Thanks, I Hate It: Parks and Recreation

If the world's comedians were given my psychological profile, a hundred million dollars, and a mission to give me a rage stroke, Parks and Recreation seems like the most probable result. This show gives me hives. It makes me think less of human beings as a species. It makes me want to dig my nails into my palms until my fingertips burst through the backs of my hands. It's chirpy, syrupy-sweet tone and manic energy function as an effective cloak for an ethos which amounts to little more than neoliberal boot-licking and callously fatphobic jokes. Even when it's funny, I hate it.

The motto of Pawnee, Indiana, the town in which the show takes place, is "First in Friendship, Third in Obesity." Restaurant chains operating in said town include "Paunchburger" and "Colonel Plump's Slop Trough." Parks has enough goodwill to give war criminals and general shitheels Hilary Clinton and John McCain jokey guest spots and to make a heavily armed Libertarian into a gruff but gold-hearted kook, but not to look at fat people as human beings. It's especially hateful given the fat actors in the cast, both of whom are among the show's better performers.

The sugar-and-rainbows hyperactivity of Amy Poehler's Leslie Knope is one of the most abrasive things I've ever seen on screen. Even if it weren't in service to making government cuddlier and more lovable, even if it weren't the sun around which the show's solar system revolves, it would be unwatchably grating. There's some comedic talent here. Retta's never less than fun, although the fact that her character is charismatic, secretive, and sexually magnetic is all she ever gets to work with. Nick Offerman is very funny as the terrible Libertarian man until the show strips his edge away in favor of his soft side. Jim O'Heir is miles better than the "butt of every joke" material that is the sum total of his screen time.

If a sitcom is intended to act as a kind of joke delivery system, Parks and Recreation leans far too heavily on cringy overplaying of its bits and not enough on the talents of its cast. Even its best guest stars -- Ben Schwarz and Jenny Slate as the spoiled, odious, and irrepressible Saperstein siblings -- are boxed in by the joyless "I guess we all learned a mildly important kindergarten-esque lesson" format of each episode. It's the absolute worst kind of sitcom, one in service to the status quo, empty of human warmth, and devoid of actual people. It's a slate of robots with five preprogrammed responses reacting to one another in random sequences.