Emmys

The Emmy Nominations will announced tomorrow morning July 8. So cross your fingers! I will post the results if they are acceptable (in other words if people are smart and P&R is nominated!)

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Parks and Recreation MUST come back in the fall of 2010, not January 2011!

Sign the online petition here!!!!!

NBC pushes P&R to midseason next year

From Maclean’s:

[T]he key fact about Outsourced is that it’s taking the spot that would normally have gone to Parks & Recreation, forcing that show to be delayed until mid-season. NBC was considering opening up another night of comedy; when they chose to make Thursday their only comedy night (including Love Bites, a new hour-long show that’s a hybrid of comedy and anthology — basically, The Love Boat on land), that left them with the choice between keeping the 8 to 10 period more or less as it was, or bumping an already-renewed show to make room for a new one. They chose the latter, and the show they decided to bump was Parks. The show has already — presumably in anticipation of Amy Poehler’s pregnancy — shot some episodes for its third season, so it will go on a short production hiatus and then resume production for mid-season. How long the new season turns out to be depends on how soon Outsourced gets canceled.

Parks has probably been, overall, the best of NBC’s four comedies this season; Community has had great individual episodes, and I haven’t been as disappointed with The Office as some (but then, that’s the only show in that group that I have loved without reservation, so I can forgive it a lot), but Parks not only made the expected second-season improvement, it ruthlessly weeded out all the faults of its first season, learned to do things that no other current show was doing — the mix of small-town comedy with political and media satire recalls Newhart, but no recent U.S. show — and maximized the strengths of most of its performers and characters. Greg Daniels is good at making his shows a lot better really quickly; his shows have a wonderful combination of artistry and efficiency, like he’s figured out the secret of producing great, personal television art in a businesslike way.

2009 Honors so Far!

Third in LA Times’ list of the top 10 good things about TV in 2009!

Yahoo! TV names Ron Swanson one of TV’s most fascinating characters

Amy Poehler hits top 15 in People magazine’s top 100 people list

San Francisco Chronicle said Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman are two of 18 TV actors who truly stood out this season.

18 Standout TV actors of 2009 (San Francisco Chronicle)

Top 10 Shows of 2009: The Best, and the Rest (TIME magazine)

TV Gal names Leslie Knope as one of her favorite characters of 2009

Aubrey Plaza-The Twelve Days of Festivus: Eleven babes worth watchin’ (TV Squad)

Best and Worst TV of 2009: Allison’s list (TV Squad)

Best and Worst TV of 2009: Joel’s list (TV Squad)

Pop Candy’s 100 People of 2009 (USA Today)

Top TV Stories of 2009: The return of the sitcom (TV Squad)

NBC’s Parks and Recreation is one of TV’s finest comedies in 2009 (Examiner.com)

GQ’s Sitcom of the Year: Parks and Recreation

The Huffington Post names Amy Poehler and Aziz Ansari as two of the funniest people of the decade

TIME dubs Parks and Recreation one of the year’s best TV shows

Best of 2009: Comedy Series (IGN.com)

My Favorite TV Characters of 2009 (Zap2it)

My Top 20 TV shows of 2009 (Entertainment Weekly)

Best of 2009 (salon.com)

Killer Dads and Family Comedies: The Best TV of 2009 (New York magazine)

In the top 3!

Parks and Recreation a top 3 comedy according to San Francisco Chronicle
December 14th, 2009
From San Francisco Chronicle:

It’s the Comeback Series of the Year after dropping six mostly uninspired episodes on viewers last season. Now everything is clicking and the laughs are smart and surprising. Another series with nary a creative misstep. NBC gets credit for sticking with it, and the writers should be applauded for fleshing out the supporting cast while spreading around the jokes.

Here’s the complete list:

30 Rock
Modern Family
Parks and Recreation
Better Off Ted
Curb Your Enthusiasm
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Bored to Death
Hung
The Office
Flight of the Concords
How I Met Your Mother
The League
Community

P&R holiday E-cards

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P&R Trivia Game

Play Parks and Rec games here!

GQs Sitcom of the Year: Parks and Recreation!

