Parks and Recreation Watch: Season 5, Episode 12 - Ann's Plan

"Ann's Decision" involves Parks & Rec setting up another possible end game thread in Ann's baby news and balances it's A story with a couple alright side stories.

So Ann decides to have a baby, on her own, and it is up to Leslie to stop her so she can wait for her dream man and start a family that way. The first trip to the sperm bank gets us a nice cameo from our favorite disgraced Sewage employee, who serves as an excellent example of why that path isn't the right choice. Plan B is to narrow down all the men in her life to the most compatible single men she knows and she settles on The Douche. The other donor prospects had funny little scenes, but letting Kroll come in and spread his wings for an episode saves the storyline. While Leslie's nosiness predictably mucks everything up, getting to know The Douche is a stroke of genius.

Having the shock jock persona be a front for an educated and kind of charming guy really let's Kroll have a lot of room to show off and he takes full advantage of the opportunity. With no decisions made at this point on the baby this could be a fun thread going forward, but like I said earlier, I feel like this is set up for a happy ending for Ann if this is how the shows end.

The boys on the other hand are doing wedding food taste testing and it's not going well. Besides being unable to come to a conclusion, or being very good food critics in general, the little calzones get everyone sick. The whole plot line is basically to set up one amazing scene of Chris, Ben and Ron slowly dying of food poisoning and it's mostly worth it. Getting to see them crawl all over the ground is played wonderfully by the trio, with Rob Lowe stealing the show as "dead" Chris, whose body hasn't been hit this hard sense the flu. It was also nice that they were able to spin the story into a sweet victory for Ben as he nails the food choice with their favorite JJ's Diner. Waffles!

Andy and April are busy taking over the local forums and April has decided she is going to Knope it up for the meetings. To be honest, I thought Plaza would have been a bit more fun impersonating Leslie, and the forum has surely been better in the past, but I enjoyed Pratt's fawning, and April ripping everyone a new one was a lot of fun. Not a lot to the plot line, but they didn't devote much screen time to it anyways; still expected more from it though.

A solid, if lesser, episode of Parks & Rec that happens to be one of the rare occasions where a guest star comes in and steals the show. Nick Kroll was great and lifted a limp episode story wise by keeping the comedy coming. Let's hope the show gets some of that story back for the final run of episodes this season.

Random Ramblings:

-"Dealer's choice, please and thank you."

-"Because that is the only situation I can imagine."

-"It was, literally, a small calzone."

-"We are both, unfortunately, heterosexual."

-Sweet Time Condoms?

-"Maybe just Fleetwood Mac?"

-Chris will be the donor?

-"He might have just disappeared off the Earth."

-"That son of a bitch is astute."

-The Douche!

-"Drizzle it on for me, I ain't your maid."