Huh, tough crowd. I thought this episode was great, and I like seeing Kenneth slowly turning into Jack.

delete

I enjoyed Hahn's character so much that I kind of started thinking "Hey, maybe they can marry Ann off to some not-Tom who lives in Indy, and invent a reason for Hahn to stick around as Leslie's new bff/frenemy." (And I say this as someone who loves Rashida Jones and will defend the Ann of Seasons 2-3 anytime.)

IDK. I mean, there have been elements this season that I've thought were a little too over-the-top, but the campaign thing seems pretty much in keeping with the tenor of the show since Season 2. The kind of dry, banal, realistic local campaign you're describing might have fit well with the show Parks looked like it…

Also, sort of OT, but Kathryn Hahn reminded me how much I actually liked Free Agents - the blink-and-you'll-miss-it sitcom she and Hank Azaria had on NBC last fall. To all two of you who care, they actually put up the remaining, unaired 4 episodes of that show on Hulu - I thought they were decent and getting somewhat…

Great episode. The visual of Pawneans covering the whole spout with their mouths was wonderfully suggestive.

I can't be the only person who at first glance thought this was about Tina Fey.

Rachel Dratch Often Confused for Amy Poehler.

Dratch's Jenna was probably supposed to represent the actual Tina Fey / Rachel Dratch relationship, as the two are longtime friends and collaborators going back to their time in Second City. So the show would have focused much more on two quirky female friends working on a sketch comedy.

Don't a lot of people feel Office Season 5 marked something of a comeback too?

Oh sure, and I think that the show's dynamic is probably a lot funnier with Krakowski. Just pointing out that the "Jenna and Liz are best friends" background makes more sense as a vestige of when the role was based on Dratch.

Dratch's Jenna - "Jenna DeCarlo" was supposed to be fairly different though. And this Jenna and Liz being best friends and former roommates (an actual reflection of Fey and Dratch in Second City) makes more sense than Liz and Krakowski's Jenna.

30 Rock S3 would be another example.

Tom of S2 and S3 (and even S1) was hilarious.

I thought last week's was pretty good, actually, though it was marred by the same Ann/Tom issues as this week's.

I think the problem is that the writers clearly are doing this purely for laughs. But in the process, they've opted against showing any moment where Tom is actually charming and quasi-normal. Parks works best when the humor is grounded in identifiable moments though, so when its just Tom being wacky and Ann…

I think it's stronger than S4 of The Office b/c they have a better handle on the main character and most of the major storylines have been done well. It's just that they aren't as strong with the supporting characters this season, which is resulting in several duds for the B and C-plots.

Yeah, those were all perfectly valid reasons to break up.

I didn't much like E720 either - it just seemed too out-there even for Parks. (Though that arc was IMO sort of redeemed by End of the World which I think was one of this season's real classics).

The answer is that the former two should have been A's and these should have been B's.