Parks & Rec & The Women of Pawnee — Season 5 (part 2)
Leslie and Co. get through a pretty tumultuous spring
Previously…
I covered the first half last time. We left off with Leslie preparing to face off against Jamm over Lot 48 and with Ann’s decision to have a child.
In a nutshell…
Leslie and Jamm present their plans for Lot 48 to the council, who are ready to go with Jamm as the park would cost them money, but if Leslie can raise $50,000 for the park in a week, she wins. Leslie and Ben decide to have people come to a gala fundraiser on the lot for them instead of giving wedding gifts. Jamm tries to tie Leslie, Ann and Chris up in a long-anticipated (Leslie made binders and everything!) surprise emergency response drill, which he keeps sabotaging to keep her from her fundraiser. When she finds out, she “kills” the town to get back to the gala. Meanwhile, Ron has appeared on Pawnee Today to promote it with Joan Callamezzo. She’s hung over and passed out, but Ron gives indispensable wood-working and home-brewing advice to. Tom has arranged to have local food vendors (who don’t want yet another Paunchburger) to cater free and Donna uses her irresistible appeal to firemen to call them off when Jamm tries to mess things up again.
Back at the now successful gala, Ben and Leslie realize everyone they love (not Marlene!) is there and decide to get married that night. They recruit the entire gang: Ann finishes Leslie’s half-done wedding dress with news clippings, Ron melts a brass sconce to make the wedding rings, Donna gets impersonators of Illinois celebs (including a Li’l Sebastian look-alike) to keep the guests amused, April and Andy take care of the license, Jerry will perform the ceremony, and Tom is set to M.C.
Unfortunately, Jamm shows up, drunk and bitter at being bested, and drops two stink bombs. Ron knocks him out. Leslie bails Ron out of jail, figuring this just isn’t the night. It turns out the gang has set up an intimate ceremony at the offices. It’s all very sweet (except for how Marlene isn’t there! Couldn’t they just get Pamela Reed for two seconds?). Anyway, pretty…
Leslie is supposed to roast the Pawnee journalists at a special dinner, especially The Pawnee Sun. Then they end up telling all of her exact jokes about themselves before she even makes the stage. It turns out they’ve been hacking her email. She exposes them (it involves a hoax email about midi-chlorians in the soil… and that’s the first and only time that word’s existence has aided a good cause).
Meanwhile, Ben has taken the job with Sweetums Foundation, where the perks are super fancy and, all this season, poor Andy has been preparing for his PD exam. He aces everything, except for the personality test, where it turns out his trusting nature makes him an ill fit. When a depressed Andy points out all the people Ben could help without the fancy meals, Ben hires him to work for him.
Ann has taken notice of Chris’ new emotional stability and finally asks him to be her co-parent. Chris tests himself by “fathering” Tom through a crisis with his new employee at Rent-A-Swag, Jean-Ralphio’s sister, Mona Lisa Saperstein (Jenny Slate), who is a dangerous sociopath. Chris tries to guide Tom to be firm and/or fire her. Instead, Tom starts an ill-fated affair. Jerry assures a disappointed Chris this doesn’t mean he’ll be a terrible father. Chris agrees to have a child with Ann in the end.
Meanwhile, April has realized she wants to be a veterinarian, but needs a letter of recommendation from Nurse Ann. Ann uses the leverage to force April to spend time with her in the hope that April will finally be her friend. The manicures, matching hair-dos and sing-alongs get them no closer until Ann ends up confiding to April about Chris and the donor situation. They bond tentatively.
Leslie tries to bail out a video store as a cultural landmark. Ron doesn’t believe a business that can’t make it should be given help. Leslie goes through with it anyhow, telling the owner (Jason Schwartzman!) to include some popular videos. He takes it to heart and it turns out the best selling rentals in Pawnee are porn and he moves the store in that direction. Brandi Maxxxx is so super grateful to her favorite politician, Leslie, for championing porn in Pawnee that she makes a porn where she plays Leslie. Ron is extremely amused.
