'Parks and Recreation': Finally, a Sitcom That Loves Middle America

Most TV shows make people from small towns look either stupid or saintly. Parks and Rec lets them be normal.

Parks and Recreation doesn't have cliffhangers.  Built around Amy Poehler's character, Leslie Knope, deputy director of for a parks department in fictional Pawnee, Indiana, the show's storylines seem intentionally pedestrian. Most weeks, nothing too dramatic happens. A prized horse goes missing, for instance, or a few friends take a hunting trip. The show's entire first season centered on Leslie's attempt to turn the abandoned construction of Pawnee's Lot 48 (Pynchon reference, anyone?) into a new city park. Certainly, the romance between Leslie and Ben, played by dreamy Adam Scott, isn't terribly compelling—not in the traditional mold of a long-term, will-they-won't-they sitcom romance, like Jim and Pam, Ross and Rachel, or Sam and Diane.     More