S1E6: We all fell in the pit
Singing silly little songs
First of all, in case you haven’t noticed, Park It got a huuuuge rebrand in the week since I was last in your push notifications. Shoutout to my work pal , who seriously got in the weeds with slacking me various color schemes, and my very best childhood friend Lane, who made my tender little logo. I think we’re all thanking these two that no one has to look at my shitty (but endearing) logo I doodled in 5 minutes while my dinner was microwaving. But please pour one out for the logo before I lock it away forever:
Back to your regularly scheduled programming. Welcome to the season 1 finale! I know, I know — it snuck up on us. But remember that I warned you about this. Season 1 of Parks and Rec was picked up mid-season on a shortened run, meaning that NBC basically wanted to test to make sure viewers would like it before they ordered a full season and spent all of the money involved with it. Good thing for us, it got renewed, and season 2 is where things start to get good.
But the season 1 finale sets a LOT in motion. It’s Mouse Rat’s (Andy’s band) debut. Andy finally gets his casts off his legs, but we learn he delayed the removal for two weeks, which causes him and Ann to have THE fight that will ultimately end them. Leslie’s mom sets her up on a “business dinner” with a a literal geezer from Eagleton, the nearby rivaling town, and the guy is so old he can barely hear Leslie talking. (Actually, maybe I should watch what I say about hearing. My friends would kill me if I’m on my high horse about that one. I can’t hear shit.). Mark’s butthurt about being the seventh wheel at Andy’s show, so when Leslie shows up after her date gone seriously awry, Mark starts to chat her up. One thing leads to another and they end up at the pit drinking beers, shooting the shit, and kissing each others faces. But, in the shock of all shocks, LESLIE is the first one to pull away and realize that she doesn’t want to go down that round. Mark then literally falls. into. the. pit. Can’t say he didn’t deserve it.
I can’t imagine being in the writers’ shoes for this episode — trying to wrap up loose ends and give the characters some sense of narrative closure while they were all unsure if they’d have jobs for a season 2. As finales go, it’s solid, especially in the context of the rest of the show. But for this post, I want to focus on Mouse Rat.
More broadly, I want to focus on one of my favorite topics: silly little songs!
Silly little songs — whether they’re comedic parodies of pop hits or genuinely earnest originals written for sitcoms/TV shows — have a total soft spot in my heart. Something about the humor of a really good jingle just gets me going.
This love very well might come from personal associations I have with well-written song parodies. Back in my college, I’d spend my summers working at a summer camp, and we’d host SNL-style sketch shows every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. These were always a mix of original content and famous sketches or songs we rewrote to fit camp themes. One year I rewrote an adaptation of the lyrics to “Shallow” (that was the summer where “A Star Is Born” was all the rage), while another year I pitched a version of Andy Samberg’s “I’m On A Boat,” but about paddleboats and preteens (“I’m On A (Paddle)boat”). One all-time personal favorite was a camp-themed version of SNL’s “Back Home Ballers” about the moms who came camping. It poked fun at them drinking wine and gib gabbing while their kids ran around unattended. Total smash hit.
The original “Back Home Ballers” is one of my favorite SNL sketches of all time. It’s the crowning jewel of YRGRLS, SNL’s musical girl group of the late 2010s. The group — whose members rotated but almost always consisted of Aidy Bryant, Leslie Jones, Cecily Strong, Vanessa Bayer, and Kate McKinnon — took their cues from Andy Samberg’s success with The Lonely Island. Legendary comedic songs of theirs like “I’m On A Boat” and “Dick In a Box” are still staples of modern vernacular. But their humor was always incredibly boyish, and indicative of SNL’s boys-club roots. The Tina / Amy era of SNL made a group like YRGRLS possible.
After Andy departed from SNL in 2011, two writers partnered with Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant to fill the musical vacuum left by The Lonely Island. YRGRLS’ first smash hit, “(Do It On My) Twin Bed,” came out in 2013 and details the struggling of trying to hook up with an SO in your parents’ house when you’re home for the holidays.
