of tonight was me realizing that this is a deep, significant part of me and the rest will come later.

I am a spaceship
Screaming across the sky
Burning through clouds and fog
I am hurtling towards goodbye [but also hello and i love you], worried that I will break it when I hit
Or perhaps that it will break me.
I am a spaceship
Big, loud, dangerous,
I am still sitting on the launchpad (and I am falling from the sky)
Rending, roaring, tearing, fighting:
Important pieces are coming off, flying away and falling behind
There's no going to get them, they are gone and
Maybe not so important after all
I am a spaceship
On a collision course with what? I don't know.
But I will get there and I will make a mess.
I will be loud. I will hurt.
I am a spaceship, living and dying

And living again.

I am a spaceship with some unknown final destination
I am a spaceship and I won't be stopped.

Rainy Day - For Matthew Price

yeah.

Tonight I went for a walk with my iPod and pretty soon after that decided to listen to Over the Rhine's new album, The Long Surrender, all the way through. It was good sad and beautiful and whatever - there's probably a whole slew of blog posts in that experience. Anyway, the first lyric on the album is

"Come on boys
It's time to settle down
What do you think you'll gain from all this running around?"


I feel like I am one of the boys that lyric is directed at. I run around a lot. Not physically (I like cake too much for that), but in my head and my heart. I worry about things and try to work them out in my head, often before I even know all (or any) of the details. This probably doesn't make me much different from anybody else. I currently have two favorite things to worry about. The first is the month of May. I have a couple of exciting opportunities that I could pursue, but I am having a lot of trouble deciding between them. The second is next fall. I don't know if I can afford to come back to school, and if I can, I don't know if I should. For the past week or so, I've been quite stressed and worried about it. It's caused me to become rather cynical and to start thinking pretty poorly of myself and of my friends. I'm sure I've probably seemed at least OK on the surface, but when I'm at my worst I can have a great poker face, and at my best I often can't help but be a mess (it's hard for me to remember that that is indeed my best). Anyway, it wasn't a good place to be. But I realized something this evening as I was walking about and playing in the woods: I've been obsessing over finding the "answers" about what I'm doing in May and in the fall, but the answers aren't really what I'm looking for or even what I want. What I want is Jesus, now. I've been mistaking solidifying my May plans and my school plans for the face of Jesus. I mistake a lot of things for the face of Jesus. My friends, time with my friends, music, food, movies, and lots of other stuff I'm sure. These are all good things, but when the Lord comes second to them, I've found that they are at best distractions and at worst self-destructive vices.
But I digress. Point: What I'm doing in May doesn't matter. What I'm doing next fall doesn't matter. God will take glory from it, and that's all I really need to care about. There's too much life to live and not enough time to fill it with worries, obsessions, and fears about things like that. Whatever my path is, I will be set on it whether I want to or not, so all I can do is focus on what's happening right now and seek the Lord in that.

This has been What's Going On In My Life Right Now...join me next time to find out what will be happing to me then.


"Jesus my Lord, my life, my light, oh come with blissful ray
Break radiant through the shades of night and chase my fears away
Won't you chase my fears away

Then shall my soul with rapture trace the wonders of Thy love
But the full glories of Thy face are only known above
They are only known above"
-Thou Lovely Source of True Delight


lemon out.