Let Sirens Be The First Responder For Your Parks & Recreation Emergency

Parks & Recreation ends its seventh and final season tonight, and all those who aren't going to be sated by episodes in syndication on WGN, FXX, Esquire, and probably at least one local station may be desperately looking around for another sitcom to fill the void Parks will leave. I think I may have an answer, and it's one even Burt Macklin would approve of: consider the EMTs of USA's Sirens.

This may seem like a stretch, particularly if this is the first you've heard that USA has sitcoms. (If that's the case...I literally don't know what else we could have done to spread the word about Playing House, and if you're not on board with that, you are only hurting yourself.) If you had heard of Sirens but decided not to sample it then, I kind of get it: Denis Leary is its executive producer, and his brand has lost some of its former lustre after those last few unnecessary and increasingly angry seasons of Rescue Me. On paper, replacing an overtly feminist sitcom built around and by the talents of Amy Poehler with a dude-ier affair developed by Denis Leary seems like an insane suggestion, and two less similar blond Boston comedians do not immediately leap to mind. But hear me out.

Sirens is also about likable civil servants: As we learned over and over again from Parks, government work can be thankless and frustrating, and the public one is trying to serve is often far less grateful than one would, if not expect, then at least hope. Sirens is actually even more realistic about the challenges of working in the public sector. (More realistic than the show that moved an entire regional office of the National Parks Service to a raccoon-plagued shithole? Incredible but true!) But, ultimately, all of its EMT and cop protagonists, like the Parks Department staffers of Parks & Recreation, take their charge seriously and find the joys and satisfactions even in what is often a real grind.

Sirens also features a diverse bunch of weirdos: Our three protagonists are Johnny, who's very belatedly trying to work through his complicated feelings about the father who was mostly absent during his childhood; Hank, a charming and attractive gay man who cruises -- apparently quite successfully -- one in ten of the cute male patients on his shifts; and Brian, a sweet naïf who reveres his mentors and still lives with his parents. The squad also includes Cash, a grizzled old veteran who's seen it all; Stats, who's trying to collect interesting cases for her life list; and Voodoo, who's openly asexual. Circumstances have thrown them together to learn from each other, occasionally, but more importantly to ballbreak each other for our amusement.

Sirens also loves and likes its characters: And in ways that make it impossible for us not to love and like them too. In the second episode of the season, for example, Brian treats a teenaged girl after a car accident has scraped up her face just days before her prom; when he learns that her date backed out due to her temporary disfigurement, Brian takes her instead...and takes their election as Prom King and Queen to deliver some dorky home truths from the stage. In "Transcendual," Voodoo -- who's been trying to "date" Brian even though he knows all about her asexuality -- trades their special friendship in the moment for Brian's long-term happiness, breaking things off and encouraging him to date a cute diner waitress.

Sirens features one element Parks never really did: A three-dimensional gay character! In the latest episode, Johnny, Brian, and Hank are called to the home of single mother Sheila, who's injured her wrist in the middle of hosting a sleepover for her daughter. As Brian and Johnny stay back to look after the girls, Hank drives Sheila to the hospital, and once they're alone in the rig, she starts barking up the wrong tree, flirtatiously commenting on how long it's been since she was out after dark with "a handsome man." Hank: "Gay....Gay. I am gay. Gay gay gay. Really gay." When Sheila bounces right back, effusing, "That is even better! To be honest, I was already a little exhausted just getting up the nerve to hit on you. Besides, I am so in the market for a gay best friend right now." Hank shuts that down in a fast hurry too.

"What is your stance on wine tastings?" she wheedles. Hank: "BEER." But because the show loves and likes its characters, and Hank is a decent person who realizes Sheila needs a friend, he first plays a little Dating Game trying to set her up with some potential gay best friends at the hospital; when none of those work out, he softens some of his own positions. I mean, first he has to tell her some shit -- "I just want to state for the record that gay men are not human accessories. We do not exist to fill the fun hole in straight women's lives!" But then he holds out an Extra Virgin olive branch: "I won't do any of that other gay shit with you, but I do like brunch." HANK!

Billy is the new Andy: There's no harder challenge for a sitcom than making this viewer invest in its dumbest character, and rare indeed are the times such a character has actually found a place in my heart. Andy was one. Billy is another.

Billy came on the scene in Season 1 to be a threat to Johnny, pretty much: he and his girlfriend Theresa were on a break, and Billy was her impossibly hot new (cop) partner. As time went on and Theresa and Johnny found their way back to each other, we also got to know more about Billy and how little Johnny ever would have had to fear from this gentle, good-hearted idiot. He might spitefully withhold a burrito from a perp in custody, but that's about the worst thing we've seen him do. And he is a cop! In Chicago!

Season 2 has really let Billy come into his own as a character, from cheerfully ogling the definition of the male patrons at Johnny and Hank's fancy gym to cheerfully accepting Brian's brief attempt to define his post-sexual identity as "Transcendual," including warning other characters not to dismiss Brian's self-identification. But hands down the greatest moment came at the end of the latest episode. Under Brian and Johnny's inexperienced supervision, the party has fallen into chaos, with a proposed dance number blowing up due to conflict over who gets to be Beyoncé. While Johnny, Brian, Theresa, and Theresa's sister/Billy's girlfriend Maeve lurk in the kitchen, having devolved into their worst middle-school selves, Billy cheerfully takes over the girlfight offscreen, and shows us how a real diva handles her business.

Nothing could or will replace Parks & Recreation, but Sirens is fun. And don't you want to be as happy as this fool in the boa?

Sirens airs Tuesdays at 10 PM on USA.