This may sound awful, but ever since I grew out of my toy-crazy adolescence, my birthday has consistently been one of my most-dreaded and least-favorite days each year. So, I could sympathize with the outrageous lengths to which Ron Swanson’s went to in the latest Parks and Rec episode to keep his DOB classified around the office. Maybe it’s from a fear of surprises or my preference for both pie and ice cream over cake, the traditional birthday dessert. I also find the “Happy Birthday†song to be rather grating, especially considering the disgusting way the song’s copyright holders insist on collecting royalties even for public performances, thus forcing every tacky chain restaurant to craft their own obnoxious birthday song, most of which somehow rank higher on the irritation scale than the original. But beyond all my petty birthday gripes, the uncomfortable workplace birthday celebration is easily at the top of that list, as I find it difficult to join ranks with a group of people who have little in common, acting as if they care about one another just as an excuse to stuff their faces with free cake.
Ron Swanson’s desire to evade such festivities led him down a dark path in last night’s episode, forcing him to make a number of sacrifices to avoid other people’s plans for his birthday. Hell, he’d gone through a lot of trouble to keep his birthdate hush-hush in the first place. It was only through Ron’s weakness for junk food that Leslie was able to catch on. She gleaned his DOB from a “well-placed bribe to a gentleman at Baskin-Robbins,†as Ron’s membership in the ice cream purveyor’s birthday club did him in.
While Ron’s birthday (or the avoidance of such) brought some great laughs in “Eagleton,†it was hardly the main event. We got a nice, in-depth look at Pawnee’s neighboring, rival city Eagleton when Leslie’s ex-friend and Eagleton counterpart Lindsay Carlisle-Shay (played by guest star Parker Posey) put a fence down the middle of the two towns’ shared park. Lindsay’s presence brought us a much-needed glimpse into Leslie’s past, as she details the two’s former friendship. I’ve always found Posey to be a skilled comedic actress, and her character is a delightful addition Parks and Rec’s roster of guest characters.
The show seems to be using big-name guest stars more sparingly this season, as compared to Season Two, which featured Fred Armisen, Andy Samberg, Will Arnett, and John Larroquette, amongst others. The only major guest stars in Season Three, besides Parker Posey, have been Megan Mullally and Will Forte. The scant number of guests has only made the show stronger, allowing Parks to devote more time to its central cast, which grew a little bit in between Seasons 2 and 3 with the addition of Adam Scott and Rob Lowe, as well as Jim O’Heir and Rettta being bumped up from guest stars to main cast members. When the show features guest stars, as with Posey, they’re utilized well and fit into the series organically, instead of serving as distractions and publicity stunts like a lot of sitcom guest stars do. We’ve seen alt-comedians like Matt Besser, Nick Kroll, and Jason Mantzoukas pop up in small roles this season, but these actors aren’t mainstream celebrities yet and don’t figure into the plot as largely as someone like Megan Mullally has in her two appearances.
Parks and Recreation is a creative successor to The Simpsons in many ways, and that’s no surprise considering that two of Simpsons’s glory era writers are on staff: Mike Scully (who cameos in “Eagleton†as the resident at the Pawnee town meeting who suggests putting another fence around the Eagleton fence) and Parks co-creator Greg Daniels. Perhaps no comparison between the two series is more apt than the similar way the towns of Pawnee and Springfield are portrayed. Both towns are microcosms of America, often using satire to highlight the country’s worst trends and attitudes. Springfield and Pawnee are universes in and of themselves, each overflowing with characters that strike a perfect balance between being broad exaggerations and three-dimensional humans the likes of which you don’t see on most sitcoms.
Parks already took Springfield’s spotty racial history to its logical point of conclusion with the offensive murals that lined the walls of City Hall, and “Eagleton†offers up a nice spin on town rivalries akin to the Springfield-Shelbyville dynamic. While Springfield and Shelbyville were seen to be eerily-similar towns, there’s a huge disparity in the quality of life and the people that reside in Pawnee and Eagleton, and the writers mined a great deal of humor from this contrast last night. In Eagleton, everyone is polite, well-dressed, and articulate. The town is made up of good-looking people who treat each other with respect during their classy town hall meetings, and it seems as if you can’t as much spin around without being handed a snazzy gift bag. Even the police station’s holding cell is like a fancy resort. With “Eagleton,†Parks and Rec has continued to fill out the show’s ever-expanding universe by setting up a hilarious and absurd town to rival Pawnee, and I look forward to seeing the cast return to Eagleton in future episodes.
Stray thoughts and observations:
Bradford Evans bets Baskin-Robbins employees get bribed all the time.