Change is an essential part of any TV show. If the characters are static throughout a show’s run, things get stale. But, when characters repeatedly look to re-invent themselves, things get a little old.
And therein lies the problem with April Ludgate. This is the third time she’s faced with an identity crisis and it’s getting tired.
Remember when April hated her internship with the Pawnee parks department? Then she fell in love with Andy and decided to be a full-time assistant to Ron. Remember how she wanted something more after being Ron’s appointment-deleting secretary got boring? Then she started acting as Pawnee’s one-woman humane society and felt better about life in her own April sort of way.
This time, she realizes that working as an assistant to the regional director of the National Parks Service isn’t quite what she’s passionate about. Big surprise there.
What follows is a series of slights on stability and white collar work.
Ben helps the situation by offering to help April find something she’s passionate about. And now we have another story arc for the next few episodes.
Self-discovery is something most of the characters on Parks and Recreation have gone through. And it’s getting about as exhausting as trying to remember what we’re supposed to call Jerry Gergich these days. Or is it Gary?
At least “Ron and Jammy” brought back one the series’ most delightful secondary characters. Because we see her so infrequently, Megan Mullaley’s Tammy 2 is always a delight to watch, no matter who she’s terrorizing.
This time, she’s seduced Jeremy Jamm to get some pull on the Pawnee City Council. Ron and Leslie put their differences aside to rehabilitate the man in hopes that he’ll give one of them his vote to either designate the Newport family’s undeveloped land as a national park or as timber fodder for Ron’s construction company.
Ron and Leslie’s rehab clinic is where Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman finally get an opportunity to riff off each other for a bit. Unfortunately, most of the jokes here fall a bit short, save for a couple that involve an armoir and a crotch helmet.
The C-story has Tom and Andy traveling to Chicago to rekindle Tom’s romance with Lucy, the woman who left him when he just couldn’t get over his ex-wife. After the two spend a day in the Windy City together, Tom tries to get her back the only way he knows how: by offering her a job as a manager at Tommy’s Bistro. Because that’s how any enduring union begins, right? Too bad she has a boyfriend.
Now that the wheels are in motion for a few different Parks characters (The national park/timber yard debate; Tom’s attempt to win back Lucy; April’s search for a fulfilling career), you’ve gotta wonder if secondary characters like Donna and Terry (Jerry? Gary? Larry?) will have similar setups with one big payoff at the end.
With any luck, the storylines that Harris Wittels, Alan Yang, Matt Murray and the rest of the Parks writing staff cooked up tonight will wrap up with a bit more elegance than what “Ron and Jammy” had to offer. Because for a show that consistently finds ways for its characters to re-invent themselves, the constant change is getting stale.
Stray observations:
• Who’s your human equivalent of gas station sushi?
• “I have a bad case of tunnel vision when it comes to achieving my goals.”
•  “The snooker has become the snort!”
• Wait. It doesn’t count as stripping if no one sees you?
• “What was your mistake? You didn’t check your armoire!”
• “Turns out the crotch blinder was inside you all along.”
• “Oh, you know. Regionally directing the Midwest of who cares.”