Battlegroundâs first crime is that itâs unfunny, and sometimes painfully so. If you havenât heard of it, itâs Huluâs first attempt at original programming, and is not very good. Itâs an Office knock-off, which, sure, fine. The setting is what made me watch it in the first place: a political campaign. Iâve worked a few campaign cycles (thatâs what we call them, cycles! Lingo! And â08 Obama and a bunch of Congressional races, if you must know) and itâs an environment just begging to be mocked: a high-pressure workplace of mostly strangers thrown into practically living together, working seven days a week and trying to sleep with each other on the eighth. Whatâs shocking, and this goes for Parks and Rec too, is Battlegroundâs second crime of not even understanding the basics of a political campaign.
Sure, itâs not essential to get everything. Comedy is about maximizing the ridiculous, and itâs not like The Office needed to really be about a paper company to be good. But from the scene at the beginning of Battleground where an volunteer has to beg his way onto the campaign, and every single campaign scene in the surprisingly clueless Parks, I figured that Hollywood Funnypeople could use a guide as to What Campaigns Are and What They Are Not.
Volunteers Are Meat for the Grinder
In dealing with volunteers, your Campaign Official is like a stripper, and the volunteer is the slightly drunk middle manager. You need to make them feel like this experience is for them, and if they could just do one more thing for you, then that would make it even better. This can be mailing envelopes, entering data, phone banking, or that Champagne Room of volunteer activities, knocking on doors (in their own neighborhood!). You need them as a way to boost your stats, although you really donât need any one volunteer individually. So, Battleground, this means that you do not mock your volunteer, and more importantly, you do not have him sit in on high level strategy meetings! But, at least Battleground acknowledges that people do the heavy lifting on political campaigns, for free! And yes, that jab is directed at you, Parks and Rec. I know Ann Perkins was designated Knope 2012âs Volunteer Coordinator, but even for her this is an abysmal outreach job into Pawnee. Surely Leslie has one devoted Superfan out there, willing to call every number in the phone book twice over and register convicted felons who just got put back on Indianaâs voting rolls.
More Important Than Volunteers Is Money, Money, Money
Letâs do a quick, partial tally of Knope 2012âs spending, shall we? Weâve got an opening event at the ice hockey rink, multiple television ads, focus groups, rented bowling alleys, free food, studio time at Double Time Recording, and so on, yet we havenât seen a single fundraiser to pay for any of these things. This is where that realism thing comes in: I mean, it could be funny to stick Leslie in a small, closed room with nothing but a list of phone numbers to call potential big time donors for hours once, but to do it every day, like an actual candidate has to, would be a drag.
Battleground, for all its weaknesses, addressed money issues right away, and hopefully itâll show the never-ending compromises and half-promises politicians at that level (in Battleground, the candidate is running for U.S Senate) have to make to get the endless levels of money you need to compete. But even in a small place like Pawnee, these things cost money and add up. Iâm not saying it has to consume your world, just like Iâm sure dealing with vendors for the Harvest Festival would be a bigger IRL hassle then it was in the Parks-verse. Just please, have someone donate something to Leslie, even if itâs only Entertainment 720 SwaggerCash.
Campaigns Are About Issues
If youâre a fellow hardened campaign veteran, maybe youâre chuckling at that header. Campaigns are about advertisements, the issues have been settled way beforehand, etc. Well, sitcoms are about why people choose to do the things they do. And for these shows, campaigns are ways for them to show what they aspire to beâŚwhich is never really made clear. Leslieâs long list of things she is pro- has been a great joke, but how about maybe discussing one of them? In Season One/Two she wanted to build a park, in Season Three run a successful festival, and now sheâs running for office to do what, exactly? I mean, everyone on Parks and Rec is talented enough that it could just get away with saying âPawnee is wonderfulâ a thousand times over, but why not let there be an actual issue in Pawnee that Leslie has to have an opinion about? Thatâs what happens in real life.
And Battlegroundâs problem here is something that other shows, like Showtimeâs terror-drama Homeland, struggle with, for reasons Iâm never quite sure. Are you familiar with the terms âDemocratâ and âRepublicanâ? Because these shows, which deal with politicians, sure arenât! Itâs shocking to me that writers actually think they can create anything approaching a politics recognizable to Americans without at least addressing the fact that 99.9% of all political candidates for all political offices are of one of these two parties. Not that it has to be a central issue, but going back to The Office, imagine eight seasons in that we didnât know these people sold paper, that they were just generic business-people. Besides allowing for highly marketable tie-in products, specificity makes things real, and more importantly, funny. Maybe the writers think that it will only expand their audience if they keep things as vague as possible, but I mean, The West Wing lasted seven season with Ds and Rs, so I donât think itâll be a dealbreaker.
Again, these are comedies, and comedies donât necessarily have to reflect the complexity of buying ads in multiple Neilsen point regions or the drudgery of entering endless reams of data at the end of the every single Godforsaken day. But those are just details, even on the big picture things, these shows are getting it wrong. The Candidate got it right. The 1972 film starred Robert Redford as a no-shot Democratic Senate hopeful, getting the nomination because of his family name and trying to reconcile his political beliefs with actually winning. It captures the sense of ego and self-grandeur that comes naturally with running for office, like when Redford and his campaign manager force their way into a TV station:
People desperately needing to pretend that they know what theyâre doing, thatâs what campaigns are all about. They convince themselves that what theyâre going to do is going to help everyone around them, even if itâs clearly only going to help themselves. Battleground isnât a very good show, but it could improve by remembering that. Parks and Rec is a very good show, and one thatâs not entirely bound by this arc. The campaign will end, Leslie will win or lose, and life in Pawnee will go on. But while itâs passing through, itâd be nice if got things right.
David Meir Grossman lives in Brooklyn, writes about music for Tablet, tweets about whatever here and rarely Tumbls here.