Ben and Leslie go to Partridge, Minnesota, Ben’s home town and the site of his dismal failure as a mayor as they want to present him with the key to the city, but it turns out to be a cruel joke. Partridge hates Ben Wyatt as much as Pawnee hates vegetables, libraries, and Eagleton. Ben is in the hospital with kidney stones for most of it and heavily drugged, but Leslie shows up and defends him at the ceremony. Ben’s okay, though. His home is Pawnee now.
Back in Pawnee, Jamm is suing Ron for punching him. April, Tom and Andy testify for Ron in the hearing, but Andy is the only one who tells the truth. Ron shames them into going back in and being honest and it looks like Jamm has a case… until April and Tom use trickery to blackmail Jamm into dropping it. Ann and Chris stress over how incompatible they seem in lifestyle and as future parents, but then decide the only thing that matters is that they’ll love the child and work towards him/her having a good life.
Leslie and Chris find out the guys over at Animal Control are incompetent stoners and he fires them. She works to find a good replacement, competing with Jamm trying to get one of his awful friends in, and decides April should run it due to her love of animals, and pushes her to go before the council unprepared, but April has a better idea and proposes the Parks Department absorb Animal Control, saving the city money and the trouble of hiring more incompetent workers. It’s approved and a proud Leslie puts April in charge of it as “Deputy Director of Animal Control and the Parks Department.”
Ben, Andy and Tom work on getting Pawnee’s cologne mogul Dennis Feinstein (Jason Mantzoukas) to donate money to the foundation at a cigar club. He’s a jerk and they all try to swallow it until Andy can’t take it anymore and calls him a dick. Incidentally, Donna is at the club, in a VIP section and sandwiched between adoring men because of course she is. The three try to apologize to Feinstein the next day, though Andy in particular is not happy about it, but when he makes out a check to “Go F*** Yourself,” Ben calls him a dick. Later, Tom says he’ll give the foundation five percent of Rent-A-Swag’s profits.
Meanwhile, Ann forces a sick, stubborn Ron to get medical attention for strep throat. Ron reluctantly takes antibiotics and gets better. Ann is surprised his tests are so normal, considering his lifestyle, but notices his potassium is low and suggests eating bananas. He finally forces one down while looking at a picture of Diane and the girls (Aw!).
“Ted Party Day,” one of Pawnee’s stranger customs based on an old law spelling tea wrong, says that “citizens shall dump Ted into Ramsett Lake.” The Teds of the town band together and refuse to be thrown in this year (with hilarious examples of the many sexist and racist laws still in the Pawnee books). Leslie realizes it is time to retire the law, but local history aficionado Garth Blunden disagrees and filibusters the council hearing (with ideas for the new Star Wars movies) in an amazing, improvised scene by internet darling Patton Oswalt.
The two of them make a wager: they live in a historic Pawnee cabin like the settlers and whoever lasts longest gets their way (on a related note, I really loved all those historical “House” shows PBS and the BBC used to do and I desperately want them back if only so I can send an audition tape!). Garth is way more into this than Leslie, mostly because he’s replaced having a social life with living in the past, poor guy. Leslie compromises with Garth. The most offensive laws are taken off, but “Ted Party Day” remains with a volunteer Ted.
Chris railroads Ron and April into a management training seminar. April encourages Chris and Ron to pit their styles against each other (fear or bribes vs. positivity and encouragement) with Jerry as the guinea pig and Donna keeping track. Nobody wins except April, who orchestrated the competition, stole “$20 from Chris for pizza and Ron’s watch just for fun,” and spends the day goofing off with Andy. Meanwhile, Ben and Ann struggle to find the perfect gift for one of Leslie’s many anniversaries and finally go in on a J.J.’s Diner waffle iron and convince Leslie to condense the multiple holidays into a day for each of them. Leslie, of course, asks for a month.
Jerry has been counting down his retirement for years, but no one listens to him, so everyone is taken by surprise on his last day. Leslie feels guilty and she and Ben spend what was to be her day off trying to help him achieve the goals he had when he started with the department 40 years ago. Though most are simple (meet the mayor, lunch in city hall’s executive dining room), they are not doable (dead mayor for one, red tape for the other). She does rename the conference room for him, but then Jerry sets himself on fire with the cake and the whole day ends terribly. Leslie visits him at home and sees a confident and happy Jerry, who counts his time at work, even with no achievements, as happy since he valued his job only for his family’s sake. Leslie does take away that there’s more to life than work and takes a day off for Ben.
