3x01 Go Big or Go Home

[8.7/10] And thus begins the Harvest Festival arc! Thought it would be good to go back and round out my unplanned rewatch of P&R, which randomly started in the middle of S3, by watching the first few episodes of the season. It’s interesting watching the season premiere shortly after seeing the season finale. It shows how far Leslie & Co. come from the humble, position they start in.

It’s also backstory: the episode! That’s not a bad thing. I’d forgotten the deal about Chris’s blood disorder and how it makes every day a gift for him. And I’d forgotten that we hear about Ice Town so soon. There is something very sitcom about Leslie (and the Ben) crashing Chris and Ann’s date to hash the budget issue out, but it works despite some of the hoariness of the premise. Ben and Leslie have chemistry even as frenemies, and the combination of Chris and Ann is surprisingly effective when they’re in a typical situation and not doubling down on relationship drama.

Plus, it’s the beginning of the meme-ification of Ron Swanson. His pyramid of greatness and coaching some kids basketball pays a number of silly, amusing dividends, and the same goes for Andy’s team, which is the disorganized, goofy yin to Swanson’s disciplined yang. The Tom-Lucy-Ron-Wendy love triangle was never one of my favorite storylines on the show, but I do appreciate the gag of Tom trying to be a biased ref and revealing his complete lack of knowledge about sports.

The larger story of the episode, that the Parks department is broke and the team is scrambling to fight for the dept. rather than let it be whittled down to nothing, works as an animating theme for the whole season. Using the parallels between Leslie and Andy as unlikely peas in a pod is nice touch, and the way it plays on Chris and Ben’s good cop/bad cop routine, eventually breaking down the walls of their denial, paves the way for so much that happens in the rest of S3. It’s a great start to arguably the show’s best season, one that embodies the fun but meaningful things the show is capable of.

Okay, I was going to try and review every episode of this season (and the next and the next after that hopefully and so on) during this, my second run through of Parks and Rec but I ended up watching 5 episodes virtually back to back because this is the season where everything comes full stride. I don't remember if I prefer this season or four (I had the feeling I preferred four because of the election campaign storyline but either way, this is the beginning of the show's absolute peak.

For the most part, I absolutely love this episode. What doesn't work here is very little and in fact, it comes down to a certain few moments in this episode only. One is the culmination of the Ron v Tom tension that takes place during the junior basketball game and Ron exploding into a violent outrage. I just could not help but feel the humour of the situation (Tom's inability to cope with the fact that his boss is now dating his ex-wife) was completely deflated in the moment but it's not good enough for me at least to work as a dramatic moment because the whole Tom/Ron/Wendy angle was never that interesting for me and in fact, prior to my recent rewatch of season two, I had completely forgotten it. Regardless, it came across as a clunky and/or uncharacteristic moment from Ron.

Everything else here is fantastic and there is very little I hold issue with. I love the progression of the April/Andy storyline here, the date between Chris and Ann is great and the episode's ending sets up an ongoing story arc for this season that I am excited to revisit and re-experience.

Fantastic season premiere.