With all due respect to fans of Modern Family, The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm, when ?uestlove of The Roots wrote last week that Parks and Rec is the Wu Tang of Comedy, he nailed it. This, no doubt, comes as a shock to people who dipped their toes in last season and left disappointed. We know. We understand. The first six episodes blew. The creative team has said that run last spring was really one extended pilot. That's true—and a shame. Because it turned off a lot of viewers

But while no one was watching, the focus changed. Amy Poeher's parks commissioner Leslie softened. The limp romance between Mark (Paul Schneider) and Ann (Rashida Jones) moved to the background. The true lunatic weirdness of the show—from Chris Pratt's pit-dwelling, shoe-shining, Deal Or No Deal-auditioning Andy to Nick Offerman's lover of brown haired ladies and breakfast food Ron Swanson—started to emerge. It's got the deepest bench on TV. (Aziz Anzari = brilliant. Aubrey Plaza is our biggest entertainment crush right now.) The best guest stars. (LouisCK, Megan Mullally, Fred Armisan.) And, of course, Amy Poehler, whose warmth and willingness to totally humiliate herself confirmed what we always knew: she's one of the best comedians working today.

For all that, though, the real star of the show is Pawnee. Unlike The Office, which exists in a hermetically sealed lucite box of sadness that hits WAY too close to home these days, Parks and Recreation pulls back the lens and lets the town become a character. Just off the top of my head, here are a few details of what we've learned about Indiana's finest city. It has...

–An anti-semitic past that is celebrated in mural form
–A library department that is a group of "punk ass book jockeys" and the "worst group of people ever assembled"
–Raccoons that aren't nocturnal and tend to attack children
–A sewer department overrun with floozies
–A gay bar and a strip club and a nipple factory and a restaurant named The Jurrasic Fork
–And, of course, a giant pit that the government can't seem to get filled

Reminds you of something, doesn't it? Springfield. And while we know that any comparison's to the Golden Age of The Simpsons is heady praise that borders on sacrilege, it's deserved. Parks and Recreation is absurd. Hilarious. Packed with polished jokes, unexpected turns, and boasting real heart. Simply put, this is the funniest show on television right now. America, start watching. You're missing something special.

(We'll return to our regularly scheduled power rankings when the NBC lineup returns after the holidays.)
— Dan Fierman

TIME names P&R one of the years best!

TIME dubs Parks and Recreation one of the year’s best TV shows

TIME magazine’s James Poniewozik published his top 10 TV shows of 2009. You know what made the cut? Parks and Recreation, tied at No. 10 with another NBC Thursday night comedy, The Office.

Here’s what Poniewozik said about Parks:

After a shaky start, Parks found its offbeat voice, focusing on bureaucrat Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and the citizens and civil servants of Pawnee, Ind. Knope fights doggedly for a pet project (turning an abandoned pit into a park), battling red tape, an evil library department and her own overenthusiasm. This sly but optimistic civic satire may be the first distinctive comedy of the Obama era.

And, of course, the list:

1. Mad Men
2. Modern Family
3. Breaking Bad
4. Big Love
5. Battlestar Galactica
6. Lost
7. Friday Night Lights
8. Glee
9. Sons of Anarchy
10. The Office / Parks and Recreation (tie)

Congratulations, Parks cast, crew and staff!

TIME names P&R one of the years best!

TIME dubs Parks and Recreation one of the year’s best TV shows

TIME magazine’s James Poniewozik published his top 10 TV shows of 2009. You know what made the cut? Parks and Recreation, tied at No. 10 with another NBC Thursday night comedy, The Office.

Here’s what Poniewozik said about Parks:

After a shaky start, Parks found its offbeat voice, focusing on bureaucrat Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and the citizens and civil servants of Pawnee, Ind. Knope fights doggedly for a pet project (turning an abandoned pit into a park), battling red tape, an evil library department and her own overenthusiasm. This sly but optimistic civic satire may be the first distinctive comedy of the Obama era.

And, of course, the list:

1. Mad Men
2. Modern Family
3. Breaking Bad
4. Big Love
5. Battlestar Galactica
6. Lost
7. Friday Night Lights
8. Glee
9. Sons of Anarchy
10. The Office / Parks and Recreation (tie)

Congratulations, Parks cast, crew and staff!

YOU REALLY SHOULD BE WATCHING P&R!

