NBC's "Parks and Recreation is Better Than NBC's "The Office"

When talking with my friends about the TV shows we enjoy, I can count on at least one of them to say that NBC's The Office is their absolute favorite. I typically reply with: "The Office is great! But honestly, I think Parks and Recreation is better."

You would not believe the amount of backlash I recieve after I express this.

"WHAT?!", "No way!", "The Office is the BEST!" are the most common responses I hear.

Ironically, when I ask if they have ever seen Parks and Recreation, the anwer is typically "no."

Even though a good portion of my friends have not seen Parks and Recreation, their claim that The Office is the better show is not necessarily innaccurate. It is true that The Office maintains higher ratings and a large amount of popularity, but the numerous amount of successes Parks and Recreation achieves as a comedy program is lost behind The Office's amount of overrated jokes and gags. While its appreciation unfortunately remains unseen, I strongly believe that Parks and Recreation’s three-dimensional characters, sustainable tenure, and developed storyline outranks the amount of admiration The Office receives.

One of The Office’s most notable features is its impressive ensemble cast. Steve Carell, Rainn Wilson, John Krasinski, Ed Helms, and Jenna Fischer have received a substantial amount of praise for their roles during the series’ run. And while the legacy of their characters will remain intact for years to come, the rest of The Office’s cast will simply not remain as memorable. Although actors such as Mindy Kaling, B. J. Novak, and Angela Kinsey excel in their performance on the show, their characters prove to be two-dimensional, and truly remain as the same people they were since the beginning of the series. While their characters have likeable and interesting attributes, they do not have much of a backstory, and lack a sufficient amount of emotional maturity that naturally occurs over a long stretch of time. Alternatively, one of Parks’ best qualities is the presentation of personality that the characters have on the show. They all have realistic dispositions and continuously parallel the same traits that any real person would have. Their amount of quirkiness, charisma, and growth significantly surpasses most of the characters on The Office. As Katy Fann states in her article on medium.com: “…there really isn’t a whole lot of depth or variance to the characters of The Office. I get that the whole point is to make them seem like average people, but they’re all the same average people. Parks on the other hand? [That cast had] some big personality” (Fann 1). Because so many characters in The Office remain the same throughout the series, there is a lot of space left to fill in terms of the show’s sense of purpose and direction. Regardless of the fact that the storyline of The Office is fictional, it is imperative for any TV show to have its characters portrayed as realistically as possible. Although having a lot of good jokes will get a series’ occupancy far on the small screen, a show is really only as good as its characters are, and Parks' lovable cast prevails over The Office’s by far.

Both Parks and The Office had a successful run during their tenures on air. And while Parks ended its run with seven seasons and The Office ended theirs with nine, Parks managed to begin and end in a much more uplifting and heartfelt fashion than its forerunner. “…Donna and Tom’s futuristic treating themselves was magical, and Leslie and Ben’s commitment to each other is unflagging and aspirational.” Margaret Lyons writes on slate.com. “…By the time The Office ended, Pam had kind of considered cheating on Jim, Michael had become a love-worthy sweetheart and left the show completely, and Oscar was secretly cuckolding Angela. I had a while to practice feeling totally over The Office” (Lyons 1). Not only did Parks end in a more suitable way than The Office, but it also ended when it was time to end. After Steve Carrell left the series after its seventh season, the show overcompensated its loss by creating two seasons that did not fill the void of his departure. “Parks wasn’t on the air as long as The Office. But we all know that doesn’t mean anything.” Fann continues in her piece. “The Office lost its momentum way before it went off the air. The last few seasons were pretty painful and you really only see it through because nothing is worse than stopping a series when you’ve already invested so much time into it” (Fann 1). Why should a series continue if it will only let down its viewers? It is truly disappointing when a comedy show loses its credibility of being consistently funny, and The Office proves how much that is true.

