Rob Lowe is mysteriously missing from this cast picture. One can only assume he was off running a light 12-k.
Warning: Article contains spoilers.
After its roundly fantastic fifth season premiere, Parks and Recreation took a step down in quality with follow-up “Soda Tax.” It’s far from a terrible half-hour of television, but it’s a bit scattered and doesn’t milk its premise for all the laughs or pathos it could.
The episode’s biggest development is that Leslie’s finally taken her seat on the city council and is shepherding her first bill, a tax on oversized sodas clearly inspired by Michael Bloomberg’s infamous ban on large sugary drinks, towards passage.
Strangely, her arrival on the council arrives without much fanfare; there’s no swearing-in ceremony, no celebration – all of a sudden, she’s discussing bills with Ann, with no prior indication that she had even begun her duties as a councilperson. This isn’t a complaint – it’s probably even a good thing, as “Soda Tax” could stand to be tighter and throwing in more exposition wouldn’t help in that regard – but there was so much build up to this moment that it seemed a touch underwhelming to have the culmination of all of last season’s efforts go virtually unremarked on.
(Also odd: That the show would base Leslie’s first act on a measure as widely unpopular as Bloomberg’s. It fits with her do-gooder idealism, but it’s interesting to consider why the writing staff picked this as her pet project over anything else. Maybe showrunner Michael Schur is a Traeger-esque health nut or something.)
The tax runs into opposition from the Pawnee Restaurant Association, represented by Kathryn Pinewood, who I sincerely hope becomes a recurring character. Parks and Rec is great at zeroing in a particular “type” peculiar to American politics and then twisting it to comic effect – think Marcia Langman, the family-values advocate of “Pawnee Zoo” and “Time Capsule.” But while Marcia is all overbearing, holier-than-thou judgment, a soccer mom who uses guilt and passive-aggression to force her conservative values on everyone else, Kathryn is a walking press release, the prim, smiling, but vaguely inhuman face of a corporate entity. She looks like she walked out of a stock photo and everything she says sounds like it was submitted to a half-dozen focus groups. She’s a great comic creation – I love the way she can make things like “It’s roughly the size of a two-year-old child, if the child were liquefied” sound perfectly reasonable – and I hope she crops again as a nemesis for Leslie.
The show has only grown bolder in portraying how corporate influence poisons the democratic process and deepens that theme here. When Leslie refuses to back down on the tax, Kathryn threatens to tell the press that the effort will cost at least 100 fast-food employees their jobs. Leslie thinks it’s a bluff, but it ultimately doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. (Well, to public perception, anyway. I’m sure it matters to the 100 employees.) People believe it regardless and show up to a public forum to yell that Leslie needs to be recalled. (Also: That income tax is illegal, that fast food ruins marriages, that there should be a vagina tax, etc. More or less what you would expect from the citizens of Pawnee.)
So, when it comes time for her to cast her vote, Leslie ends up panic-vomiting – and then, as she is wont to do, inexplicably breaking out her English accent to mayhaps request a recess. This is all pretty funny – public forums and Amy Poehler awkwardly doing accents are both reliable sources of comedy – but some of it feels recycled. The “making political decisions is hard!” theme is a viable one, but it’s one the show covered similarly in “Live Ammo,” and “Soda Tax” lacks that episode’s sense of urgency. There was the feeling in “Live Ammo” that Leslie’s decisions could legitimately affect both her own chances at election and the health of the city’s institutions. It’s hard to care as much about a tax on soda and the threats of a recall and layoffs don’t amount to much. Maybe this will be addressed in the next episode, but for now it feels like a lot of setup and very little payoff. (It does, however, provide us with the excellent scene where Ron reveals he tried to fire Leslie not once but four times.)
Meanwhile, in another development from “Win, Lose or Draw” that only pays off here, Andy starts training for his police physical with the aid of Chris, the master of all things physical – but not mental, as the episode notes. In fact, Andy’s training turns out to largely be an excuse to examine Chris, which is a very welcome development. As good as Rob Lowe is, Chris sometimes feels like a one-joke character (He’s really optimistic and fit! And…not much else.), so it’s nice to see him finally receive some additional shading. His relentless positivity and obsession with physical fitness have always seemed like they might be compensating for some deeper dissatisfaction (even depression) and a more thorough exploration of his character has been long overdue. Sure, the episode might spell this out a bit too obviously in places, but I’m mostly just glad to see the show (or any show, really) tackle mental health issues. Plus, it’s delightful as always to just watch Chris Pratt and Aziz Ansari do their respective things.
