The Psychology of April Ludgate’s Love For Andy Dwyer

(From the TV Show Parks and Recreation)

There seem to be a number of intriguing components amid April’s attraction to Andy:

First:

There is a part of her which is obviously quite terminally angry at the world. And so she takes a stance of complete antithesis, digging her heels into a state of hostile opposition, and abandoning herself to brazen rebellion…

All this seems to stem from a morosely defeatist paradigm, which causes her to feel as if she can do nothing but determinatively fail — no matter how hard she tries.

She’s quagmired in the notion that she’ll never fit in socially, due to a perceived personality flaw— in herself and in everybody else!

As such, she’s determined to be opposite, hostile, and negative to the bitter end…

So,

in Chris Pratt’s character, she finds a partner which convention would consider to be an absurd choice for marriage. Thus, in a proclamation of unabashed rebellion, she romances him openly.

She also realizes

that he is somehow getting away with wreaking complete and utter havoc, absolutely everywhere he goes.

So, because he unwittingly gets away with what she would love to do with her own malicious intent…

…she joins herself to him, so that she may knowingly participate in the disasters he accomplishes amid his own oblivion 🤩

All the while,

another part of her genuinely realizes that this is honestly a pretty well-meaning guy; and he just keeps right on trying in life, no matter what catastrophes are left in his wake…

Andy Dwyer is a both an adorable wrecking ball, and a hero in April Ludgate’s eyes.

She realizes that in his own eyes, everything is somehow on tilt in the positive direction; and as such, every blunder is self-evaluated as a definitive triumph.

Andy is the world-dubbed “failure” that is actually an April Ludgate version of success:

He innocently lives-out April’s proclamation of, “Screw the world!” And he does so by simply being completely oblivious and utterly unconcerned, regarding what others think of him.

This is a polar opposite of herself, and allows her to feel the desperately needed hopefulness and joy that she alone cannot seem to derive from life. She is a “negative”, and he is a similar element in the positive.

Part of her affirms him because she knows he means well, and she never wants him to find out the “reality” that he is a complete and utter buffoon in the eyes of most people…

In Summary:

There is a part of April Ludgate which realizes that despite Andy being completely incognizant regarding all that is appropriate, and all that is generally considered to be “successful“…

…and despite the fact that his entire life is a culminating series of recklessly enthusiastic disasters…

…yet somehow he is happy, and somehow he is actually kinda thriving.

Either way, it seems that to April Ludgate, Andy Dwyer represents heroic freedom from the unbearably oppressive darkness of owning the label “outcast” and/or “failure”.