I’m glad there were two episodes—disregarding the fact that it meant double the recaps—because it was nice to see the Leslie/Ben (is there a name for this yet? If not, I’m submitting “LesBien” for mass consideration) sexual tension get some mutual recognition—and some face-munching.

But that comes later. The first episode, “The Fight,” honors the timeless sitcom staple of everyone getting really, really drunk. The setup is that Pawnee’s head of public relations for the health department has, as Chris says, “Gone bananas,” freeing his position up for Leslie to swoop in and recommend Ann Perkins for the job, a job Ann’s none too willing to take since it entails memorizing every Pawnee health reform since the 1950s (which actually might make interesting, if not terrifying reading)…in one night.

Meanwhile, Tom’s developed a new drink to promote at the Snake Hole: Snake Juice, a 140-proof, Kahlua-inspired liquor (basically a lot of alcohol mixed with sugar and coffee), which likely tastes as good as it sounds, but oh how it does the job. Tom invites the gang out to partake (but more to help peddle the hooch), and oh how they do, particularly Ann Perkins, who ditches the massive amount of homework Leslie prepares and is now dating The Douche, Pawnee’s own radio-shock-idiot, last seen in “Media Blitz.”

Leslie gets incensed at Ann’s promiscuity and Ann retaliates by chiding Leslie for hiding her feelings toward Ben, leading to a booze-fueled confrontation between the two that results in a falling out/massive hangover.

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Inner Circle should be best remembered for giving unto the world “Bad Boys,” the song that has, for some 20 years, opened COPS. My father so loved that song that he actually bought a tape of Inner Circle’s greatest hits, doubtless the only reggae music he has or ever will purchase, and I remember taking long trips through the east side of Saginaw (the most violent portion of the most violent city in America) listening to him sing along—even the incomprehensible lyrics (“You ‘chock’ it on this one, you ‘chock’ it on that one, you ‘chock’ it on your mother and you ‘chock’ it on your father”).

Years later, to me at least, “inner circle” meant the part in TIE Fighter when Thrawn is promoted to Grand Admiral (Battle Ten). I don’t think I ever made it to that part, but there was a cheat that allowed you to see all the killer cutscenes. Damn fine game.

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Oh, just make out already! Or go hog wild on Tom’s desk. Or have Chris or Ron or Ann Perkins or all three catch you in bed together, Leslie and Ben! You guys were doing so well avoiding the trap of lingering romance that every damn sitcom and its mongoloid step-brother trips, I hope you can chew your foot off before it’s too late.

“Jerry’s Painting” continues pushing the Leslie/Ben thing that, hopefully, will culminate in an upcoming episode where the two take a road trip to Indianapolis (I saw it on the Wikipedia), and Chris even goes so far as to set Ben up with someone who has what he deems “compatible traits,” to the natural chagrin of Leslie. But the bulk deals with the eponymous (damn, I hate that word) Jerry’s Painting—on full display at the Pawnee community art exhibit—which depicts a topless female centaur slaying a deer while a Reubenesque cherub looks on.

But, of course, it’s by Jerry, so naturally it has to have something wrong with it, which is that the centaur resembles a topless Leslie and the cherub resembles Tom (I wonder what mythical Greek creature Ron would be…Zeus?). However, while Tom is (in a cosmic sense unjustifiably) incensed, Leslie loves it and feels empowered that it’s her flailing boobies taking down a stag. What woman wouldn’t? Still, topless art is topless art, and Marcia Langman, the same Bible-beating woman who tries to find some anti-Christian message in everything objects to the implied beastiality of the painting and wants it destroyed, as does Tom, though for completely different reasons.

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Goodbye, Michael!

I’m not sure which one we all knew was coming: Michael Scott leaving, Steve Carell leaving, or The Office pretty much getting cancelled now that they’re gone. Maybe my emotions gauge isn’t properly calibrated, but I wasn’t tearing up during this one; of course we’ve all known about Michael/Steve’s departure since before the Eisenhower administration, so it’s no big reveal, and many other writers have given him a far more lugubrious analysis than I.

I’ve lost a good deal of interest in the show over the years and gotten progressively more annoyed with Michael’s character, but I still maintain an appreciation for all the good things the US Office and Steve Carell have accomplished over the last six years—they did, after all, take a British favorite and put their own distinct spin on it, creating a show that will go down as one of the ‘00s best.