Parks and Recreation review in Slate magazine
December 2nd, 2009
From Slate:

In the world of meager TV ratings, the line separating a loser from an underdog can be blurry, but with its second season, Parks and Recreation has vaulted definitively into the latter category. Contributors to Salon, the Los Angeles Times, and New York are among those who have rallied on behalf of the show, which has gone from an erratically funny nonevent to astonishingly good.
Leslie has become less of a punching bag (or, rather, a more multifaceted one), and Ann has dumped Andy. These shifts in plotting have freed up the writers to make better use of the ensemble cast, where charm runs deep into the bench: Who knew that Jerry, a pencil-pushing piece of Season 1 furniture, would blossom into a hilariously tragic office Eeyore?
The season truly hit its stride with the fourth episode, “Practice Date,” in which the characters dug up dirt on one another in an office background-check game—a funny, economical way to bring them more vividly to life. Tom, we learned, is in a sham marriage, hitched to a Canadian hottie not because of his Casanova talents but because she needed a green card. The revelation at once punctured his slimy façade and deepened our sympathies for him.
Unburdened by the pit plot, the show’s writers have also taken aim at targets beyond an ineffectual City Hall: a hypocritical beauty pageant here (a turkey shoot no less enjoyable for its familiarity), hysteria over gay marriage there (as provoked by a pair of homosexual zoo penguins). And the writers have been making ever more frequent detours into an inspired absurdity that tugs against and tweaks the show’s bureaucratic backdrop. In “The Camel,” Leslie’s boss was brought to the verge of orgasm (and beyond?) by a good shoeshine; in “The Hunting Trip,” we watched as Tom and several others convinced themselves they were being stalked by the Predator.

LA Times: Parks and Rec is building success

'Parks and Recreation' is building success
After a slow start in front of a skeptical audience, the second-season sitcom has become a critical favorite under series creators Greg Daniels and Michael Schur.
In the NBC comedy "Parks and Recreation," Amy Poehler plays Leslie Knope, an upbeat, low-level bureaucrat determined to make the fictional town of Pawnee, Ind., a better place.

Leslie's cheerful, tireless ambition in the face of cynics is echoed by series creators Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, who previously gave us "The Office." And who can blame them? Few industry observers thought "Parks," which launched as a midseason replacement last spring, would survive even this long.

First, there were production delays to accommodate Poehler's pregnancy. Then there were the early test screenings and poor scores that landed on the desk of influential Hollywood blogger Nikki Finke, who practically declared the show DOA before its premiere. Many critics said the show was needlessly similar to "The Office" -- both in its mockumentary format and naive lead. Not surprisingly, ratings for its six-episode first season were low.

"My sense is that if we had built 'Parks and Recreation' around a 90-year-old Maasai warrior, people would still have said, 'He reminds me of ["The Office's"] Michael Scott,' " Schur said. "There was just no way to escape it."

But "Parks," in its second season, has emerged as a critical darling. Time magazine's James Poniewozik, a fan from the get-go, called it a “very very good, very very funny” series that “has found its rhythm” and The Star-Ledger's Alan Sepinwall declared it quite possibly “the best comedy on TV right now.” He could also add "that you're not watching." "Parks" averages a lowly 5 million viewers, which puts it roughly in the same neighborhood as first-season audiences for NBC's reigning Emmy magnet "30 Rock." The show, as they say in the industry, is gaining traction with the right crowds and has already landed a full second-season order. So what happened between Seasons 1 and 2 that flipped "Parks" from flop to hot?

"We needed to tell a certain number of stories before people got it," Schur said.

NBC President of Primetime Entertainment Angela Bromstad recalled the early days of "The Office" and said, "I knew Greg was great at self-assessing and evolving a show, and comedies take longer to catch on. . . . Also, I have to say, the cupboards were bare. We really needed to stick with it, and I think it's paying off."

It helped that Daniels and Schur (the latter was a writer on "The Office" before moving over to "Parks" full-time) had solid track records. Daniels spent several seasons on "The Simpsons" and co-created "King of the Hill" before adapting Ricky Gervais' British hit "The Office," and both he and Schur credit stints on "Saturday Night Live" with shaping their comic sensibilities.

Rather than do a straight spinoff of "The Office," as many expected, the pair instead were inspired by the local politics of "The Wire" and the theme of optimism from the 2008 presidential election. They decided that their next show would revolve around the interactions of small-town government, specifically focusing on Poehler's Leslie, an eager but often misguided parks and recreation official whose first big project is tending to an unsightly large pit in the middle of Pawnee.

"This could be my Hoover Dam," a chipper Leslie says in the pilot. This season Leslie is a little less wacky, but she remains ever-positive about making government work for the people. "She is a hard worker, very well-read, very intelligent -- these are not Michael Scott traits," Daniels said.

"She's not delusional. She's not crazy thinking there's a boys' club in politics," Schur added. "She has a strong point of view and her intentions are always good and noble. She's just not always great at executing them."

