Nothing gold can stay, and to compare this fourth season of Parks and Recreation to the bar set by the previous two - easily two of the best single seasons of a comedy series that I've ever seen - is probably unfair. But it's also only natural, and when this season ended last May, I couldn't help but feel just slightly disappointed by the inevitable dip in quality. It was hard to place exactly what went wrong. Too little direction for too many characters? Character gags going just a bit too far over the top? Character inconsistencies that retroactively cheapen older episodes by rendering them contradictory to these newer ones? I couldn't quite place it, but for whatever reason, Season 4 just didn't live up to Seasons 2 and 3 when all was said and done.
Or so I thought. After re-watching it over the course of the past few days, I really enjoyed Season 4. You know what the problem was? The season ends with just a few too many episodes about Leslie running for office. It's a weak-on-laughs story arc that just kind of dominates the season a tad too much in its waning episodes. Seriously, in hindsight that's the only reason I was even slightly down on Parks and Rec last May. So, no, the season wasn't quite as good as the previous two, but it also wasn't a horrible train wreck or the clear-cut beginning of an irreversible decline (see: The Office, also in Season 4).
I don't often rummage through submenus on DVD sets for each and every morsel of bonus content, but that's exactly what I did here. I was rewarded with several webisodes of Andy and April's Grand Canyon trip, a legitimately great gag reel, several featurettes, and Ron Swanson chainsawing a bunch of wood. Gotta love it.
No comments:
Post a Comment