PARKS and RECREATION

S03E08
"Camping" (A)

          Being pressured to come up with a great idea after you've had an incredible one is quite the burden.  Thom Yorke famously had a mental breakdown after the glowing critical reception he received following "OK Computer".  Leslie Knope follows suit.


          The Pawnee Harvest Festival was a resouding success, despite media hype over an alleged curse due to the region's numerous atrocities.  City Manager Paul Iaresco (Phil Reeves) hold a press conference, during which he announces that he is greatly anticipating the next idea Leslie has to offer.  He then collapses in a state of cardiac arrest, inadvertently clutching Leslie's right breast as he collapses.  Parks and Rec has done (and continues to do) some of the best cold opens I've ever seen, and this ranks among the best.



          In her desperation to find the next great Pawnee event, Leslie decides to organize a "mandatory work retreat", so she and her colleagues can brainstorm together, isolated from the distractions of modern life.  However, deprived of the comforts of modern life, her colleagues can't help but be distracted by their absence.  That is, except for Tom, who has brought nearly every one of his SkyMall-bought gadgets from home, and is powering them from an as-yet-undisclosed source.


          Ron and Jerry go to catch fish for dinner, but their venture is not a successful one, and, much to Ron's chagrin, Jerry feels this is an opportune moment to confide in an unwilling confidant.  Leslie, in all of her anxiety, had not planned the camping trip very well, as her provisions, which consist of s'more fixin's, have been exhausted.  After a near-unanimous decision to return to the comforts of Pawnee, the group discovers the battery of the van has been depleted by Tom's SkyMall collection.


          Lacking any better option, Team Parks & Rec hikes to a nearby bed and breakfast, a place so old-fashioned it's only slightly better than camping.  Breakfast is served between 5:30 and 6:15, and if you're not up by then, well, that's just rude.  The end result: Leslie, refusing to sleep before she comes up with an idea, is locked in a room (with at least fifty cats) by Ron, and is apparently subdued into slumber by a lack of municipal stimuli.


          Almost this entire time, Andy has been MIA, after having promised April that he would help make the trip worthwile, with promises of booze and makeout sessions.  The well-meaning-yet-inept Andy set up a romantic campsite nowhere near the vicinity of where he was supposed to be, and spent most of the episode bumbling his way through the Indiana wilderness.  Eventually, he finds the group at the B & B, and provides April with the makeout sessions, but most of the champagne is gone, as he had to consume it in order to survive his journey.  Andy's character has become more and more likable as the series continues (his cracking up at identities being stolen and accounts being frozen was sublimely funny) but his female counterpart, April, is becoming less and less likable.  The overly apathetic Gen-Y card is getting increasingly stale, and now that she has finally coupled with Andy her character has become decidedly less interesting.  If she doesn't evolve as a character I have no doubt that viewers will sour on her, much as they have with 30 Rock's Kenneth.  Is it a coincidence that, prior to appearing on Parks & Rec, Aubrey Plaza had a single-episode appearance as an NBC page on that same show?


          In the end, Leslie is born again, and following her indulgence in a seven-hour night of sleep (double her norm) she emerges with seemingly boundless energy and a plethora of ideas of municipal projects.  Projects, I should add, that have nothing to do with building a park on the vacant lot that used to be the center of the show.  It's one hell of a running joke.


           The show started quite well with the cold open, but the closing credit accompaniment was quite marvelous as well.  We see Ben and Jerry being entertained by the proprietor of the bed and breakfast, who is playing the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on a harpsichord.  Jerry is in a state of ecstasy, swaying to the music with a cat in his lap, while Ben is looking for an escape route.  Cut to a talking head shot of Ben, saying "Yeah, she died twenty minutes after that."


          God, I fucking love this show.


Potent Quotables
This episode was a mammoth of quotable lines.

• "That was...the second most awkward way a man has ever grabbed my breast."
• "No, Tom, don't!  Her boob kills!"
• "Well...I salsa...your face."
• "Wow, the sky is really beautiful."  "It's pollution from the Sweetums factory, but is it worth the asthma."  "No."
• "...and when she looked in the back of her car, she saw that, even though it was her own private property, she would be forced to bring it in....FOR A STATE INSPECTION!!"
• "We have nothing to eat.  Jerry scared all the fish away with his loud, personal stories."
• "The fuck is a German muffin?"

Periphery

• It's well concealed during the first half of the episode, but toward the end Amy Poehler is quite noticably pregnant.  Either the writers are going to have to send her character on some sort of sabbatical, or they'll have to explain that she's pregnant with the Louis C.K. character's child.  Normally, I'm all for a guest appearance by him on any given show, but his character kinda....well...sucked.  It's not his fault, how funny can he really be when he has to be passed through the Standards and Practices filter of network tv?

Tags: Parks and Recreation, Parks & Rec, NBC Thursday, Amy Poehler, Leslie Knope, Nick Offerman, Ron Swanson, Spam, Spam, Eggs, Sausage, and Spam, Aubrey Plaza, April Ludgate, Chris Pratt, Andy Dwyer, Parks and Recreation Is the Wu-Tang of Comedy, For Realz.