Over at Maclean’s, Jaime Weinman (a great, vastly knowledgeable critic you should be reading regularly) has an insightful post wrestling with the question of why Parks and Recreation has a vastly improved second season, but it didn’t result in improved ratings. He posits that the problem was it didn’t retool in any visible way (recasting, etc.), it just got better—so people turned off by season one saw no reason to try it again.
I don’t have much to add to his analysis (except don’t underestimate how hard it is to sell people a sympathetic show about bureaucrats). But Weinman closes his post by embedding this great YouTube mashup (above) of P&R scenes with the theme from Friends, and I wonder if it suggests another theory: Is possible that people don’t watch Parks and Recreation simply because they don’t think it will be fun?
Answering the question involves the distinction between “fun” and “funny.” They are two different things, and while I think P&R is both, I wonder if people look at the packaging of the show—the title, the credits, &c.—and don’t see a show that promises them a good time.
This video includes some of the drop-dead funniest bits Parks and Rec has done: Leslie and Ann attacking a librarian and running, a killer Nick Offerman pratfall. But is silly as it seems to package the show with a peppy ’90s sitcom theme, the aggregate does something that P&R’s dry opening—with its archly ironic Americana theme and scenes of wholesome children enjoying public facilities—just does not. It grabs the viewer and says: “HEY! Do you like having FUN? Because you are going to have some AWESOME FUN with these AWESOME CHARACTERS! And they kiss, too!”
It promises, in other words, things that P&R actually delivers—slapstick, inventive situations and heart—rather than promising them wry amusement, about a parks department. (Consider the opposite case: Weinman noted to me on Twitter that the most popular sitcom is about two depressingly broken single men. But it’s got a peppy theme song!) And that’s not just about the theme and titles, but the series’ title, the premise, and the mockumentary style (which again, may be an easier sell with The Office, since that’s about people you can identify with as surrogate co-workers).
Now, I’m not saying that the producers should ditch P&R’s theme and credits, because I love them. But, you know, I also love Christopher Guest movies. I like wry amusement. It may be that no cosmetic change you could make to P&R would overcome the challenge of making Americans fall in love with government workers. But if nothing else, it’s an interesting thought exercise as to why people choose the comedies they do—and, unfortunately, don’t.
But I don’t know. Maybe they should just go with these credits:
