Parks and Recreation - Season 2

I said last year that while Parks and Recreation wasn't that amazing out of the gate, its sister show The Office wasn't either, and with time it could become something special. I didn't imagine it would get this good this fast, though. Definitely the most improved show of the year, which just makes it all the worse that NBC made the bone-headed decision to use the third season as a midseason replacement for some other upstart comedy. I get that they have a lot of faith in their new stuff, but that doesn't mean they had to pull this.

One of the things that made this season so much better is that the cast seems more comfortable and works together a lot better. Everything just hums with electricity when they're all in their zones, riffing and joking at light speed. By the time Andy is working as a shoeshine, it's pretty much golden. I wasn't a huge fan of how Jerry became a punching bag on the level of Meg Griffin, but otherwise these characters and relationships were so funny and well written that it seemed like they'd all been doing this for years. I can't say I was interested in the various romantic entanglements as much as they wanted me to be, but it didn't interfere with the comedy so it was fine by me. Leslie's brief relationship with a cop might have been the most enjoyable, mostly because of Louis C.K.'s understated performance.

At this point, the show is better off than its counterpart in Scranton. It's definitely on the upswing rather than the decline, and assuming this whole midseason fiasco doesn't harpoon it, it could be good for a while. They get a lot of good guest stars that don't feel like stunt casting, they seem to have a whole lot of things they could do with it, and it often just crackles with energy. You might not expect that they could get that much out of something like an opossum on a golf course, but then laugh your ass off for half an hour. It's definitely gonna be a long wait for the next episode.