Tuned In
NBC spared a lot of fans a lot of nailbiting this afternoon and announced that it is bringing back Community, Parks and Recreation and The Office for another season. 30 Rock was already renewed as of last fall. As for the other Thursday comedies: there is a very, very low ratings bar at NBC right now, but Outsourced and Perfect Couples …
Tuned In
[vodpod id=Video.5784218&w=425&h=350&fv=]
TV’s reigning best sitcom, Parks and Recreation, returns tonight with the episode the rest of season 3 has been building toward: the Parks department attempts to pull off the Harvest Festival, on which its future depends. I don’t want to spoil much about what is the season’s best episode …
Tuned In
When I first pitched my editors for a return review of Parks and Recreation in its third season, the last thing I expected is that the show would end up being politically timely. But while TV’s best sitcom is scarcely a hard-hitting political statement, it’s hard to avoid the coincidence of a show about quirky Midwest bureaucrats …
Tuned InUncategorized
Spoilers for last night’s Parks and Recreation coming up:
We could talk endlessly here about the cast of characters on Parks and Recreation, but one of my favorite things about the show is how Pawnee itself has become a character. Episode by episode, it’s developed into one of the richest fictional towns since Springfield, Wherever, …
Tuned InUncategorized
[vodpod id=Video.5552894&w=425&h=350&fv=]
I watched the opening arc of this season of Parks and Recreation several weeks ago, so my memory is a bit shaky, but “Ron and Tammy II” was for my taste a little broader and wackier than P&R at its absolute best. (Whereas Ben’s subplot as “Calzone Boy” was an excellent example of how well the …
Tuned InUncategorized
[vodpod id=Video.5504885&w=425&h=350&fv=]
As I noted earlier this morning, I wrote my farewell column for Friday Night Lights on the show’s theme of community and interdependence: the way it shows how sustaining (and sometimes infuriating) a small town’s network of relationships and reliance can be. If I had two or three times the …
Tuned InUncategorized
[vodpod id=Video.5451784&w=425&h=350&fv=]
So here’s the deal: Now that Parks and Recreation is back and Archer has returned, on Thursday night we have several sitcoms that are capable of delivering a killer episode. Last season I tried for a while doing a picture gallery of Thursday comedies with paragraph reviews, but I felt I managed …
Tuned InUncategorized
The title of the return episode of Parks and Recreation was “Go Big or Go Home,” which had meaning on a few levels. It was Leslie’s advice to Andy about April; it was Leslie’s philosophy in proposing the Harvest Festival, doubling down on the Parks department’s ability to make life better for Pawnee; and it seems, in a meta sense, like a …
Tuned InUncategorized
[vodpod id=Video.5386729&w=425&h=350&fv=]
What are you doing tonight? You are watching the best comedy on television, Parks and Recreation, as it finally returns to NBC after eight months off the air. (The rest of NBC’s new three-hour sitcom schedule—Comedy Night Frequently Done Right, Sometimes Not So Much, But What’re You Gonna …
Tuned InUncategorized
The pit in NBC’s Thursday night is finally being filled.
NBC announced its midseason schedule today, and if you’re like me, what you really care about is that Parks and Recreation is finally coming back on Jan. 20—and in an actual good time slot, or as close to one as you can get on NBC. The comedy will now air at 9:30, after The …
Tuned InUncategorized
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq5lIwkupJU]
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 …
Tuned InUncategorized
Because of a mad rush of stuff at the end of last week and the beginning of this one, I didn’t manage end-of-season writeups on any of NBC’s Thursday comedies except The Office. Tuned Inlanders have asked about them since then, and thought I might as well post something an even week later. Briefly, then, and starting with Community …
Tuned InUncategorized
[vodpod id=Video.3631433&w=425&h=350&fv=]
Attention, TV watchers, advertisers and Hollywood: NBC is determined to prove to you that it is once again dedicated to Quality Television. And it’s going to prove it to you by benching its best comedy. (Its best show, period, excepting Friday Night Lights, which half belongs to DirecTV.) Parks …