YRGRLS continued to release banger after banger. There was “Dongs All Over the World,” with Elizabeth Banks as a guest star. “First Got Horny 2 U” where they sang about their sexual awakenings (with lots of dry humping involved). “This Is Not A Feminist Song,” where they sing on a beach about the various 2016-era memes about feminism. Season 43’s darker “Welcome to Hell,” which — released in the midst of #MeToo — pokes fun at what women have been dealing with since essentially the beginning of time.
And finally, their crowning glory, “Back Home Ballers,” which spotlights how much kids (myself included) expect to be pampered whenever we head home for the holidays. It’s so accurate — everything from doing one whole load of laundry for just one sock (is it just me or does all sense of environmental responsibility go out the window when you’re home?) to the heinously long wifi password that’s a string of numbers and letters. The humor is in the specificity of their examples and the universality of that experience of pulling up to Virginia from San Francisco, dog tired from living my incredibly stressful life of drinking with my friends all weekend long, kicking up my feet and expecting my parents to just dote on me. And the best part is … they do. As we speak, I’m coming at you live from a flight back to SF from Virginia, munching on a PB&J my mom packed me in my carry on. Back home balling never dies. Thanks Sheila, happy mother’s day!
SNL’s long been a champion of the comedy x music crossover (it continues to this day — Maya Rudolph’s monologue last night was a simply iconic rap about her being “Mother”), but I also absolutely love when sitcoms take it upon themselves to build original music into their worlds. The humor relies again upon the specificity of the sitcom’s world and the audience’s knowledge of that world. Dwight and Michael’s “Straight Outta Scranton” rap is objectively funny in The Office, but is infinitely better when we understand intimately how unhinged both of them are.
Andy Dwyer’s band, Mouse Rat, is the same. Season 1’s crowning glory of a song, “The Pit,” is fantastic because we understand that Andy’s currently the worst (but we have hopes he’ll grow into less of a shithead). They’re one of the sitcom greats and this is just the beginning of Mouse Rat’s character arc! Andy’s band isn’t even NAMED Mouse Rat until the end of this episode. (Well, technically, it was named Mouse Rat, and then he changed it, only to ultimately change it back).
And I absolutely can’t wait to get to cover Mouse Rat’s crowning glory: “5,000 Candles in the Wind [Bye Bye L’il Sebastian].” They’re about to make it big time (in Pawnee).
Bye, bye, season 1!! Other minutes of comedy gold from episode 6:
When Andy’s leg casts come off and underneath them is just a layer of debris and trash, including Ann’s iPod Nano
Also when Andy’s casts come off and he immediately stands up, only to be hit with a case of jelly legs and fall flat on his face
THE FIRST MENTION OF EAGLETON, Pawnee’s rival town ( I need that Eagleton shirt right about now)
When Leslie’s on her supposed-business-dinner turned blind date with the old guy, he goes “so what kind of movies do you like?” and she goes “oh you know…documentaries…political thrillers”
The episode of meeting everyone’s SOs! We meet April’s bi boyfriend and HIS gay boyfriend, Wendy (Tom’s green card marriage wife!), and Ron’s date, who just so happens to be his ex-wife Tammy’s sister
God Mark is such a sleazeball in this one (what else is new). He goes from hitting on Ann to kissing Leslie. Grrrr
Silly Ron Swanson continues! When he’s leaving the bar at the end of the episode, he’s drunk and goes “hey who wants to see me climb a tree” AND he’s finally wearing a polo, not a suit
Hahhhahahah Leslie tries to throw her beer bottle into the pit and it flies backwards out of her hand
Mark falls into the pit after kissing Leslie and she pulls away and honestly …. he deserves it
Ok team! One season down, six to go (I’ll be writing this till I’m old and gray at this rate). Hope you’re all enjoying my silly little rewatch. Hit me with some comments if you have thoughts / questions / concerns / feedback and seriously appreciate you ALL for tuning in!!
We’ll take a brief hiatus next week between seasons, and then it’s back to your regularly scheduled programming. Tell your friends it’s not too late to join on the watch along — after all, Ben Wyatt doesn’t even join the cast till the end of season. It’s JUST getting good.
How did I miss that you write a substack about the best show of all time. (Though I always tell people to skip the 1st season, lol!) Mouse Rat forever!
Love the new branding!