You aren't wrong, but those people probably all still need the jobs. On this show, everyone is independently wealthy, has a hot spouse, is turning down good job offers left and right, or some combination thereof. If that is anyone's real life situation, I don't really want to see a show about it.

Showing "Cocoon" to nursing home residents is like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. "But you could… well, no."

In the first few seasons of P&R the show was more likely to let its characters have disappointments. Fewer people had happy romantic partners, Andy's lack of common sense meant he didn't have good jobs. Leslie had less power and was just a bureaucratic jobling.

Petty was the absolute worst. This is the one place where you need to be garish. Black Eyed Peas were better. Carol Channing. Up With People was better. "Gee, I wonder if he will do Free Fallin'?" zzzzzz…..

As much as people complain about that Sister City episode, it was a lot better structured than a lot of the more recent episodes. A lot of politics is kissing babies, kissing asses, putting up with annoying people, putting up with bureaucracy that will never change. This was before the show became Leslie being…

I'm assuming she spent some money from her own pocket on her campaigns. Maybe the P&R job pays more than I assume. They seem to be able to add new positions at will, so maybe Ron or someone has dirt on everyone else that allows them to all pull down cushy salaries.

Malwae-Tweep and Barkley were genuinely good here. I was bored with the main cast. Many of those characters are running out of steam. It happens.

I think it depends which show it was. It seemed like MTM show was shot on film, which would likely make it look better than WKRP, an MTM production which was videotaped.

Law And Order went the other way, with nearly every case being a murder. Even in NYC there are only so many murders.

The problem with Leslie is that they've made her competent AND ambitious AND the lead character, driving most of the action. Many shows have had any two of the three in a character. Andy Griffith Show had Andy Taylor, who was a competent lead but not ambitious, with Barney Fife, who was ambitious only. Barney…

Gremlins 2 may have been a comedy sequel (haven't seen it), but the first one really wasn't a comedy. It was out-there action adventure aimed at kids, but there were no comedians or comic actors cast and not many jokes.

The Girlfriends sketches have improved since they stopped having Aidy Bryant act as a sad sack and starting having her act as a weirdo.

So Turkey Lady failed because you happened to watch an unrelated sketch show that is at least 15 years old. I don't think it's possible to write a sketch that bears no resemblance to any other show ever.

Michael Scott/Toby had more levels to it as far as emotional depth. Jerry/Larry is just the same thing every single time, no emotional nuance.

All of the job-hopping does cause some credibility issues. Jerry/Larry whatever retires, now he is there all of the time anyway. Craig has some undefined role. I thought Leslie still had a job in the Parks department, so she really isn't unemployed. Leslie gets to annex another entire city on her own when she is…

Yeah, what a wasted character that turned out to be.

tl; dr

I'm assuming an unannounced alternate timeline. Which it pretty much is. They wanted to do the Doppelgangers episode because of Sam Elliott, so they wrote the whole Eagleton thing, regardless of the fact that it makes no sense with the recall plot.

Donna probably reports to Leslie, though. I will give the show credit on that one. Jerry reported to Leslie; she did his performance reviews. I'm sure Ron is happy with the bureaucratic layering because it means less work for him. Ron has Leslie and April reporting to him and that's probably it.

Ben & Leslie being first in line for Xena's kids is an example of TV gravity, where in long running shows everything comes to orbit around the main characters. There is not a billion to one chance that these kids would be going to friends of the step-dad. These kids presumably existed years before Ron entered the…