There's so much to like about Parks and Recreation, the new NBC sitcom from The Office creators Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, that it's hard to believe they managed to mangle its single most important element: Leslie Knope, the small-government Pollyanna at its center.
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Rule of thumb about perfect worlds: They're not. Take for example the dream scenario in which the United Nations' ban on self-serious films about suburban ennui has Alan Ball and Sam Mendes living as international fugitives. It looks great on paper, but then we likely wouldn't have Lymelife, director Derick Martini's own, fine chronicle of disaffection, dissolution and lust on Long Island in the 1970s.
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If you've seen its red-band trailer, then you've seen the best of Observe and Report, the nasty little comedy that, with any luck, signals the end of the mall-cop micro-genre. You've seen Seth Rogen's anti-Blart, leading his rogue security detail in a quest to nab the flasher threatening his retail idyll. You've seen him defending the honor of his cosmetics-counter dream girl, the flasher's most distressed victim. You've seen his fraught relationships with his boozy mother and the local detective investigating the case. You've likely chuckled at all of it, spiked with vulgarity and quirk and thinly veiled sociopathy. You've also been radically misled.
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