 |
| Left to right: Adam Scott and Amy Poehler |
Welcome to Parts of Rec, a new column that will attempt to take the weekly brilliance of NBC show Parks and Recreation and cut it into the bare essentials. After all, time is precious and sometimes you cannot read pages and pages of reviews. While it will be impossible to bottle all of the highlights, I will do my best to cover the plot, as well as memorable moments and just what makes it great in general. Make sure to look for Parts of Rec every Friday following the episode.
Season 5, Episode 6
"Ben's Parents"
"We're a Red Vines family."
-Leslie (Amy Poehler)
"We're a Twizzlers family."
-Ben's Dad (Jonathan Banks)
Now that Ben (Adam Scott) has proposed to Leslie (Amy Poehler), it is time to have a party to announce the news. This of course means inviting over both the Knope family and the Wyatts, who haven't gotten along since their divorce. Meanwhile, Tom (Aziz Ansari) and Jean Ralphio (Ben Schwartz) try and start a school uniform rental company called Rent A Swag and plan to propose the deal to Ron (Nick Offerman). When Ben's Mom (Glenne Headly) and Dad (Jonathan Banks) get in the same room, tension rises. Even the idea that Ben's Dad also has a new girlfriend (Kulap Vilaysack) becomes unsettling. Leslie tries to find a way to cheer them up by using a unity quilt that is meant to share common interests. This does little besides cause more secrets to come out: Ben's Dad's Girlfriend is pregnant. Meanwhile, Chris (Rob Lowe) is hiding in a bedroom because he is sad. April (Aubrey Plaza), Andy (Chris Pratt) and Ann (Rashida Jones) try to cheer him up, eventually becoming successful. Somehow Leslie manages to cheer up the parents by having them sit far apart at the wedding. Ron decides to fund Tom's program since he believes Jean Ralphio left him. Turns out Jean Ralphio is homeless and still mooching off of Tom.
Rating: 5 out of 5
 |
| Left to right: Nick Offerman and Ben Schwartz |
MVP: Jean Ralphio (Ben Schwartz)
How do you manage to outshine someone as amazing as Breaking Bad star Jonathan Banks? I have no idea, but Ben Schwartz figured it out. Of course, the Jean Ralphio character by this point is just an eccentric fun guy who wants to be successful, so of course he comes across as sillier. He manages to just walk into a room and the scene is already ten times more hilarious. The way that he said "technically I'm homeless" at the end is a testament to why he is a brilliant character who is sadly underused. I also just loved the Rent A Swag idea so much, notably the first presentation. He has all of the energy but less of the brains. Such a funny episode and it is also nice to see Aziz Ansari have someone who is wackier than he is.
 |
| Left to right: Offerman and Rashida Jones |
Best scene: I am trying not to give all of the credit to Ben Schwartz for this episode, but his surprise cameo plus Jonathan Banks made this episode perfect. I must admit that we have seen a lot of meet the parents situations on TV, and a lot of them are not pretty. However, there is something insanely brilliant about having Ben's family be insanely distant of each other and greedy that Ben's Dad's Girlfriend doesn't have her name on the quilt. While I am sure my favorite scene probably had something to do with Jean Ralphio, I will give this week's honor to the scene in which the unity quilt becomes the center of all the conflict and causes one of the squares to be cut out. The best part is the punchline, which is that Leslie believes that her quilt brought the families together when it did a better job annoying everyone.
Check out more of my work at http://nerdseyeviewpodcast.blogspot.com/ where I have a podcast called Nerd's Eye View.
Comments
Post a Comment