With Jerry gone, Tom has become the new Jerry, mostly because he reacts so strongly to being made fun of. Tom tries to appoint Andy, who bumbles a lot, as the new Jerry, but Ron points out that Andy has no shame. Ron hires an intern at Tom’s urging, but it turns out the guy is a handsome, athletic paragon that they all (Donna most of all) love. Ron takes pity on (and the heat off) Tom by asking Jerry to help out in the office weekly and everyone’s happy. In other news, Ann and Chris feel a bit put off by the sterility of artificial insemination. They decided to try things the natural way and end up, even with some awkwardness at work, deciding it might be “good for the child” if they were together… that and maybe they just want to try again. It’s sweet.
Andy, April, Ben, and Tom are all out together when a band calling themselves Rat Mouse starts playing Andy’s songs… without Andy! Andy confronts them, especially Burly, and learns they’ve tried to get in touch with him and he never heard back. Andy is hurt and angry and makes up a “swan song” he performs on the spot April fakes righteous anger in support of him even though Mouse Rat’s music is not her thing (see image). At the same time, Tom bribes Ann to help him get out of his increasingly chaotic relationship with Mona-Lisa. Though Mona-Lisa does pull a screwdriver — not the drink — on her, Ann diffuses things by telling her Tom is broke. It works as she doesn’t “eff with poorsies” and claims Ann as her new best friend and makes her over in the bathroom. Now Ann needs help breaking up. Tom and Ann decide to kiss and pretend they’re getting back together. Mona-Lisa mistakes this as them wanting a threesome. Ann quits the whole thing and Mona-Lisa invites the next girl she into their threesome and she agrees, but Tom reveals the next day that it didn’t happen.
Mona-Lisa beat the girl up, broke into her car and sold her birth control pills to kids as ecstasy and he still didn’t successfully break up with her. As for Andy, he’s ready to give up laying with a band forever, but April makes him apologize to Burly for not showing or calling and ask to be back in the band. Burly agrees as they never wanted him out. He just seriously never answered his phone.
Then it’s Leslie vs. Ron again when he wants to cut the budget and get rid of the Pawnee Palms Public Putt-Putt, which he thinks is extraneous and expensive. The council is split on it and it turns out Jamm is the swing vote. Leslie tries to court his favor on the course (with Chris caddying), but Ron shows up and shames her for losing to him on purpose and pandering for his vote. Jamm tells Leslie and Ron to play against each other for his vote. Ron wins and Leslie is angry with him the next day. Ron tells her he has his set of principles and will never deviate from them. Jamm isn’t so ethical, offering to make a deal to switch his vote to Leslie. Leslie is disgusted he’d break his word, but he points out she gave him her office before and says that’s just how things operate.
A horrified Leslie finds Ron to tell him she forced Jamm to stick to voting with Ron, that she’s still angry with him and still going to try to save the putt-putt, but that she respects Ron for being a man with a code. They share a drink and Leslie reveals she’s disillusioned by all the dishonesty and double dealing in politics as opposed to just working with Ron and hashing things out where “you either realize I’m right or get hungry and go home and I win.” Ron tells her there are lots of Jamms on her path and she has to figure out if it’s one she wants to walk.
Leslie reflects on that in the finale, “Are You Better Off?” It’s a question she asks of her constituents and herself when the department (and pals) all meet at Ron’s cabin. This year, she’s been dealing with sexist co-council members tracking her monthly cycle, trying to kiss her (with tongue), and Jamm. Now it turns out Paunchburger’s Kathryn Pinewood is stirring the public up against her over the soda tax, the senior sex-ed and the bail-out/porn shop fiasco and trying to force a recall vote. At a forum, most of the town chews her out. Only her friends (and Brandi Maxxxx, which never helps. Poor Leslie) are on her side.
Pinewood even puts a “Recall Knope” float in the Founder’s Day parade and gains even more support. Ben encourages Leslie to just keep doing her job, whatever her detractors say. She gets back to cleaning up the river with the (reluctant) others. In other events, April gets into veterinary school and Tom is approached by a lawyer for someone wants to buy Rent-A-Swag, but Ron advises him to keep building his business if it’s doing so well. He turns the mysterious buyer down, but the lawyer says the client will be opening a competing business called “Tommy’s Closet” across the street.
