My experience with Parks & Rec reiterates my feeling that shows are better when compressed. I seem to always enjoy a series more when I can watch them one after another. I can’t explain why, and it might be a personal thing, but for comedies especially I get more out of them when I can watch them in chunks of 3 or 4 episodes at a time.
At the beginning of Parks & Rec I definitely liked April and Tom Haverford the best. They were the funniest. As time has gone on both have become annoying. Aubrey Plaza’s facial expressions to the camera are growing old, much like Jim Halpert’s looks at the camera in The Office. By the fourth season Tom is also bordering on annoyance, but I think that is more deliberate. As those characters have fallen out of favor Ron Swanson has stepped it up. I also wasn’t a huge fan of Leslie Knope right of the bat, but she is growing on me. Same with Andy Dwire.
Coming into the fourth season I can see the show starting to get a little stale, but it won’t matter because I will be through it by next week. However, that is the end of the Netflix line and season five probably won’t shot up for a while. It will work out well. I will be ready to take a little break from the citizens of Pawnee. But I will definitely be happy to catch back up with them in a few months.
The next tv show we hit up on Netflix will be Arrested Development. Yes, I am admitting I still haven’t watched it. I started watching season one last year and didn’t really get into it. Blasphemous I know. However, I am intrigued enough to get back to it and make it to the end of the most current season released exclusively on Netflix.
I’m also looking forward to checking out Mad Men, and think that experience will also be improved by not having to watch a single episode a week.
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It seems so strange to write out the word Recreation, but that is technically what the show is called. However, this will be the only time I do it. ↩
Filed Under: Comedy, Netflix, Parks & Rec, Television