I’m going to offer you some advice that contradicts almost everything you’re hearing from health and wellness experts: go watch some TV.
No, not the news (please, no). And not whatever prestige program is currently in vogue and up for however many Emmys. I’m talking about the small-screen equivalent of hot soup when you’re sick: the modern-day classic “Parks and Recreation.”
Let me back up a bit.
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re a person of faith who is at least a little bit concerned with the state of the world at the moment. It might all feel a bit overwhelming — there is so much to do and much too little time to do it in. But I have a hunch that “Parks and Rec” may be just what we need right now.
Let me back up again, to November 2024. You might remember some things happened that month, specifically that first Tuesday.
My husband and I had been meaning to finally cycle through some quality television that we’d missed when it first came out, programs like “Mad Men” and “The Sopranos.” But then that Tuesday happened, and the prospect of watching fictional sad things happen to fictional sad people seemed less alluring when things were looking bleaker out our own windows.
I offered “Parks and Rec” as an alternative suggestion. I’d watched the entire series years ago, but my husband hadn’t. What better way to take a 22-minute break from the world than visit Pawnee, Indiana, and its cast of characters as they bumble through city politics?
As we dived in, however, my delight in revisiting this favorite show started to morph into something else. The show’s entire run took place in the Obama era; it ended in 2015, when the possibility of a Trump presidency still felt (to me) like a real impossibility. The show’s vibes are sunny, and protagonist Leslie Knope’s political heroes — Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden — have, um, been through some things since the show first aired.
I started to worry a bit: is watching this silly sitcom about local government in the pre-Trump era pure escapism, a pining after “better days” when things at least seemed simpler? Is “Parks and Rec” too much of a relic now, and maybe not the most helpful thing to be taking in, given, well, everything?
Maybe this line of questioning sounds a bit intense, but I’m a firm believer in asking questions of the things we present to our eyes and ears: what is this book, show, commercial, podcast, etc., assuming and declaring as true?
In the case of “Parks and Rec,” I gradually realized that, even in its “datedness,” the messages at the heart of the show still ring truer than ever. “Parks and Rec” is about community, which includes not only your best friends (the nurse Ann Perkins, a “beautiful, tropical fish”) but also the people you simply have to learn to live with (creepy orthodontist and city councilman Jeremy Jamm; basically everyone in neighboring town Eagleton) and the people you have come to love (grumpy-with-a-heart-of-gold parks director Ron Swanson, aspiring-and-failing-entrepreneur Tom Haverford).
The show is about staying put in a small town in the Midwest and trying to make it a better place for everyone, which means listening to your neighbors, no matter how kooky they are (ever notice how many town hall meetings take place over the course of this show?).
As actor Jim O’Heir, who played perpetual office punching bag Jerry Gergich, put it in a recent NPR interview: “‘Parks’ was about hope. It was about people working together to make change, and things didn’t always go our way. And when they didn’t, Leslie Knope was like, ‘OK. Let’s dust ourselves off and move on to the next thing.’”
A lot of the advice I’m hearing about how to best live in these bleak days involves starting small and starting local. Learn about your city and its government. Take care of those around you. It’s oddly stirring, then, to rewatch “Parks and Rec” episodes that aired more than a decade ago and see in them a vision for how to move through these challenging days.
True to sitcom form, each episode has a conflict that must be wrapped up in 22 minutes, but the resolutions are often unexpected, and maybe a bit messy. Unlikely alliances are made; hard conversations are had; difficult truths are acknowledged.
So go ahead: pull up an episode, or just some YouTube clips of Li’l Sebastian’s funeral. Yes, “Parks and Rec” is funny and heartwarming. Yet the things that make it a comfort watch are also the things that make it meaningful in this chaotic moment.
Of course, I want to stay informed and educated about the chaos (as hard as that may be at times), but “Parks” ended up being much more than just an escapist palate cleanser.
In the series finale, Leslie tells her parks department colleagues: “When we worked here together, we fought, scratched and clawed to make people’s lives a tiny bit better. That’s what public service is all about: small, incremental change every day.”
Here’s to fighting, scratching and clawing to make things better in our own little corners of the world.