And, to it’s credit, “Goodbye, Michael” doesn’t dwell on the loss and is actually pretty damn funny. One of its many smart moves is to play down Imbecile Michael and play up Caring Michael, who’s leaving the office on a good note by dispensing gifts and compliments, including his neon St. Pauli’s beer sign to Ryan, a velvet pool table to Stanley, the ten best accounts to Andy, and not telling everyone about Phyllis’s long-lost child.

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Members of my generation probably remember Rescue Rangers, the cartoon that (if you lived in mid-Michigan in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s) eased the de-gression each weekday from the awesomeness of Ducktales to the mediocrity of Tailspin. Rangers wasn’t up to the same level of quality of Ducktales, but it did have one thing that kept our pudgy little eyes watching: Gadget.

Smart, sexy, and sporting a dynamite purple jumpsuit that no girl ever dared try pull off, Gadget was ashamedly appealing, and Disney gets a lot of credit for screwing up our concepts of attractiveness and sexuality. My college roommate’s predilection for redheads stems from seeing The Little Mermaid at a birthday party when he was seven (that same friend also took my “Who’s Your Ideal Cartoon Woman” quiz and, oddly enough, ended up with Gadget, which he reasoned was actually an ideal choice).

So what does this have to do with Parks & Rec? Outside of mindless filler and the hope of scoring more hits from the nostalgic crowd, I think I’ve nailed down what makes Leslie Knope so fetching: She’s the human equivalent of Gadget. “Mousey” would certainly be a good adjective to describe her—she’s petite and generally shy, regarding the opposite sex; she’s blonde; and she’s scatterbrained yet curiously competent at what she does (and in both cases it’s implied that their work is a substitute for social interaction).

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Maybe I’m biased, but Amy Poehler gets cuter and cuter each episode (something about those devilish eyebrows); Jerry gets more pathetic; and Ron is more and more of a badass.

First off, this may be my favorite cold open so far—though it’s in close competition with the one where Leslie goes up the dreaded fourth floor of Pawnee’s City Hall (“POPCORN?”)—it’s nice to see the twistedly playful side of Ron and even nicer to see that he’s almost aware of how the rest of the parks department perceives him.

He almost fooled me, too, but then my Ron Sense is calibrated enough (or at least more than Tom’s) to figure out that even he wouldn’t perform an impromptu tooth removal in the middle of a meeting.

The episode lives up to that open as well; it keeps the humor coming but also injects some character development that ranks right up there with the best of The Office’s second season: Ben’s crush on Leslie is getting more overt; Donna’s finally getting more face-time; the writers deliver a great moment from Chris; and, oh, April and Andy get married.

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This may be a tough one to summarize because it’s not so much a plot-oriented installment, but more a series of skits featuring Will Ferrell interacting with everyone else around the office—Andy, Jim & Pam, Erin, Kevin, and, naturally Michael. That’s pretty much the recap right there.

But that won’t suffice, so here’s some more details: Ferrell, whose guest appearance for a few episodes has been in The Office news for what seems like the past three seasons, plays Deangelo Vickers (which sounds like a name Ferrell chose for himself), the guy brought in to replace Michael. After a surprisingly long cold open in which he ingratiates himself to Michael, Deangelo hits it off with the rest of the office, talking kids with Jim & Pam, immediately spotting/assigning the role of office clown to Andy, and earning the respect and admiration of the rest of the gang (especially Kelly, who orchestrates her own “meet cute” to nab his attention).

For those of you who’ve seen the original BBC Office, this is the long-awaited arrival of the “Neil” character, someone I never thought they’d get to—particularly seven seasons in. And, like Neil, Deangelo is great with first impressions but turns out to be a shallow, humorless jerk.

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AMC has quickly become a go-to source for high quality, unconventional television. They built their reputation on Mad Men and Breaking Bad, now they are adding some genre fare to their lineup. Last fall we had The Walking Dead, now comes The Killing. The series will unfold over 13 hours; the first two episodes premiered on Sunday evening.

The premiere episode of The Killing wastes no time establishing a dark and dreary atmosphere. Homicide detective Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) is jogging on a trail in Seattle. Her peaceful excursion is juxtaposed with scenes of a teenage girl being pursued through the woods at night by an unseen assailant.

