Crazy thought of the day: Is a primetime NBC show secretly about Dothan?
If you’ve never seen NBC’s “Parks & Recreation” it’s well worth your time to catch up on the last three seasons. The show started out as a clone of NBC’s hit comedy, “The Office,” but quickly surpassed the fading antics of Michael Scott and Dunder Mifflin Paper Co. It falls into the same “mockumentary” category as “The Office” since its cast of characters periodically give one-on-one interviews throughout the show with an invisible camera crew there to capture daily life in Pawnee, Indiana’s, city hall. And this fictional small town just might be a familiar place to anyone living here in Dothan.
Parks & Rec absolutely nails the small town atmosphere of middle America, which is nice to see since TV networks seem to think sitcom characters only exist in trendy, big cities. The absence of a laugh track and the understated character interplay add to a sense of reality that you don’t often get from scripted half-hour sitcoms. More than that though, I think the writers may have secretly visited Dothan during the show’s development for research. Laura (my wife) and I keep spotting similarities between fictional Pawnee and real-life Dothan:
1. Pawnee has murals which depict important moments from the town’s past. The enthusiastic, cheerful citizens of the show take these beautifully-painted murals very seriously. They’re also completely unaware that these murals are (un)intentionally hilarious. I’ll never be able to ride past “The Dothan Riot” or the “Abduction of Elizabeth Dill” murals in downtown Dothan without thinking of the murals on Parks & Rec. You have to check them out for yourself on the Parks & Rec website.
2. An ongoing plotline involved “The Harvest Festival,” Pawnee’s fall festival which was a cross between Dothan’s National Peanut Festival and Landmark Park’s Wiregrass Heritage Day. I’d wager that the writers have been to a few small town festivals in their lives.
3. One of the more interesting ways I think show reflects real life is how it realistically portrays small town media. In Pawnee there are newspaper reporters who find themselves reporting on stories which might not make the back page of other papers. There are local TV newscasts and chat shows with longtime hosts who may or may not know they’re just on a small-market station. There are radio DJs who overestimate their own ability to entertain. The only thing not on Parks & Rec (so far) is “Pawnee Magazine”… and I’m not sure I want to see what they do with that. 
4. Most of all, there’s the character of Ron Swanson, the director of the parks department. He’s unlike any other character on TV right now but he’s A LOT like many guys around Dothan. The mustachioed conservative/libertarian is a tightly wound male authority figure who embodies All Things Manly. The writers handle the character of Ron smartly and affectionately, not cynically — on any other show he would be the buffoon. Apparently the character is so unique because the actor who portrays him (Nick Offerman) is not so far removed from Ron Swanson in real life.
Ron’s character is an example of how the writers discovered comedy gold by setting their show in a small town. I’ve met a few dozen Ron Swansons in my years here in Dothan. The humor of Parks & Rec comes from its well developed characters, not zany situations. The show might have the most easy-to-identify-with group of characters on TV. If you watch it long enough you will find someone on there who’s like you. After watching the show for the past three seasons, I’m impressed that the writers were able to develop all the characters of Parks & Rec into something close to real people.
New episodes of Parks & Rec return tonight on NBC. I wonder if every other small town in middle America wonders if the town of Pawnee and its chracters are a reflection of them?
well written
Whatever, man. Our coverage of the "Watching Paint Dry Celebration" at a certain local park was groundbreaking.