Still Firing Bullets!

Not pictured: the terrifying Jonathan Banks, firer of bullets

Bryan,

This week’s installment of Parks and Recreation got a lot of belly laughs out of me by going to the reliable well of Ben Wyatt being nervous.  As showrunner Mike Schur has noted, Adam Scott “just says things, and they’re funny.”  It’s hard to think of many other comedy straight men whose timing and phrasing gets comparable laughs (Jason Bateman on Arrested Development comes to mind), and Scott’s quietly panicked, insistent fatalism really sold a line like “If there’s anyone that can bring my parents together…it’s no one.  No one can ever bring them together.”

While most of the story beats this week were fairly predictable —