The Parks and Rec Open Thread

There was no new Parks and Rec episode last night (BOO!), but we didn't have an Open Thread for last week's Galentine's Day episode, so let's talk it about now, okay?! OKAY!


My absolute favorite part of this episode was Chris' DJing while he was super depressed. That was LITERALLY the worst Valentine's Day music I have ever heard.

Also, scatx and I were both rewatching the ice rink grand entrance scene ("Get on your feet!") from the previous episode like 9,000 times this week, because nerdz, and, while I was watching it on the 8,573rd time and laughing until I cried, I was also thinking about how genuinely radical the Leslie Knope character really is, and how radical a plotline it is that she's got a male partner who is profoundly supportive of her career.

That there wasn't an arc about his "coming to terms" with her career, that it was just taken as read that he was going to be her ally because her ambition was part of what he loves about her, is a really revolutionary departure from the familiar rom-com construction of a dude who "learns" how to love am ambitious woman only after he sees that trying to crush her dreams makes her unhappy. (Quelle surprise!) Ben is already a fully-realized equal partner, who wasn't written to "grow" for the benefit of men in the audience who are assumed to be unable to relate to a man like that.

I feel like P&R is saying to those men: We won't indulge your tiresome discomfort with ambitious women. We expect more.

And, in doing so, it's also acknowledging that there are men in the world who are and have been unconditionally supportive of their female partners' ambition, who navigate without some boner-killing identity crisis the negotiations and compromises innate to any two-career partnership. Ben, I thought, is kind of a gift to them. Here YOU are. We see you.

Tangentially: One of the things that I always think makes P&R the most feminist show on television is that there's no regular foil for Leslie's feminism, even outwith her romantic relationship. Ron is the obvious candidate for that role, but he doesn't actually fill it. He continually recognizes Leslie's competency and general awesomeness. But I digress.

I also had this sort of related thought about how radical it is that all of this is taking place in small-town red(dish) state America. I live in a small town in Indiana, and I'm involved enough in local politics I've got the mayor's cell phone number, you know? This show is about women like me. And it speaks to me, reflects some of the realities of being a feminist outside a media/creative career in a major urban center, in ways that shows like The Mary Tyler Moore Show or Murphy Brown never did, even though I love those shows.

(It's also one of several fundamental differences between P&R and 30 Rock, which is a show I don't like.)

Being a feminist here, and being a feminist when I lived in Chicago for a decade, can in some ways be two very different things. I like seeing that acknowledged by P&R.

So, anyway. Those are my thoughts! What are yours?

Dr. Seuss + Ron Swanson = WIN

I fear that what you've heard, my friend
Is that I want a lot.
I shall my plea once more resend:
Give me all you've got.
[Image via BuzzFeed, by way of @scatx.]

Happy Birthday, SKM!!!

Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuuuuu!
Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuuuuu!
You look like a purveyor of the radical feminazi agendaaaaaaa!
And you smell like one, too!

(Mmm, rosemary!)
Every year on her birthday, SKM gets a cake featuring a Very Manly Man Offering Very Manly Birthday Wishes for her: Tom Selleck, Chuck Norris, Mr. T. This year I figured it was time to go right to the source of modern virility: Ron Swanson himself.

He may not be able to bring himself to wish you a Happy Birthday, but I can! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SKM!!!

I adore you, lady. I hope you have a great day and a marvelous year.

The Parks and Rec Open Thread

Ron Swanson, at his favorite restaurant in Pawnee.
By popular demand, here it is: The Parks and Recreation Open Thread! Yay! I am so excited to talk about Parks and Rec with other parksnrecheadz! Woo!

There are more spoilers herein than there is love for Li'l Sebastian in Pawnee. Which is A LOT, as I don't have to tell you.

I totes loved this episode silly, and I'm probably not as embarrassed as I should be to tell you that I blubbed my face off when April gave Chris the tickets, and there were three of them. You did it to me again, Parks and Rec!

Also: Hurt fingy!

VOTE KNOPE!

I Write Letters

Dear Parks & Recreation:

I recently wrote you a letter telling you how much I love you. And I feel like it may have been insufficient. Because I love you A LOT.

