Parks and Recreation - Season 3

The constantly-reinventing-itself Community is still my favorite comedy on TV, but if it didn't exist, Parks and Rec would be a perfectly admirable substitute. The additions of Adam Scott and Rob Lowe as regular characters does a good job of growing the show a bit without interfering with the chemistry that had already been built. They fit right in, with Lowe as Chris, the super eager and optimistic new guy running the city government, and Scott as Ben, a disgraced former 18 year old mayor who's now a budget expert. They were introduced at the end of season two to kind of push the plot along, but they're fully integrated into the cast this time, with Chris' new ideas disrupting the flow in the office, especially for Ron, and Ben being both lovably awkward and an interesting match for Leslie. I like how the show has handled relationships, not wasting too much time dancing around the idea before having actual fun with it.

It's not just there where the show is as enjoyable as ever - every character seems to be getting better with age. Donna isn't quite as funny as the show wants her to be, but she at least has a full personality now, and the way they've explored Jerry's interests makes him a more worthwhile punching bag. Tom's big city attitude in a small town schtick gets a lot of play to, and the end of his arc this season is one of the things that has me most excited for this fall, when the show is thankfully returning this time. They only had 16 episodes to screw around with, but they generally made the most of them,  expanding on the insane little universe the show takes place in, with some of my favorite bits being Perd Hapley's talk show and the fabulously wealthy citizenship of nearby Eagleton. I like that there's a continuity in there too, with certain wacky citizens coming back when appropriate, and basically any scene where a bunch of town folk are in the room together is fun. Not every moment is great, and the show has some really weird identity issues that revolve around the whole mockumentary thing. But it's still an exceptionally funny and joyful show, with a fantastic and growing cast (I didn't miss Mark once) and a great sense of where it's going. I don't want to speak too soon, but when all is said and done, I think Parks might end up being viewed as a better series than The Office. At least by me.

The Social Network

It's not actually my favorite movie of 2010, but The Social Network represents, possibly by far, the best coming together of writing, directing, and acting that I've seen from last year. There's just immense skill on display through the entire thing.  Aaron Sorkin's screenplay is so great that you could be justified in posting the entire thing on a webpage for memorable quotes. The structure is clever in doling out information while leaving you anticipating the next scene, and the dialogue is just unbelievable. And while the negative connotation of that word could be applied, it doesn't matter because the point isn't for the characters to sound real, but just to be constantly entertaining to listen to. It's the same thing with the inaccuracies in the story - the broad strokes of Facebook's creation seem to be mostly correct, so who cares if things that happen between characters are changed for dramatic effect? It's a movie.

Meanwhile, David Fincher's direction is excellent as well. He's not the most consistent filmmaker I can think of, but with the right project he can knock one out of the park, and even the lesser movies he's directed still have his style, which makes most things more interesting. He gets great collaborations out of his cinematographer and composers, including Trent Reznor, who provide a memorably and unsettling score. Even with the script, the movie might not have worked without the sinister mood all these people worked to create, and seems key to making a film hinging on something as pop culture-focused as Facebook still work.

And the cast is great from top to bottom. Jesse Eisenberg finally and definitively casts aside the Michael Cera comparisons with his depiction of Mark Zuckerberg, a brilliant programmer and wordsmith but someone who doesn't really know how to act around people. His relationship with friend and site co-founder Eduardo Saverin is key to the story have any emotional resonance, and Andrew Garfield more than holds up his side of that in the role. There's something odd about the film's version of Sean Parker, the guy behind the business side of Napster who impresses Zuckerberg with his business ideas and eventually becomes a partner. The movie seems to conflate him with the more famous Shawn Fanning, and it's also strange how he seems more like a rock star than a young, bright business man, which is further encouraged by him being played by Justin Timberlake. But it somehow works for the film's purposes, and Timberlake does a fine job. Fincher's use of technology to enhance a movie without using obvious, overbearing effects has always been intriguing, and having Armie Hammer play both of the Winklevoss twins because he was right for the part instead of just picking two real twins pays off. Women aren't really a big part of Zuckerberg's life after he gets the Facebook idea, even leading to some accusations of misogyny in the film, but Rooney Mara and Rashida Jones are both good in supporting roles as the ex-girlfriend who sets the whole thing in motion and a junior lawyer who sympathizes with his position.

So the movie is pretty brilliant from start to finish, with all of the elements I've described thrown together and allowed to thrive for two hours. There aren't really any particularly special moments that stood out to me and made me exclaim at how good the movie was, but consistently excellent filmmaking is worth applauding too. I'm not sure if it will quite earn too many of the incredibly talented people involved the academy awards they might deserve with The King's Speech (another film I hope to see soon) kind of looking to me like an unstoppable juggernaut at this point, but whatever the case it's still a great movie just absolutely packed with killer dialogue and great performances. There's just so many quotes running through my head right now. It would be a shame to settle for just one, so I'll instead just say you should see this movie if you haven't yet.

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.

I Love You, Man

You might guess this is another Apatow movie, but it's really just another of the several that have successfully modeled themselves after his revival of the R-rated comedy this past decade. It's actually not that similar stylistically in a lot of ways, although it's hard deny a bit of influence. The cast is pretty great, with all sorts of talent, both familiar and up and coming sprinkled throughout. The pedigree of the writer and director isn't fantastic, but they managed a solid hit with this. Paul Rudd is maybe a bit off-type, playing a guy who gets along with women and is a great boyfriend but never really connected deeply with another guy. After proposing to Rashida Jones, he realizes he doesn't even have a decent candidate for his best man, so he starts going on "man dates" looking for a friend. It's a cute idea, reversing the normal focus of a romantic comedy, and it sort of is the pinnacle of the bromance sub-genre. Eventually he meets Jason Segel, the two hit it off, and then there's the standard formula of growing friendship, troubles, and reconciliation right before the end (if you think that's a spoiler then you obviously have never seen a motion picture before).

So a lot of it is just Paul and Jason hanging out together, and Paul briefly seeing other guys played by a bunch of recognizable faces. Some of the better smaller parts are Andy Samberg and J.K. Simmons as his gay brother and dad respectively, and Jon Favreau as the dick husband of one of Jones' best friends, played by Jaime Pressly. A lot of the humor is fairly typical of modern comedy, although there were some unique bits that were pretty good. Throughout the movie Rudd can't help but try to come up with clever phrases in an attempt to sound cool and failing utterly, with each bomb funnier than the last. The best might have been "totes magotes" in place of totally, but it's hard to say. Certain things like Segel's "return the favor" engagement party toast were gold, and even something that could have seemed uninspired like the Lou Ferrigno part were saved by touches like the matter of fact the way others treat him with reverence. It's not a particularly groundbreaking movie and I'm not sure if I'll remember much of it a year from now, but as a simple funny movie it succeeds fairly well.

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.