Parks and Recreation – Recap & Review – Camping

photo: nbc

Parks and Recreation
Camping

Original Air Date: Mar 24, 2011

Valentina D. – TwoCents Reviewer
valentina@thetwocentscorp.com

“Camping” is an excellent installment of Parks and Recreation that sees the Pawnee parks department gang return to the great outdoors. It recalls last season’s instant classic “Hunting Trip,” but instead of game hunting, this time it’s a government retreat organized by the one and only Leslie Knope. Having successfully pulled off the Harvest Festival against all odds, Leslie feels pressured to come up with her Next Great Idea in order to avoid being a one hit wonder. Does she succeed or is Leslie destined to peak early? Read on to find out!

Leslie excitedly proposes a camping retreat to Ron and the rest of parks department, using it as an excuse to unveil her next mystery project and for the group to brainstorm a bunch of new ideas. The others are less than thrilled about the thought of spending a night sleeping outside. As April tells Andy, she hates camping because “you can see the stars, which I hate.”

Around city hall, Chris runs into Ann which could be a very awkward situation if Chris wasn’t so positive about the encounter. He’s back in town acting as city manager after the original city manager suffered a heart attack while commemorating Leslie on the success of last week’s Harvest Festival. He wants to catch up and Ann is pleasantly surprised by this prospect, despite clearly still taking their breakup hard.

The gang arrives on the Wamapoke campsite and in true Leslie fashion, the retreat won’t be a free-for-all, winged getaway. For her, these seemingly small things become events and she’s come prepared with a retreat schedule. Poor Ron just wants to get in some fishing time but I have a feeling he won’t get much.

Ben has never been camping and from the look of disgust on his face, he already knows he hates it. Tom has never been camping either but he loves it already and you understand why when we see his “Sky Mall”; a tricked-out jumbo tent filled with all the electronics you’d ever want, including a soft-serve ice cream machine. To top it all off, an old fan favorite from last season makes a cameo appearance: DJ Roomba is scooting around the Thunderdome! DJ Roomba made such an impression the first time he, er…it, was featured last season. He was only on screen for a few seconds but it was a nice callback.

Andy’s laid out a “love tent” as a surprise for April and it’s a welcome change from last week’s buffoonery and the whole “awesomesauce!” misstep. It was a thoughtful gesture on Andy’s part but there’s only one problem: he’s in a completely different part of the camping grounds than the rest of the parks department.

While Andy hikes to get to the proper camping ground, the gang is sharing plans for the next big parks project and the idea well seems to be running dry. April makes the excuse that whatever idea they come up with, they’ll all agree on Leslie’s anyway because it’ll be that good. Leslie gives everyone a break to brainstorm some ideas on their own but she confides in Ann that she doesn’t have one slightest idea herself. This was a pretty shocking development that for the first time ever, Leslie Knope is all out of good ideas. As always, she’s under a lot of pressure to produce because Chris wants whatever idea they come up with to generate revenue. Ann tries to get Leslie’s confidence going by reminding her she is smart and creative. It’s nice to see that these two always have each other’s backs no matter and it’s a prime example of why the friendship between Leslie and Ann is probably the best female friendship of any show on television right now.

Elsewhere, Ron is trying to enjoy fishing while listening to Jerry’s worries about his sexually active teenager. This is a great scene as we’re treated to some classic Ron Swanson blank stares, which are always somewhere between indifference and annoyance.

One thing I always wondered is how Tom manages to afford all his fancy toys and I’m glad this episode answers that question. He tells Ben he’ll return everything in his Thunderdome the next day and it works because, as he says, “no one wants to see a grown man cry.” Leslie and Ben take a walk against the gorgeous dusk sky (it’s like that because of the pollution coming from the Sweetums factory, we’re told) and Leslie confesses that she’s worried that she peaked with the Harvest Festival. Ben reassures her and provides the single greatest description of Leslie that anyone has ever come up with, calling her the “Energizer Bunny of city government.” When return to the campsite, she admits to the group that she doesn’t have any ideas and proposes an all-nighter when out of nowhere, Chris crashes the camp trip. Barely out of breath and hardly breaking a sweat, he was on a jog and decided to run all the way to the camping grounds to see what they were all up to and ends up making a dinner date with Ann to “talk about them.” Poor Ann, because all Chris does is gush about how amazing she is and then he’s surprised when she leans in for a kiss. Yup, that happened yet again.

Ron is fed up with the camping retreat and gets ready to take everyone back into town by running the van but there’s just another problem: the battery is shot because Tom’s Thunderdome has been running power from the van in order to power all his electronics. Leslie takes this as a sign that they need to work through the night to generate some ideas so they check into a bed and breakfast Jerry saw up the road, and Leslie hopes that some brilliant idea will pop into her head there.

Once they settle into the Quiet Corn bed and breakfast, April hears someone playing guitar and singing to her from underneath her window. It’s Andy! Andy turns up safe and is finally in the right place, having set up his romantic tent on the lawn. Inside the Quiet Corn, Leslie is going nuts trying to come up with ideas and Ron finds her attempting to pull off an all-nighter. She confides that she’s worried the harvest festival makes her a one hit wonder and that people are expecting her to deliver. We’ve seen Leslie in moments of weakness before but this time, it was different. She’s worried about herself and her creatively but ultimately, she wants the very best for Pawnee. If she lets herself down, she lets the town down and Leslie has invested too much in her job to allow that to happen. It’s refreshing to see how seriously she takes her position in government and how badly she wants to succeed to make a positive change for Pawnee. Just as Leslie is on the verge of a breakdown, Ron puts his idea into action which is locking Leslie in a room for the night to make sure she gets rest for the first time in her life.

The next day back at city hall, Leslie, confident and well-rested, reads from a silk doily she stole from the bed and breakfast and presents a slew of good ideas to Chris and Ben who are impressed. As she exclaimed at the end of the episode, “Leslie Knope is back!”

Despite this having a similar premise to “Hunting Trip,” I thought it was a worthy example of the “group bonding” theme that Parks and Recreation likes to pull off from time to time. What did you all think of this episode? Can ‘Camping” hold a candle to last season’s “Hunting Trip?” Have any good stories about your own group retreat gone wrong? Share your Two Cents below!