That brings us to our third plotline, which was easily the weakest of the lot. Ben and April are still stranded out in D.C., and their isolation from the rest of the cast is really starting to put a strain on the show. They’re both great characters, but they don’t have anyone to interact with but each other – and that’s already getting old. The plotline feels a lot like when Jim from The Office was stuck in Stamford at the beginning of that show’s third season, but at least that excursion introduced interesting new faces in Rashida Jones and Ed Helms. The only fresh supporting player we get in D.C. is Ellis, the kind of generic prep-school douchebag you’ve seen a zillion times before. He’s not exactly the show’s greatest creation.
The show’s committed to letting its characters grow, which is admirable, but it brings with it some real risks. Sitcoms rely on the dependability of their dynamics – no matter what, the gang always ends up back at the Cheers bar or the Greendale study room or what have you. But growth means growing apart and expanding beyond those carefully-defined relationships and settings. We want to see Ben pursue his dreams and run a congressional campaign, but we also want to see him awkwardly flirt with Leslie and make nerdy pop-culture references that make Tom groan.
Parks is attempting to have its cake and eat it too. It’s created a couple of smart, ambitious characters in Ben and Leslie and it would be a shame for them to never advance beyond the Parks Department. But having them move past it also means disrupting the ensemble dynamics that made the show so great. Ben spends the whole episode interacting with April and Ellis, while Ann is the only regular cast member Leslie gets to interact with for most of the runtime. They’re pursuing their dreams, but they’ve been cut off from the main cast in the process.
The show avoided this problem in the premiere by splitting the cast into two large groups – Ben, Leslie, April and Andy in D.C., everyone else at the cookout – but I really hope “Soda Tax” isn’t the model for the show going forward. It’s not a bad episode – it’s pretty good, even – but it does a very poor job of integrating the entire cast, which is normally one of the show’s strengths. (Ron, Tom, Donna and Jerry all get very little to do, for instance.) It’s a tough balancing act, finding a way for characters evolve while maintaining the original premise, but if any show can pull it off, it’s Parks and Rec.
Tidbits:
–Adam Scott is very good at trying way too hard to seem relaxed. “Grab a slice of ‘za, brah!”
–Leslie’s care package(s) to Ben includes waffle mix and Batman comic books. They are the best.
–Andy’s care package to April, on the other hand, seems to contain only a Mouse Rat CD and some dirty clothes. They are still also the best.
–They finally ran Sue’s Salads out of town. Good riddance.
–Andy is about as fit as I am. (However, I don’t immediately strip down to my boxers when I’m done exercising, as is his technique.)
–Pawnee’s many fine restaurants include Paunchburger, Big-N-Wide, The Fat Sack and Colonel Plump’s Slop Trough.
–They also feature Zero Water, which has 300 calories and no water. (Be sure to also try Diet Zero Water Lite, which only has 60 calories.)
–Andy’s butt wiggle has to already be a .gif, right? What else are you doing, Internet?
–“You are way better at laundry, can you do mine and send it back to me?”
–“PS: Please hurry, I’ve been wearing a bandana as underwear for three days now.”
–“I’ll never be a cop. I’m gonna have to be a robber.”
–“We’re not taxing anyone’s genitals.”
–“Most people call it a gallon, but they call it a regular.”
–“It’s a perfect recreation of Han Lu’s car in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Weirdly, so far no one has noticed.”
–“Someone please tell me we Kodaked that moment!”
–“Nothing: The silent killer.”
–“Andy, I’m proud of you. Not because of what you did, which was terrible, but because of what I’m going to be able to get you to do. I guess I’m proud of me.”
–“I finally met the minimum requirement. Minimum champion!”
–“You were insubordinate, stubborn, a pain in my ass and, worst of all, bubbly.”
–“Ellis hates you and he has herpes.”
rgifford@umdbk.com