Although the storyline of The Office has its strong and redeemable qualities, it just does not remain as strong and consistent as the storyline of Parks does. As many avid TV comedy viewers know, if a show delves into a major plot point too early in its run, it becomes difficult to continue its success if it is not handled well or efficiently. “Parks and Recreation stumbled a tiny bit in Seasons 5 and 6, but came back huge in Season 7 and went out with a bang.” Collin Flatt writes in his article on ranker.com. “The Office lost its momentum after Season 4… and was always teetering near collapse after Jim and Pam got hitched. The highs of Parks and Recreation (‘Flu Season,’ ‘The Fight,’ ‘Pawnee Rangers’) match the highs of The Office (‘The Injury,’ ‘The Dundies,’ ‘Casino Night’) but the lows of The Office (all of Seasons 8 and 9) were so, so much worse than even the crappiest Parks episodes” (Flatt 1). Parks spreads its major synopsis throughout the duration of the series, and continues it in a real and organic way that is only able to occur because everything is timed the way it is supposed to. Each episode in every season has a purpose, and it never loses itself in the comedy by being too campy or artificial. Because the quality of The Office’s storyline continuously declined over time, it is unable to give the audience the same sense of closure that the storyline of Parks gives. It is difficult for a television program to maintain its popularity if the show does not have much left to offer, and The Office displays a poor attempt of continuing a story that was already over.

Many fans of The Office believe that the show is better than Parks solely because its number of ratings and amount of positive response remains higher overall, and because its use of humor resonates in a more effective way to its audience. While in some ways this may be true, this fact alone does not imply that the quality of the show is better than Parks. In reality, The Office’s central sense of humor will remain a product of its time during its run on television. Even though the vast majority of the humor on the show is harmless and is never intended to cause offense to any of its viewers, a fair amount of the jokes featured on the show have not aged well over time, (such as the ironic amount of misfired white guilt in the episode “Diversity Day”) and have shown to execute a less positive response in the present day. Although the humor of Parks differs from The Office, Parks never based their jokes in such a fashion, which leads to the accurate consensus that Parks provides a more progressive view of what Americans find to be funny. And despite the fact that many fans of The Office claim that Parks is just a “spin-off” of the show, this sense of proprietorship the fans of The Office feel for Parks proves to be a sophomoric rhetoric against Parks’ sense of forward-thinking silliness and goofiness rather than The Office’s repeated amounts of cringeworthy remarks and second-handed awkwardness. Not only is that argument insufficient, but it is also hypocritical, considering that the American version of The Office was directly taken from the original U.K. development of the series created by Ricky Gervais.

Both The Office and Parks and Recreation are two incredibly funny and well-developed shows. The impact they have left on television will be just as remarkable as the shows themselves. And while The Office has received a large amount of critical acclaim for its writing and development, Parks and Recreation has a better sense of direction with its storyline, a more realistic group of characters, and a story with a definitive beginning and end. It is evident that the creators of both shows have made drastic improvements in their directorial visions and executions in their second program, and have undoubtedly created one of the best comedy shows of all time.

Regardless of the fact that I personally Parks is better than The Office, both shows are hilarious and well worth watching! Although my opinion lays on the unpopular side of the spectrum as to which one is superior, be sure to give Parks the chance it deserves. Who knows? After you watch it, you may even think that it is better yourself!

Works Cited

Fann, Katy. “7 Reasons Why Parks and Recreation is Better Than The Office.” Medium, Coffee House Writers, 12 Nov. 2018, <medium.com/coffee-house-writers/7-reasons-why-parks-and-recreation-is-better-than-the-office-388decbfb0db.>

Lyons, Margaret. “Parks and Recreation Outshined The Office.” Slate Magazine, Slate, 25 Feb. 2015, <slate.com/culture/2015/02/parks-and-recreation-vs-the-office-how-the-nbc-sitcom-managed-to-outshine-its-predecessor.html.>

Flatt, Collin. “15 Reasons Why Parks And Rec Has Always Been Better Than The Office.” Ranker, <www.ranker.com/list/why-parks-and-rec-is-better-than-the-office/collin-flatt.>