Meanwhile, Andy found a positive pregnancy test in the trash at Ron’s cabin. He brings Bert Macklin out of retirement and investigates each woman that was there with Ann joining in, angry that someone else got pregnant before her. When they rule out Leslie, Donna, Mona-Lisa, Andy gleefully tells April he knows, but it’s not her. Who is it? Well, Diane does show up at Ron’s office and asks to talk in private…
Passing The Bechdel Test…
It’s a 14 to 8 pass and, even the episodes that didn’t pass are because the women involved were too damned busy getting stuff done to have a conversation. ☺
The Women of Pawnee…
Throughout the series so far, Leslie’s unwavering optimism in the face of all the things that go wrong for her is one of her best qualities, but this season it seems like more of a sort of blindness. She is shat on so much this season and her time in city council was so contentious that I have to wonder why the runners decided to have her elected at all. Then again, perhaps it was for her to get to that place of dissatisfaction at the end of “Swing Vote.” A politician has more power, for sure, but there’s a simplicity to working with (or around) the rules that’s not present in making them. Leslie the bureaucrat didn’t have enemies. Leslie the politician is gunned for constantly. I still don’t know why the showrunners had her elected just for everything to go so badly. Then again, maybe there’s a reason for all of it that will become obvious in the final season (which I have yet to watch because I’m still catching up with these. ARGH!)
As much as I respected Ann for rejecting Chris for very valid reasons in season 4, I didn’t lose any for her when they got back together in “Jerry’s Retirement.” When Ann and Chris first started, she was dazzled by his supposed perfection and eager to be what he wanted. It’s not that Ann is unhealthy, but she doesn’t share Chris’ obsession with health. She just can’t be happy as a female version of Chris. So when Chris realizes he doesn’t want a female him and Ann realizes she doesn’t have to change herself, they have a shot and I’m happy to see it.
As for April’s veterinary aspirations, I agree that this is something she might want. The only creatures she has ever shown open affection for are Andy and animals. However, I don’t think it’s realistic (don’t you have to have been on some sort of compatible track in college to be accepted to vet school?). I don’t see why April’s arc didn’t just include more time in animal control or running the shelter, especially since she decides not to be a vet very early in season 6. In retrospect, I don’t see why the showrunners had this arc happen just to be dismissed. Did they plan to follow it, then abandon it when they realized April the vet student would be taken away from the A-plot too often? I guess we’ll see what the plan is in season 7.
I’ve spoken before about Donna’s awesome life outside the office only being hinted at. I have no problem with that as it would seem unbelievable if seen, similar to Ron Swanson’s rarely-glimpsed life outside. Anything broad or extreme should be given in small doses for a comedy to stay grounded. However, I do wish she was a cog in the A-plot more often. I realize that applies to everyone but Leslie, though characters vary, episode to episode. Still, at this point, Jerry has had two A-plot episodes (season two’s “Park Safety” and “Jerry’s Retirement”), so Donna should have one (or two) as well or at least a storyline directly driven by her interaction with Leslie, just anything that gets her in the first sentence of the blurb or where I don’t have to type some variation of “meanwhile” in front of her name. Is it because she’s black? Is it because she’s a woman? Honestly, with this show and the people behind it, I doubt it. I do think this is an issue a lot of shows have with their tertiary characters—not planning their arc well when mapping out the series. It was something they seemed to recognize and fix in season 6, though. We’ll get there.
Another thing I love about Diane (besides that she’s Xena and her cool, deep voice) is that she is perfect for Ron without being a female version of Ron. They both share a certain easy confidence in who they are, but she doesn’t enjoy his hobbies and likely doesn’t share his views on the uselessness of government, being a public middle school principal. I like that being with her has softened him up without changing who he is. Much like with Ann and Chris, it’s a relationship you can see working. The only thing I don’t like about Diane’s presence is that we’ll be seeing much less of this delicate flower:
Mona-Lisa Saperstein is a dishonest, mercenary, horribly annoying human being with no redeeming qualities to be seen just like her brother (she is slightly more dangerous, though. If he was in jail, my first thought would be fraud. For her? Anything from grand larceny to murder). That doesn’t translate to her being a bad character. It’s funny, though. She and Jean-Ralphio walk a very specific line. Everything they do or say is obnoxious and sometimes audiences don’t like having a character like that on their screens for too long. I think I Parks has struck a good balance with them in that I look forward to what’s about to come out of their mouths the moment I see them.