It’s Sarah’s last day on the job before she moves to sunny California with her son to get married. Wouldn’t you know, a local girl has gone missing, forcing Sarah to take one last case before her replacement arrives in a few hours. Rosie Larsen is 17, and has been missing for the whole weekend.

Sarah is tiny, pale, contemplative and reserved. Mireille Enos captures the nature of Sarah perfectly. You might recognize Enos as Jodeen on Big Love.

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The Office has finally stopped lollygagging around the Michael-Holly will-they/won’t-they (of course they will) question? and given us what we all expected: The Proposal, albeit coyly buried under the episode’s evasive title “Garage Sale.” But who’s complaining?

In the show’s 145-episode run, it’s deftly avoided cheap sentiment, and though Michael’s erratic behavior can be grating, especially in this last season, Steve Carell knows how to keep it sweet instead of cloying—even when you have the rest of the office bearing candles and ominously asking Holly to marry them in some weirdly druidic ritual (not that I know anything about druidic rituals [though one of the tech guys at my old job was a druid]; it’s just the best adjective to go with “ritual”).

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The Harvest Festival has come and gone (about 16 episodes earlier than I thought), and Leslie’s getting the kudos she deserves…until the city manager Paul suffers a heart attack during her recognition ceremony and collapses with a death grip on her right mammary. Nice. (And the headline “Knope Grope Is Last Hope” is the icing on the booby.)

Before he does, though, he tenders some eagerness toward what Leslie’s next big idea will be, which leads Leslie to call a mandatory work/brainstorming retreat for the parks department, a fancy name for camping in one of Pawnee’s starry-night-sky-infested parks. Naturally, the rest of the office is reluctant (I do love how Leslie seems to be the only person in her department who actually enjoys the parks): Ron would prefer to skip the get-together and go camping by himself (presumably at some private campground).

Tom would prefer to bask in the pervading effulgence of SkyMall; and Jerry just brings bad luck by scaring all the fish (and misidentifies “rappers” as “rappists”). The only one who shares Leslie’s gung-ho-i-ness is Andy, who sees it as an opportunity to build a love-tent for himself and April (not too bad of an idea, had he not chosen the wrong campsite to pitch it).

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I like the dynamic Todd Packer brings to The Office. Among the group of miserable souls who have their own beefs with each other and whose allegiance depends on whatever the week’s plot requires, Packer was always a fun wrench to toss into the cogs and, somehow, make them work better.

Basically, in his earlier appearances, Packer became the one thing towards which every petty person at Dunder-Mifflin could put aside personal differences and rally against. There’s something heartwarming in that solidarity. I also love David Koechner.

Of course, Packer has only made a handful of those appearances (four? five maybe?), but they’ve all been memorable thanks to Koechner, who finds the relishing humor in school-yard insults such as “Michael Snot!” and adolescent put-downs regarding Jim’s sexuality. He’s the missing link in the evolution of the 1^st-grade-bully-to-frat-boy-to-?-to-child-molesting-Uncle-John. Naturally an episode devoted entirely to him wouldn’t work.

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Chris and Ben are both extremes of Leslie’s personality—Chris being her unflappable zeal and Ben her insecurities, particularly regarding the acceptance of others—and that’s a good enough starting point, but, as I’ve said way too many times when I couldn’t think of anything else to write, they need to develop into their own characters. Fortunately I think they’re starting to explore the possibilities of Ben, last week being a delightful lambasting of his Pawnee PR ignorance, but Lowe’s Chris still isn’t quite there, and I’m not sure if he’ll ever get a chance to be.

The core plot revolves around Leslie and Ron heading up to Indianapolis to receive a commendation for reviving Harvest Festival, but that’s quickly dismissed once it becomes clear that Ron’s sole incentive for going is to visit his favorite steakhouse, and Leslie gets sidetracked into spying on Chris, now back home in Indianapolis, when Ann Perkins suspects he’s cheating on her.

I love it when Leslie and Ron are put in light opposition to each other, but placing Chris in the crossfire seemed doomed to fail because his character is so upbeat that he’d deflect the spitwads. So the humor falls back on Poehler and Offerman, in particular a scene pitting Chris’s ultra-healthy views on diet squarely against Ron’s aggressively meat-oriented tastes.

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