Parks and Rec: "Fancy Party"

Season 3, Episode 9

A sweet episode that tends towards the obvious

“Relationships need planning.”

-Leslie

For most of the running time, I was on board with the April and Andy wedding. In the slightly off-kilter world of Parks and Rec, an impromptu wedding after a month of courtship can be taken seriously. There exists enough love between the two of them to believe that a marriage could work, and in its own way, it makes sense from a storytelling perspective. Many shows would take a plot point like a wedding and stretch it out over a season, having episodes cover one clichéd wedding planning story at a time, making sure to include a plot about how one or both of the future spouses gains cold feet. You know, the thing shows do when they’ve run out of actual drama for a couple. P&R bypasses all of that, by having a couple that they have spent so much time convincing us are perfect for one another get married, they manage to skip over all of that manufactured drama, and thus move on to telling more original stories. In it’s a way, it’s quite brilliant.

But here’s the problem: I don’t think it’s going to stick. I don’t mean this is some sort of accusatory way – as it if the show is setting us up for some sort of storyline that covers the dissolution of April and Andy’s relationship – but rather just to say that I think somewhere down the line the two will break up. Something about the impulsiveness that these two exhibit means that any day, at the drop of the hat, the two could decide they do want to be marries anymore. Sure, this could be good for some laughs, but it would seem to undercut everything this episode has worked to achieve. P&R doesn’t really have an ironic bone in its body, and I truly believe that the show wants us to take this marriage seriously. Yet I can’t when I know that these two could just as easily get divorced.  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

I took a similar reactionary curve to the show’s attempts to parallel the April/Andy nuptials with the budding Ben/Leslie romance. I have always been a big supporter of this pairing, mostly because I love the awkward chemistry the two have around one another. And I enjoyed how the show was reflecting their need to just dive into a relationship to April/Andy’s drive to get married – as long as they kept it relatively subtle. Now, P&R isn’t a subtle show, given that it often wears its heart on its sleeve, yet even with show there’s a line with how overt you can be. That line was crossed when Andy gave several iterations of “Don’t wait to fall in love” back to back to back to…. After that, I wasn’t sure if I wasn’t those two to get together just out of spite for the episode’s shift to telling, not showing.

“There are no friends in the jungle.”

-Donna

Tonight’s B-plot was surprisingly enjoyable, given who was involved. Sure, the Ann/Donna pairing was hilarious back in “The Harvest Festival,” but here is was a much larger plotline, done with a character we don’t know that much about. Sure, we know Donna to be fiery and sassy, a strong sexual woman, and that’s all that was really required of her. Yet I couldn’t help but think about when the show would get around to her expanding her character (and Jerry’s as well, given that he’s one roughly the same tier as her). She can’t just play in that one mode forever; it may be entertaining now, but it will get old soon.

The same goes for Ann, in a way. Though it’s really only been three episodes since Ann and Chris broke up, it’s been over a month in a half in real time, and so it feel like Ann has been stuck in “emotional spinout” mode for much longer than she has. The end result of this is that I can’t help but feel like the show needs to take Ann in a different direction, just to change things up.

Yet despite all of this, I like this storyline. It’s light and funny, everything I expect from a P&R subplot. It was a good way to separate some of the cast member and keep the wedding scenes from being too crowded, and its relative cynicism kept the episode from feeling too sappy-sweet.

What did everybody else think?

Additional Thoughts:

“Plus it’s always funny to see Tom faint.”

“It’s like if you could have an X-box pancake.”

“Are you asking me how to flirt with men?”

“So not only does this exist, but now you have deprived everyone of cake!”

“For you information, I wasn’t a fan of Peter Jackson’s interpretation, so you can put that one away.”

“Is that that toothy girl from Mystic Pizza?”

“Are you Nell, from the movie Nell.”

“…and you make love to the prettiest bridesmaid. Usually standing from behind.”

“And he was married. But the clothes thing really bothered me.”

“Excuse me, are there any strippers here? Former strippers? Non-dancers, but you’re feeling a little drunk?”

“Kiss him, or kiss her, kiss somebody. Help me Ann!”

“All right, so that one is dead. We know that.”

“I could have yelled something, or tackled someone.”

“Both marriages ended in divorce. And an effigy.”

“Do not stand too close to an ex-wife effigy.”

“Pause. Love, Actually quote. Drop the microphone, get out of that bitch.”

“Warren’s behind me, isn’t he?”