After the pilot of NBC’s much touted “Office” spin-off aired, my immediate reaction was that this was indeed "The Office," just slight tweaked.

Up front, Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope resembled a female Michael Scott -- surely to bumble her way through the ranks of government bureaucracy instead of corporate bureaucracy. The jokes seemed to rely on Poehler’s dumbfounded optimism, all the while pitting this in the backdrop of (another) small town America setting -- a place that never seems funny when you’re actually driving through but, somehow the residents in Pawnee (like Scranton) would prove otherwise.

But as the show’s six episodes progressed, you could see that something all together new is developing. And different.

While NBC was smart, if not noncommittal, in rolling out the...