Parking Wars

A few years ago when Law & Order was spawning swarms of increasingly random and goofy variants, it seemed that a Law & Order: Parking Enforcement spinoff was pretty much inevitable. The first half of the show would follow the parking enforcement officers who write the tickets; the second half would follow the clerks who process the tickets and release impounded cars back to their wearily belligerant owners.

The fictional show never happened, but the reality TV incarnation is alive and kicking. A&E;'s Parking Wars is a shockingly compelling presentation of a day-to-day drama that plays out in American cities coast-to-coast, the low-stakes game of cat and mouse between the everyday folks who depend on their cars to get from A-to-Z and the other everyday folks who make a paycheck by ticketing those same citizens for parking illegally.

Set in Philadelphia, the program roughly breaks down into segments revolving around the ticket-writers, the boot crew, and the guys back at the impound lot. Each and every part of the program pops with the potential for conflict; people who get ticketed, booted or (God forbid) towed are pissed and out for blood. Sometimes the conflict is defused by humor or reason; sometimes that's just fuel for the fire.

The beauty of the show is that it actually takes place among, well, real people. Not aspiring celebrities or would-be Trump apprentices or fashion designers. It unfolds with a cast of triage nurses, tow truck drivers, barbershop patrons, amateur rappers, impound-lot clerks, nightclubbers, frat boys and whoever else gets dragged into the maelstrom of illegal parking and its legal consequences.

The brilliant and completely surprising twist to the show is that it expertly captures both comedy and tragedy with the sort of organic oomph that comes from following real people around as they live actual lives.

The tragedies sneak up on you: an Iraq war veteran who can't get work, and consequently can't pay his parking tickets; a parking enforcement officer who finds out that his beloved cat has been diagnosed with cancer; a church van that gets booted.

And the comedies come with the territory: indignantly sputtering entitled jerks raging against the system, the specific ticket-writer who got their car and the City of Philadelphia in general; regular dudes fresh out of one of Philly's 443 barbershops cracking wise about a friend's ticket; the can't-believe-they're-not-married couple banter of forty-something Garfield and twenty-something Sherry, a dynamic duo of booters whose dryly insightful running commentary could be a show unto itself.

The show has a light touch. People aren't clumsily written and edited into hero/villain pigeonholes — they gain, lose, and sometimes even regain your sympathy as you watch them wade into the quicksand that is the Philadelphia parking enforcement system. Sure, the show isn't as weighty as bodies turning up in Central Park, but there's a certain simple beauty to that. There's also a certain simple beauty in watching somebody get the boot when it's not your car.