And that's another thing that differentiates Daniels' two shows: "Parks" is, well, less of a boys' club. Despite such successes as "30 Rock" and "The New Adventures of Old Christine," it's still unusual to see women drive the action in a network comedy. (And even then, Liz Lemon is nothing if not surrounded by a boys' club of crazy guys.)

Daniels and Schur have also let the rest of Pawnee's finest come out to play. "Park's" motley ensemble includes Rashida Jones as her friend Ann; Aziz Ansari as Leslie's undermining lieutenant Tom; Chris Pratt as Ann's bungling but well-meaning ex-boyfriend Andy; Paul Schneider as Leslie's cynical colleague Mark; Nick Offerman as her disinterested boss Ron; and Aubrey Plaza as her equally disinterested intern April.

To come up with the world and people of "Parks," Daniels and Schur spent time in different local governments to make sure their ideas were at least grounded in reality. In Burbank, they found the basis for Ron.

"We were talking to one official about wanting to make Leslie's boss opposed to government," Daniels said. "Like, 'Wouldn't it be funny if she's trying so hard to get stuff accomplished but her boss was like one of those Bush appointees who doesn't believe in the mission of the branch of government he's supposed to be overseeing?' And she looks at us and goes, 'Well, I'm a libertarian, so I don't really believe in the mission of my job.'

"That was an amazing response," Schur recalled. "We went, 'Really?' and she goes, 'Yes, I'm aware of the irony.' "

Poehler said talks with Daniels and Schur about Leslie's long-term journey are ongoing. "Her struggle throughout the series is trying not to become jaded. Can she fight feeling like she'll never be able to change anything? Will she get caught up in political gain in a way that will make her lose track of why she started in the first place?

"Ultimately, we do want her to succeed -- and I love that! -- but in really small ways and with very little power. I love that too. I'm a sucker for pathos."

P&R water bottle

Quench your thirst with this Parks & Recreation water bottle.

Click here for more info: P&R water bottle

Parks and Rec Marathon!

NBC to air a Parks and Recreation marathon in December:
On Tuesday, December 29, NBC will air four consecutive episodes of Parks and Recreation from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT.

In fact, the network will run similar two-hour marathons for every comedy in its Thursday night lineup beginning Monday of that same week.

Here’s the full schedule:
Monday, December 28: Community
Tuesday, December 29: Parks and Recreation
Wednesday, December 30: The Office
Thursday, December 31: 30 Rock

No word yet on which Parks episodes NBC will air.

Link: NBC TO CLOSE YEAR WITH “SING-OFF,” COMEDY MARATHONS

P&R Diversity Awards

Parks and Recreation to win ensemble prize at the 17th annual Diversity Awards
On November 22, Parks and Recreation will be honored as TV’s Favorite New Comedy Ensemble at the Multicultural Motion Picture Association’s 17th annual Diversity Awards in Beverly Hills.

Other shows set to receive prizes are Fox’s Glee (Favorite New Television Cast Ensemble), CBS’ NCIS: Los Angeles (Favorite New Television Action Drama) and ABC Family’s Lincoln Heights (Favorite Family Drama Ensemble).

Link: Click Here!

EW names P&R one of the fall's most creatively improved shows!

From Michael Ausiello:

When it debuted last spring, Amy Poehler’s workplace comedy was a snooze and a half. But apparently, while I was sleeping it got better. Lots better. What happened? “I don’t think magical fairy dust was sprinkled over the show,” co-creator Michael Schur says. “I just think we’re getting better at it.” Indeed, Poehler has dialed down her performance as deputy parks director Leslie Knope, and the strong supporting cast, including Rashida Jones and Aziz Ansari, is jelling.

Link: Fall’s best and worst: ‘Modern Family,’ ‘Parks and Recreation,’ ‘90210,’ ‘SNL,’ and more!

Parks Picked up!!!!!

Parks and Recreation is picked up for a full season!!!!!
heres the press release link: Hell Yes!!!

More Episodes?!?

Community and Parks and Recreation should get some extra episodes ordered later today. Both shows earned a 2.0/6 [rating in adults 18-49], which isn’t great– but it’s consistent. Patience has paid off before for NBC and comedies, and new chief Jeff Gaspin has said he doesn’t want to needlessly make changes to the Peacock schedule.

For season two, NBC initially ordered 13 episodes of Parks and Recreation. If the network were to extend Parks’ season, NBC would likely order nine additional episodes. In the entertainment industry, this is referred to as “ordering the back nine”.