We get a little more Jessica Wicks this season. She’s awful and vain and an obvious gold digger, but she’s so damned cheerful about it that I can’t help but love her. Hey, she runs a charity, so she can’t be all bad! There’s definitely a sunniness about this show and the characters in it that, corny optimist that I am, I respond strongly to. God, I’m going to miss it so much!
Kathryn Pinewood really came into her own as an antagonist in the latter half. During the first, she was more an unpleasant counterpart to Jamm (who became more Affably Evil as things went on). By the end, she’s stirred the public into an angry froth, made a parade float demonizing Leslie, and dolls meant to encourage kids to have their parents recall her! Busy lady!
I keep forgetting to talk about Ethel Beavers. That’s mostly because she’s rarely a huge part of the plot, but I enjoy every moment she has on my screen (see Burning Love if you want more of Helen Slayton-Hughes) and love her gritty, perpetually annoyed voice and her disdain for most of the people around her. She is April’s… spirit elder, for lack of a better term.
There was more Brandi Maxxxx in the second half! Yay! I don’t know why I get such a kick out of her. I think it’s something about the positive energy this show has. When I think of porn stars, I usually (perhaps incorrectly) see sad, possibly abused, probably drug-addicted women trying to make ends meet by doing something degrading. Now, I know times are different and hope the industry is safer, so I don’t honestly think that’s definitely true for all porn stars. Brandi seems to be a cheerful exhibitionist who is very frank and unashamed of what she does and I really respond to how sunny she is.
As for the Gergich Women, we don’t learn much about these walking toothpaste commercials, except that they’re so perfect they sing about breakfast and think Jerry’s amazing and we’re meant to marvel that they’re with him. Then again, maybe we aren’t. Throughout the years, we’ve seen that Jerry’s a talented pianist, artist, and according to a doctor in season four, equipped with the largest penis that doctor had ever seen. With everyone else in Pawnee dumping on Jerry, it eases the sting that he has a loving family at home who thinks the world of him. For cameos, Annabeth Gish plays Ben’s sister, Stephanie Wyatt, and I wish they’d done more with her in the episode. She’s one of those actresses I never see enough of and always find endearing. Joan shows up just twice all season, sadly. Considering this was a season full of the public vs. Leslie, I’d have thought we’d see more of her and Perd Hapley.
Other Notes…
Leslie’s time on the council going so badly, April’s dropped vet plotline, and Andy’s dropped police plotline all have one thing in common: I can’t figure out whether they have a purpose or whether they were just ideas the writers later decided to drop as they didn’t think they were working. For Andy’s, I think it’s simply that Pratt needed time off and a career in the Pawnee P.D. left little wiggle room to give him leave to film Guardians of the Galaxy. For April’s, I often hear it was similarly practical — they dropped it because they didn’t want her in some other town for season six. For Leslie’s… see, I’m not sure if there’s a lesson in this, that getting what you thought you wanted doesn’t always live up to the hype, or if they just decided the position was too far removed from the title of the show and would scatter things.
If it was the latter, they were right. Leslie’s A-plots in this season always seemed to be isolated from the gang and maybe the writers decided that wasn’t working and put the recall in motion. I honestly hope, after the show, a lot of candid interviews come out on why certain arcs were dropped. You’re always more likely to get that kind of admission from comedy writers.
Fangasms…
I admit I’m a shipper and it often happens that the relationships I support on a show are ones that don’t pan out in the end, but that I find more interesting or fulfilling than the Official Couples that did. So it’s a rare thing to have a show where I like all the ships as presented. Perhaps it’s because this show presents the relationships in question in a satisfying way. Either way, well done, Parks. You have finally given me a show with canon ships with no Bed Death in sight.
Next up: Season Six
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