Lately I’ve been marvelling at my nearly unfettered access to pop culture goodness. Thanks to the advances in technology of the past 15 years, and to my own slow accumulation and development of my personal collections at the same time, I have access to an embarassment of riches. Some weeks I go through the media menu like it’s a smorgasbord, sampling a little of everything, while other times I pick one thing and gorge on it. This week has been more like a binge than a buffet, as the series finale of Parks and Recreation led me to crack open my DVDs and rewatch the show from the beginning.

I watched the Parks finale late Saturday night, two days after it aired, because I was feeling a little maudlin about the whole thing and I wanted to give it a little space for my mind to settle into it. I loved the finale — it wasn’t flawless, and sometimes I found it saccharine, but that’s basically an apt description of the show itself. It’s sometimes a little too sweet and there are episodes that are real clunkers, but overall it’s amazing. The finale wrapped everything up wonderfully — I laughed a lot, I cried, and I even got goosebumps. It gave every actor and every character at least one perfect moment, and it gave Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope about a dozen of them.

I liked the finale so much I decided to watch the series all over again. I wanted to see how the show had changed, to revisit my favourite episodes and possibly discover something new in one or two episodes I had overlooked. I started with the first season, which seems like a completely reasonable decision if you have never seen the first season of Parks and Recreation. The problem with that decision, however, is that the first season is really awful. I know a handful of people who still really like those first six episodes, but I find them clumsy, awkward, and charmless. The bare skeleton of what the show would grow into is there: Leslie Knope is an energetic go-getter with a tenuous grasp on reality who sees her meaningless position as the most important thing in the world, and she is surrounded by a group of eccentric friends and co-workers.

However, those first six episodes get so much else wrong, particularly the fact that Leslie’s co-workers treat her like garbage. Ron Swanson is nowhere near the endearing caricature he would eventually become, and Andy Dwyer is a terrible selfish person who exists solely to showcase how low he is dragging Ann Perkins down. But the worst thing is that Leslie is passionate and yet also terrible at her job, and her co-workers (especially Tom) abuse and mock her at every turn. I know it’s because the show was inspired by The Office, but that style of humour is a really terrible fit for this show. I disliked it the first time I watched it and disliked it even more on this week’s re-watch. I disliked it so much I put that season’s DVDs in my “get rid of” box. Having seasons two through seven of a show on my shelf will feel a little weird to a completist like myself, but it will prevent me from watching that awful season again, so it’s something I’m willing to accept.

When the show came back for a second season, the show’s producers must have thought the same thing, because there was a noticeable change across the board. The characters are a little more likeable, and the main thrust of the show has changed from “Leslie Knope, incompetent fool whom everyone pities” to “Leslie Knope, overenthusiastic dope whom everyone likes.” It’s a much better tone and allows for more interesting character dynamics to develop, especially the two most important relationships for the next three seasons: Leslie and Ron, and Leslie and Ann. What surprised me most on this recent viewing is how much I missed the Leslie/Ann dynamic since Rashida Jones left halfway through season six. Jones and Poehler have great chemistry, and without Ann as Leslie’s best friend and anchor (and vice versa), the show sometimes felt a little lopsided. Without giving too much away, the scene in the finale where I burst into tears — big, manly tears, mind you — involved Leslie and Ann together.

The third season, though, is where Parks and Recreation really figures itself out. The last two episodes of season two added Adam Scott as the nerdy and practical Ben Wyatt and Rob Lowe as the greatest character in the history of television, Chris Traeger. The two of them gave the show a huge shot in the arm; not only are they two talented actors who entirely commit to their roles, but they get to do some heavy lifting plot-wise, allowing for some of the other performers to have fun secondary or tertiary plots where they explore their characters. The third season is sweet and romantic and super-fun, and I always recommend starting there to anyone who hasn’t seen Parks and Recreation and was thinking about starting.

Getting through seasons four through six may take me longer than a week, and I will try to branch out into non-Parks and Recreation territory for next week, if only for my own sanity. It has been fun to revisit the origins of the show, though, and if I’ve learned anything from going over the first three seasons, it’s that I never, ever want to watch those first six episodes again. (And that Paul Schneider’s Mark Brendanawicz is not as awful as I’d remembered.)

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That’s about it for me this week. Until next time, watch Parks and Recreation if you haven’t. But please, skip the first season. I’ll see you in seven days.