![]() I like how they don't make his character just a straight-up goofball. There's also a very underrated scene outside of a bar between the two that showcases a rare serious Andy scene. What's also great in this storyline is all the April and Andy scenes, including my favorite moment: sweater swap! These two have fantastic chemistry, and it is simply a joy whenever they have scenes together. They make Ron look like, well, Leslie Knope! It's hilarious seeing how the men all hate each other and the funny insults they spit at one another. You thought Ron was bad at his job, just wait until you hear the stories from the previous directors. This episode contains a lot of great comedy mostly in the main storyline at the picnic where Leslie reunites Ron and the former Parks Department directors. (Do they ever?) Tom, Ann, and Mark decide to go a different route in producing content for the catalog as Tom decides to take photographs of Mark and Ann at a park. She plans on using this story to post in the Summer Catalog, but things don't go quite as expected. I consider this one to be one of the better episodes of Season 2, so let's discuss! The episode centers around the Parks Department creating a Summer Catalog for Pawnee as Leslie organizes a reunion with Ron and his former predecessors. "Summer Catalog" is an episode that has a fantastic main plot that pretty much carries the entire episode. We see one relationship start to blossom while another one begin to fade. Lowe is funny and Wyatt is mildly charming, but one wonders if the original cast’s talents are being diiluted with the new additions.As we get closer and closer to the finale of Season 2, we start to see some on-going storylines evolve even more. He’s joined by Adam Scott’s Ben Wyatt, the numbers guy and the bad cop to Lowe’s good cop. Rob Lowe joined as the hyper (and hyper-optimistic) Chris Traeger, a fixer for financially-strapped municipalities like Pawnee. Toward the end of Season Two, the already-terrific ensemble cast (each a blissful combination of likeable with charming flaws) was buttressed with two additions. ![]() The rest of the episode features two Leslie Knope schemes-to create a raison d’etre for her team in a nearly budget-free environment and to convince Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones) to use her feminine charms to shake loose some additional government dollars. Well, except Nick Offerman’s hilariously dour Ron Swanson, Bush-esque in his dislike of the government he helps to run. The return of the show dabbles just a bit in the meta, tapping on the fourth wall with an opening segment featuring Leslie gathering the band back together with yelps of “We’re back!” followed by each character’s (or Leslie’s) happy rejection of their replacement work. Last season’s denouement saw the parks department shut down due to budget cuts (followed by the show itself being missing from NBC’s fall lineup). I’m sticking with both declarations, though the mid-season (finally!) premiere of the third season of Parks and Rec didn’t necessarily drive the point home. This was roughly akin to my other 2010 declaration of the superiority of Five Guys’ burgers over In-N-Out’s. I went on record a year ago with the kinda controversial opinion that Amy Poehler’s Parks and Recreation had surpassed the already venerable 30 Rock ( Community is now the best of the bunch, but that’s another story).
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