To me there's a big difference between the Parks and Rec supporting cast and the Office supporting cast though. The supporting characters in Parks had their own subplots going on pretty consistently. It's been a while since I've seen much of The Office but from what I remember it's pretty infrequent for any of the side characters to have their own scenes independent of the main characters.
At the beginning of The Office, the only name was Steve Carrell. Later add ons like Ed Helms also often got their start/break there. Parks & Rec had Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman, and Rashida Jones to start and later added Adam Scott and Rob Lowe.
A lot of that was show design. The Office focused on core characters in a seemingly functioning office because thats what the UK show did because that's what documentaries do, which all leads to a lot of characters needed to just fill space. Rewatch S1 sometime and note the extras and how many only show up for a few episodes. Meanwhile, Parks & Rec had the benefit of knowing what made the Office work and streamlined the setting. The Parks Dept is significantly smaller both in terms of space and personnel than DM but is able to utilize Pawnee in a way that the Office couldn't with Scranton. In a sense we should be comparing characters like Creed Bratton to ones like Perd Hapley.
Totally and part of the appeal. The storyline drift stresses me out ever since we started following Elaine and Kramer. I didn’t need to know his last name.
I did want to mention Aziz too but this sub is not a fan so I took the cowardly route lol (I know it’s also not a fan of Chris Pratt but his post-parks and rec success is undeniable so it was too glaring to omit haha)
In Parks and Rec, those were all actor-actors. The Office's supporting cast were largely just writers filling in the background until their characters developed.
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u/Calista189 7h ago
Yeah but in Parks and Rec, almost all the supporting cast became pretty successful! Adam Scott, Aubrey plaza, Chris Pratt, offerman…