If Parks and Recreation and The Office have one thing in common, it's that both series took a little while to find their footing. Of course, these two comedies have more than one thing in common -- both aired on NBC around the same time, both were created (or co-created in Parks & Rec's case, alongside Michael Schur) by Greg Daniels, and both debuted with big expectations from fans of an existing series. It's no surprise that Amy Poehler would find some very common ground with Steve Carell when talking about their experiences on their respective shows.
Not all of the best sitcoms of all time got off to an amazing start. The Office and Parks and Recreation are two perfect examples of shows that needed more than a few episodes to find their groove. In March, back when Steve Carell's new HBO series Rooster was just getting started, the Office star sat down with Amy Poehler on her Good Hang podcast. Among the topics that came up was how poorly their earlier sitcoms were initially received by viewers.
As Poehler tells it, there are two people that she's been told she's a "poor man's version of," and Carell is one of them. She went on to laugh about how terribly the debut of Parks and Recreation went, saying:
Parks and Rec had the worst launch ever. Everyone was like, 'This is not The Office, we don't like this.' I just remembered we're like -- 'You're not Steve and you're not -- we don't like it!' And I think I just dissociated and was like, 'well.'"
That viewers might have been looking for more of what they'd come to know and love from The Office -- and Carell's character, Michael Scott -- is not that surprising, given its creators and the fact that it was another single-camera mockumentary-style workplace comedy. In the case of Parks and Rec, the focus was on the office workers at the Parks and Recreation department of a small town in Indiana. That included Poehler's optimistic and determined Leslie Knope.
When Greg Daniels and Michael Schur's new series debuted in spring of 2009, it was around the same time that The Office was wrapping up its fifth season. Months prior to Parks and Rec's debut, The Office had its post-Super Bowl double episode, "Stress Relief," which was watched by millions (and is remembered as one of the best episodes of the series). The Office was firmly established with its fanbase, while Parks and Rec was just getting warmed up.
It's almost easy to forget that The Office had faced a similar challenge years earlier, as Carell noted in his conversation with Poehler:
Our pilot was the lowest casting pilot in the history, I think, of NBC. People really hated it ... They actively hated this show, and I don't quite know how it got legs after that.
Lest we not forget, The Office didn't debut to universal praise and sky-high ratings when it arrived in 2005, and it was nearly cancelled after its first season. The show arrived on the heels of the success of the 2001 Ricky Gervais sitcom that started it all, and to say that the U.S. version of the beloved UK comedy had big shoes to fill would be an understatement.
Personally, I didn't hate the first season of the U.S. version of The Office when it aired, but I also wouldn't argue with many of the criticisms of the show's first six episodes. That's a whole other conversation though. Getting back to the topic at hand, in his conversation with Amy Poehler, Carell called himself out as "a poor man's Ricky Gervais."
I don't think anyone would say that about Carell today, but he certainly had a high bar to meet when leading the U.S. version of The Office. And from what he said, he intentionally didn't watch more than a minute of Gervais in Office:
I watched like a minute of him, and he was so good, and so specific, and so funny, I thought, if I watch a second more, I'm just going to go on an audition with that. I won't be able to even imagine it a different way.
There really is only one David Brent, so it's understandable that Carell wouldn't want to try to recreate that character in Michael Scott. Ultimately, Carell's character became iconic in his own right, thanks in large part to the actor's comedic brilliance. Several seasons after he made his debut as Michael Scott, Carell had a say in how his character would exit the series.
All of this to say, I can see why Carell and Poehler would connect on this particular topic, as both of them saw success in their respective roles and shows, but it wasn't instant and both had to find their way out from under the shadow of other performances. Each show had to find their own way to success, and it's just really fortunate that both were given time and seasons to do so. I can't imagine a TV world without Michael Scott or Leslie Knope!
You can watch Parks and Recreation and The Office streaming with a Peacock subscription.
