The hour’s second episode continues Leslie’s campaigning against Ron and his partnership with Gryzzl over the undeveloped land. Tammy 2 (the always-welcome Megan Mullally) returns to sink her teeth into Jamm, causing Leslie and Ron to team up once again and take Tammy 2 down once and for all. “Ron and Jammy” also sees April spiraling after realizing she doesn’t exactly have the job of her dreams, and finds help from Ben in seeking more meaning from her work.
Where “2017” saw her and Andy attempting to outgrow maturity (April, whilst staring at a crock pot: “Stop taunting me!”) with the ineptitude only they could muster, subsequently buying an old haunted house, the second episode feels redundant. April’s unhappy in life, so she buys a house where doll-head factory workers died. April’s unhappy in her job, so she… wants to be a mortician? It feels like low-hanging fruit from a series that usually doesn’t mind getting a few cuts and bruises while climbing to the top of the tree.
“You can trust my opinion,” Leslie says halfway through the premiere. “Because I have a lot to gain by being right and I have severe tunnel vision about achieving my goals.” Poehler is as enjoyable as ever, and like Fey before her, where Knope ends and she begins has become an endearingly hazy line, but the show seems to be inheriting some of her character’s bullheadedness. It’s the same old Parks and Recreation, but throughout both episodes of the premiere, it never garnered any more of a chuckle out of me. The boldness of the time jump in last season’s finale, two minutes worth of WTF-ness and Jon Hamm, all but dissipated within seconds of “2017.”
The show is barreling forward to its designated end (now 11 episodes away) and doesn’t seem phased by anything happening in its peripheral vision. There’s something admirable about that, despite the premiere’s sense of sameness. Hopefully future episodes give the time jump more of a heft, but, at the end of the day, Parks and Recreation is still Parks and Recreation; season 7 doesn’t re-invent the wheel or blow up your expectations or even slightly deviate from the formula the show set up half a decade ago, and, in retrospect, it didn’t really need to.
