TVSquad

(S01E02) Tonight, we move forward on the next step in Leslie Knope getting that pit replaced with a beautiful park. Look at that, Parks and Recreation doubles as a primer for how local government gets things done. It almost makes me want to get involved and make a difference in my community. Almost. It also makes me wonder about the quality of people in my local community. Somehow I can imagine people like Tom and Leslie working there.

It looks like things are going to move pretty slowly on this show, despite only a six episode run. I guess with the pit project being the only major plot, there's not much else to do. I hope they have a Plan B if they get picked up. All we got was the team canvassing the neighborhood to gauge reactions to the project and then an impromptu town hall meeting where everyone could voice their opinion. And that went about as well as you might expect; remember the last meeting Leslie ran.

There were some familiar faces from across television in the neighborhood; the station manager from Free Radio as a neighborhood sex offender, as well as everybody's favorite Jericho mom, here playing Leslie's mother. Mom's achieved a pretty high level of success in the local school system, a position which keeps her so busy that she virtually ignores her daughter. Or perhaps she avoids her because her daughter is an idiot. She also clearly intimidates the hell out of her daughter; Leslie almost pulls the fire alarm when she sees that her mom actually came to her town hall meeting about the pit/park project.

As expected, some of the supporting cast got more opportunities to expand their personalities a bit. Ron is still as gruff a boss as we met, but now we've met his boss and seen what he looks like when he's sweating bullets. Suddenly, he has to want this park idea to work because it's what his boss wants, and you can tell he's just sick to death of it.

We also got to see more of Leslie's enthusiasm and ambition tonight as she canvassed the neighborhood insulting random mothers. In some ways, she seems to be even more of a trainwreck than Michael Scott at his most inept. Underneath all his bravado and psychosis, Michael is a great salesman. He's actually earned his position at Dunder-Mifflin through performance. Leslie, on the other hand, seems to be completely incompetent in her job position.

She lacks social skills, public speaking skills, organizational skills, and rational thinking. She did, however, come up with the brilliant idea of filibustering her own meeting to avoid an inevitably negative vote against her park project. Her talking points included a future where people blink their feelings to one another while flying around in space taxis. She discussed the brutal twisting to death of a town founder at the hands of Indians. Then, out of ideas, she began to read a book to them.

I will give her credit for getting out of the vote. It wasn't easy, but by allowing everyone at the meeting to bash her and her ideas, she was able to run down the clock until there wasn't time for one. So maybe she has a brain somewhere in there for when her back is completely against the wall.

I absolutely didn't' expect that the community wouldn't be behind Leslie's pet park project. It certainly lends more opportunity for conflict as we move through this six episode first season. Now it might be a struggle just to get the thing approved by the end of the show's run. While there weren't as many laughs in this episode, there was still enough charm to keep me interested. After all, there's only four more episodes to go after this.