Parks and Recreation Coverage: Back to School

‘Parks and Recreation’ Episode Commentary: The Smallest Park

In this continuity-focused era of television storytelling, nothing is more important than breaking new ground.

With “The Smallest Park,” “Parks and Recreation” came dangerously close to formulaic, and admittedly for much of the episode it was just that: recapitulating the same situations with the same characters, with no new developments.

The premise is promising—Leslie and Ben work together to create a new park, on that, at 0.000003 square miles, would be the smallest in Indiana.

Unfortunately, the script’s creativity ends there.

For the third week in a row, we get Leslie and Ben giving long monologues about their current status, some of which sound cribbed verbatim from last week.  We get Leslie hysterically attempting to have it both ways, we get Ben trying to be the grown-up and failing.

We’ve been here and we’ve seen this.

The subplot is not any better.  Despite his return to the Pawnee parks department, Tom Haverford can’t give up his entrepreneurial fantasies, and uses a simple assignment from Chris Traeger as a way to indulge his hipster delusions.

In short, we get several very-familiar sounding speeches from Tom outlining his always-bad ideas.  We’ve seen Tom try to act like he owns the world and humiliate himself countless times.  We saw it last week, and the week before that, and the week before that.  It’s just not that funny anymore.

Thankfully, the third plotline is more rewarding: Andy Dwyer returns to school, and tries to decide which class to take, with the help of April and Ron.  We see a new side of Andy, plus a hint of Ron’s charm with the ladies, and another example of Ron’s hidden, gentle nature, but presented in a way that feels new.

As for the other storylines, the last few minutes are better.  Leslie and Ben go through the same boom-bust cycle, but appear to break it by getting back together.  Tom actually comes up with a good idea, proving that he has potential once he checks his grandiosity.

The new developments late are not enough to save the whole episode, though.  This is a show that needs to grow and develop continuously in order to remain vital, and in “The Smallest Park” felt too repetitive too often to be rewarding.  “Parks and Rec” isn’t capable of being bad, but sometimes it does, sadly, fail to be great.