Also: I loved last night's episode (for which there are spoilers that follow, if anyone else happens to be reading this letter I'm definitely writing to a television show), and I want to tell you: I see what you did there.

Like, first of all, the episode was about Leslie Knope meeting her opponent in the city council election, and I'll come back to that in a second, but there was this great sub-plot with Andy and April about Andy hurting his head (repeatedly) and needing medical care. Now, it was obviously great because it was hilarious, but it was also great because it was this sneaky commentary on our healthcare system and how totally fucked up it is for everyone who isn't a bazillionaire, because surprise! Deductibles.

Every part of it was perfect: Can't afford healthcare with no insurance. Finally have insurance? Get EVERYTHING fixed! Before you don't have health insurance anymore! Wait? Insurance doesn't cover everything? OH SHIT. This system is so terrible. It is the worst!

Seriously, it was sooooooo great.

But ALSO! The main arc about Leslie meeting her opponent, Bobby Newport (Paul Rudd, such perfect casting), was the best! I see what you did there, too, with your sneaky commentary about class privilege and male privilege! And instead of making Bobby Newport some sort of evil caricature, you went all meta in an episode about Leslie not wanting to negatively campaign and made her opponent nice—just ALSO a super-privileged and super-spoiled dude whose entitlement actually makes him weak.

And THEN! Then comes the best part of all, where Leslie's principled stance against negative campaigning forces Ben to devise a campaign ad that is basically the greatest thing ever, not just because it underlines what it takes for marginalized people to close the gap created by the headstart that privilege confers, but because it centers as important the big dreams of little girls, which shouldn't make me blub so much, but does, because it's so rare, so goddamn rare, to see that on a television show, or anywhere, without those dreams being the butt of someone's joke. I love this so hard:

Video of young Leslie Knope sitting at a desk in her bedroom, labeled 1985. Behind her is a hand-written sign reading "Vote Knope." Ben says in voiceover: "This is city council candidate Leslie Knope when she was ten years old." Young Leslie says: "Hi, I'm Leslie Knope. I love Pawnee, and I want to make it even better—better schools, safer streets, and a more progressive tax on residential properties."

Over text onscreen reading "Bobby Newport, 2012," Ben says in voiceover: "This is city council candidate Bobby Newport today." Bobby, on a video, with a farm clearly green-screened behind him: "People keep asking me, 'Bobby, what are you gonna do once you get into office?' Um, I'm pretty sure I'll figure it out."

Ben, in voiceover: "Leslie Knope had better ideas when she was ten than Bobby Newport has now. They do have one thing in common—" Split-screen of Leslie with a stuffed toy dog and Bobby with his Afghan hound, both of them saying, "I like dogs!" Ben continues, over an image of her campaign logo: "For a better Pawnee, vote Knope for city council."

She's been thinking about the job since she was ten. Bobby Newport's doing it on a whim to get his dad off his back. I see what you did there, Parks & Recreation. I see what you did there.

And I like it. I like you.

Thanks. Keep up the good work!

Love,
Liss

P.S.

Ann, you are so beautiful and so smart.

This Is the Greatest Thing I Have Ever Seen

I guess scatx was feeling down in the dumps or whatever, probably because it's that time of the month when she's kayaking down the crimson ladyriver, and Liss sent her this picture of my hero, Ron Swanson.

I didn't even know he was a centaur, no less that he was trained in the ancient art of bacon-chaining. You learn something new every day, Shakers. You learn something new every day.

2FA, #5

LITERALLY.

New episode tonight! Woot!

Quote of the Day

"One great benefit of our relationship is that Megan has gone through everything a couple of chapters ahead of me, so there's an easy student-master quality to it. When your wife is a legend of comedy, you have to be a huge jackass not to assume the student role."—Nick Offerman, who plays Ron Swanson on my favorite show, Parks & Recreation, on how he and his wife, actress Megan Mullally, who played Karen Walker on the sitcom Will and Grace (and plays Ron Swanson's ex-wife Tammy Two on Parks & Rec), "negotiate[d] the disparity between [their] careers before Nick landed Parks and Recreation."

The quote is from a February interview, but Shaker alabee just passed it along with a note that it's a "great interview all around," and so it is. I hope their relationship is as awesome as it seems to be.