Parks and Recreation - Season 1

To be honest, the thing I liked the most about this batch of six episodes was the opening theme. It's delightfully chipper. That doesn't mean I don't like the show itself though, which is a pretty good if not great mimic of the style from its sister series The Office. It's created by some of the same people, and that definitely shows. I've seen people call it a rip-off, which is weird because plenty of creators who keep the same feel among their separate projects don't get the same knock, but there is something unique enough about the mockumentary-about-mundane-setting-with-wacky-people to maybe raise an eyebrow or two. Still, I thought it did enough to create it's own identity.

One thing to remember is that The US Office was a bit shaky in its first brief run as well. It took some time to get out of the UK original's shadow, and we could be seeing the same thing here. The comedy here was sometimes restrained to brief flashes of brilliance and Amy Poehler's combination of likability, blockheadedness, and romantic ineptitude is a bit too reminiscent of Steve Carell's Michael Scott, but I still mostly enjoyed watching it. Aziz Ansari has emerged in the last couple years with small parts on shows like Flight of the Conchords and Scrubs, and he's probably the brightest spot in the first season. His way of getting in fairly vicious jabs at people without them even realizing what he's doing never gets old, and he and Poehler work well together.