What I’m Watching: Parks and Recreation

Parks and Recreation: Season 7, Episodes 5 and 6 “Gryzzlbox” and “Save JJ’s” (B+)

This was a fun pair of episodes on par with most of this show’s recent installments. It’s great to see familiar tropes of this show brought back for this show’s final season and incorporated into the futuristic setting that it now occupies. Ron finally switching sides after a flying robot came by to deliver mail to his four-year-old child was a humorous and logical moment, and it was good to see him working again right beside Leslie. We’ve gone from Sweetums and other local institutions clogging the arteries of Pawnee residents one humongous calorie-loaded drink at a time to Gryzzl reading all the text messages and e-mails sent by its customers and invading their privacy, and I like that progression, especially with such technological advances as the iPad skateboard. The “Treat Yo Self” day in Beverly Hills was indeed a treat, mainly because it allowed Donna to encourage Tom to really go for it with Lucy, which of course inspired him to make a rambling speech that ultimately led to her saying that she wanted to go as his date. Craig picking cake to weed out poor palettes that actually won over Joe and Donna was hilarious, and it’s good to see him in his new role as the old Ron, trying to keep his temper in check as April did everything possible to derail his internship program. I have a new appreciation for Jason Mantzoukas after seeing him in “Sleeping with Other People” at Sundance, and it’s fun to see him again as Dennis Feinstein, spreading his awful cologne to disperse Leslie’s protesters as she continues her valiant fight for something that seems harder and harder to accomplish with every episode.