For those of you wondering, no, I didn’t cover the first half of this season of Parks and Recreation, but I did watch it. Now that I get the chance to write about it each week I hope to spread some of the joy that this show gives me with almost every episode. With no more Community for the time being and with It’s Always Sunny finished up for the year, I’ve got to cover something and Parks and Recreation, I think is actually the best of all three right now.

Anyway, let’s get to the second half premiere of the show. We pick up after Leslie has been dropped by her campaign team because of all the Ben related drama. The Parks Department has gathered together to run Leslie’s campaign. Everyone has a job—even Jerry!

The focus of this week’s episode is on a speech Leslie plans on delivering to jumpstart her struggling campaign. The group is divided to take care of the entire event planning with Anne being given the job of campaign manager. I enjoyed how the show recognizes that Anne is completely the wrong person to be running Leslie’s camp, but that friendship is so strong Leslie believes she can do it, plus using the obvious choice of Ben would be complete poison.

Episodes like this one, where the entire cast (save for Donna—WHERE’S DONNA??) are utilized working together, make for really enjoyable episodes. With such well-defined characters, all of the jobs they’ve been assigned just feel right. Ron takes on the task of building the stage, Tom is in charge of making the event look awesome (he’s so into the red carpet, he’s lined his shoes with it) and April & Andy have provided a new, wonderful animal mascot named Champion, a three legged dog (who also happens to be Champion of the dogs and terrible at digging). Jerry is given the worst job, handing out fliers. Leslie and Anne are tasked with getting legendary high school basketball player, Pistol Pete (of the horrifically named Drunken Savages) to come and dunk the ball along with an endorsement of Leslie’s campaign. Turns out he is a ball of neuroses and needs Anne to play shrink.

In the end Jerry is actually the only one who got the job done. The stage isn’t really constructed thanks to Ron’s loosey goosey views on “laws” concerning operating commercial vehicles and Tom could only afford a short amount of red carpet. This is even more of an issue since the basketball court is actually an ice rink. This made for one of my favorite gags of the night. As everyone went out onto the ice to “Get on Your Feet” they had to slip and slide their way to the podium that had no steps. It was a true disaster.

After all of this, Leslie turns to Ben even though he is campaign poison. He did, after all, win the election for mayor when he was 18. Plus this may pull him out of the episode-long funk he’s in with Chris trying to cheer him up. I’m just sad we won’t see he Low-Cal Calzone Zone or his stop-motion animation idea come to fruition. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing where this campaign goes for the KNOPE 2012 team.

Other Observations:

• “Except for digging, he’s really bad at digging.” – April on Champion’s capabilities.
• Tom ripping on Jerry for his awful Hawaiian shirt was entertaining as all Jerry bashes.
• “Can’t you do anything wrong, Jerry?”
• Ron Swanson trying not to paint with a broad brush, “Every single contractor in the world is a miserable incompetent thief.”
• Having Champion out there while the whole team was struggling on the ice made it so much more entertaining.