Pilot

Seemed like an Office knock-off to me. Tom was funny at times nothing else.

Great start to a show which is pretty much a rip off of the office which is also a rip off of the office

The pilot episode of Parks and Recreation is in the same vein as the mockumentary The Office.

The first episode concentrates on Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) who has spent six years as bureaucrat in the Parks and Recreation Department in the town of Pawnee, Indiana. She has still managed to retain her enthusiasm despite her head Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) hating local government and would like the parks department privatised.

In this episode Leslie and her colleague Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari) go to see Ann Perkins about a pit outside her home caused by a developer. Her boyfriend Andy fell down it and broke his legs. Leslie also slides down it when she goes for a look.

Leslie promises that she will turn the pit into a park much to the amusement of her colleagues who mock Leslie behind her back over the photos of her falling over.

Not the best start to a series. I presume it must get better as it ran for 6 years. We see more of Leslie here and she comes across as hopeless. Andy is rather sleazy as he tries to hit on Ann Perkins. The less said about Ron the better. He keeps a sawn off double barrelled shotgun on his desk.

Parks and Recreation belongs in the same discussion with other great series that despite being, for the most part, consistently great, do have a weak first season. Other examples include Seinfeld, The Simpsons, and The Office (US). Sometimes it takes a few episodes to get the balance just right of the tone and characters. It's a hard thing to do to get a show exactly right from the very first episode. That's why I always applaud shows that do get it right away.

Watching Parks and Recreation's pilot now, after seeing the entire series, I noticed how some of the characters act almost like completely different people. Characters like Ron, Tom, and Ann seemed to be pretty much spot-on from the get-go. However, Donna, Jerry, and April are virtually silent. Andy is a complete jerk, and Leslie is kind of air-headed (almost like a female Michael Scott), and not the brilliant government worker that she would end up becoming. The series definitely has not reached its prime yet, but hey, not every pilot can be like Arrested Development!

To pick apart a sitcom's pilot is kind of ridiculous, and having already seen the series from beginning to end, I can forgive the writers and know that it gets much better, and things start to click real quickly. Just know that if you haven't seen the series yet, and are wondering if you should still continue despite it feeling like a direct rip off of The Office, know that it becomes its own original, brilliant series very soon. Trust me.

Oh! let's talk about the episode not the show... of course the start of any series is hard but basically it's establishment for a big story; I think the start acting were good the main characters seems have chemistry between each other, the idea of the show seems to be good too with a lot of space for the writer; after all it's just start.. a not bad start.