“The lifeblood of drama has always been the relationship between two characters on screen.”
Sure it may be ridiculous drivel... but you can’t tell me that you wouldn’t nod your head obligingly if George Clooney was saying it very slowly into camera.
Suffice it to say that relationships are important and that “The Set-Up” was an episode which rose and fell on the strength of its pairings. Take the most A-plotty of these, the coupling of Amy Poehler and Will Arnett as Leslie and blind date Chris. In real life these two have been known to get along well (enough to produce babies), and as a comedy duo they prove once again here that they are wonderful. But in a third, less important sense1- within the context of P+R- their characters are, well, not an ideal romantic match. If this sounds familiar you could be thinking of the earlier season two episode in which Ken Offerman gamely tried to kill his wife Megan Mullally at an IHOP2. But where that episode, “Ron and Tammy”, pushed Parks as far out on the edge as its gone so far with sight gags and broad humor...
Tonight’s episode opens with Leslie deciding that it is time for her to get over San Diego Dave and turn to Ann to find her someone she dreams will have “the body of Joe Biden and the brains of George Clooney”. Unable to find anyone matching that descriptive description, and, more to the point, unwilling to offer her pal and mental husband Justin, Ann matches her best friend with MRI technician Chris.
It's a sure sign of the subtlety of Season 2 that Chris (Arnett) initially seems like a potential match for Leslie. After all he's "cute" and, like Leslie, passionate about what he does. But the writers slowly allow him to turn into the kind of half-weird, full-asshole characters that Arnett specializes in- a sure sign that they have some sense in their heads. Every one of the regulars on P+R is portraying a believable, three-dimensional character (though Andy, perhaps my favorite character, stretches that definition3). Not only would it be a waste of the talents of the man who played Gob Bluth to keep him inside that same spectrum, it would be ignoring the lesson of last week’s montage of petitioners in Ron’s office
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1. Smell being, statistically, the least important sense.
2. If you're slightly less fortunate you could also be thinking of Blades of Glory, the most meh entry in Will Ferrell's filmography. Arnett and Poehler teamed up and were pretty funny on their own.
3. "like he would a size 40 men's suit"... is what I thought about saying. I left
It's a sure sign of the subtlety of Season 2 that Chris (Arnett) initially seems like a potential match for Leslie. After all he's "cute" and, like Leslie, passionate about what he does. But the writers slowly allow him to turn into the kind of half-weird, full-asshole characters that Arnett specializes in- a sure sign that they have some sense in their heads. Every one of the regulars on P+R is portraying a believable, three-dimensional character (though Andy, perhaps my favorite character, stretches that definition3). Not only would it be a waste of the talents of the man who played Gob Bluth to keep him inside that same spectrum, it would be ignoring the lesson of last week’s montage of petitioners in Ron’s office
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1. Smell being, statistically, the least important sense.
2. If you're slightly less fortunate you could also be thinking of Blades of Glory, the most meh entry in Will Ferrell's filmography. Arnett and Poehler teamed up and were pretty funny on their own.
3. "like he would a size 40 men's suit"... is what I thought about saying. I left
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