Parks & Rec & the Women of Pawnee -Season 6 (part one)
See Leslie adjust to her worst career blow and still retain maximum awesomeness
Previously…
I covered season five here and here and, much like that season, a damned lot happens in six. So here’s half of it.
In a nutshell…
When we last left off, Leslie had accepted the coming recall was happening, Ann and Chris had coupled up again, and Diane had something important to talk to Ron about. This episode picks up at that moment. She is pregnant, apparently because normal birth control methods are ineffective against Swansons. Ron proposes and Diane accepts as long as there’s no fuss. There isn’t. They go up to fourth floor and get it done then and there, with Leslie trailing along and complaining about the lack of fuss.
A few months later, Leslie is still being attacked by the recall supporters and has been holding open office hours and tackling petty problems to get the public behind her. There’s hope for good P.R., though. April has nominated Leslie for an international women in government award and she was one of five chosen! Leslie, Ben, Andy, April and Ron head to London for the ceremony, with Ron in deep protest and Ben and Andy mostly there to court more partners for the Sweetums Foundation. They find a willing partner for a music program in man-child Lord Eddy, but his condition is that someone stays to help him: namely Andy. April encourages Andy to stay for a while (and maybe partake in galactic adventures?).
Ron finally finds some enjoyment in the U.K. when Leslie sends him on a trip to Scotland (and whiskey). Leslie is having no fun, however. She’s learned that Pinewood has been using her trip to London to imply she doesn’t care about Pawnee. All the other winners are beloved by their towns (including guest Star Heidi Klum) and Leslie works so hard only to be hated.
Her speech is derailed by her bitterness and she insults Pawnee—only to learn Jerry set up a viewing party streaming the ceremony and she’s hated more than ever. When she gets back to town, she tries to brush it off and work hard to get approval back. Back in Pawnee, Ann and Chris have concieved! Sadly, they getting nothing but lukewarm reactions from everyone they tell. Luckily, when Leslie comes back to town, she gives them the blinding enthusiasm they were looking for.
Tom’s mysterious buyer has opened a competing store that is killing Rent-A-Swag. Tom finds out it’s Doctor Saperstein (Henry Winkler!), Jean-Ralphio and Mona-Lisa’s gullible, doting father. He’s been gunning for Tom because his children have tried to make themselves look better by painting Tom as the villain. Tom finally makes them set him straight, but Saperstein doesn’t care as he’s making a tidy profit.
Pawnee’s sworn enemy, Eagleton, is broke (Kristen Bell guest stars as Ingrid de Forest, Eagleton’s rich equivalent of Leslie). As much as Leslie wants to gloat (and does), she ends up suggesting Eagleton be absorbed into Pawnee, the way it was before the rich took their toys and seceded. Meanwhile, Ann practically forces April to go to vet school twice, which April ditches twice because it doesn’t feel right.
Ann and Chris start to realize they want to raise their child somewhere other than Pawnee. Ron is spooked by receiving a circular in the mail and Donna and Tom (the most visible social media addicts in Pawnee) try to help Ron get off the grid, but when Diane can’t reach him, he decides to get on the grid and purchase his first (ancient) cell phone just for her and the girls.
In “Doppelgangers,” Leslie tries to smooth the transition of Eagleton’s government merging with Pawnee’s by helping the Parks Department welcome their counterparts. My favorites are April’s equivalent, Tynnyfer (June Diane Raphael!) and Donna’s doppelganger, Craig (BILLY ON THE STREET!). Ron’s Doppelganger is also named Ron (multi-movie cowboy Sam Elliott! Honestly, kudos on the casting of this episode all around!). Ron is just like Ron, except as a vegan yoga-loving Morrisey fanboy. Jerry returns and suffers the indignity of people calling him Larry and it sticks (Is that just a little too mean or am I just overly sympathetic to sad sacks because they remind me of myself in social groups?). Meanwhile, Ben and Chris revive their good cop/bad cop act for the Eagletonians as one last hurrah before Chris tells Ben he and Anne want to move.
Ann finally tells Leslie she wants her counterpart to take over her job and that she’d like to leave Pawnee and even waffles won’t soften the blow. Leslie acts out and her intensity scares off most of the Eagleton folks (well, April chases off Tynnyfer). Luckily, Craig is scary enough on his own and he will come back just for me. Leslie finally settles down to talk things out with Ann.
Finally, there’s an A-plot about Donna when she tweets something suggestive meant for her private twitter from the Parks Department account. Unfortunately, this leads to Jamm and the other council members, itching to get rid of Leslie, instigate a hearing into “Twitter Watergate” (what Perd calls it until he can find a snappier name). One of Donna’s spurned followers reveals her personal tweets complaining about Leslie’s more annoying moments. Jamm accuses Leslie of having no respect from her employees, but she doesn’t care as much about that as compared to the idea that Donna doesn’t like her. It’s not true, of course, and Chris digs up plenty of tweets where Donna praises Leslie. They make up, with Donna telling Leslie that she can be annoyed by her more overzealous moments and still love her.
Tom makes kind of an idiot out of himself by dragging out a simple forms request and putting on a fake British accent to impress a pretty doctor, Nadia (Tatiana Maslany AKA Orphan Black), until April finally puts a stop to the charade and secures him a date with her. Ben drags a stubborn Ron to a lawyer to make out a real will (see image for his current one) for the sake of Diane and the kids. It turns out Ron is loaded with buried gold (because of course he is!).
Leslie plans a 90's-themed roller skating party for Ben, but neither of them make it. Jamm tries to push a motion stopping the Eagletonians from voting in the recall election, thinking they’ll support Leslie. Leslie ends up filibustering in roller skates (to Ben’s delight. He has a thing for women in skates) and the Eagletonians show up to cheer her on, which she needs as she spends the entire time with a full bladder. It turns out they aren’t supporting her but their right to vote for Ingrid in Leslie’s place.Leslie is hurt, but she keeps going on principle and runs out the clock.
The party goes on without them. Tom brings Nadia, who is about to go away for Doctors Without Borders, to the party for a last hurrah where they battle with Ann over a giant teddy bear. Andy comes back for a brief visit and tries to chicken out of returning to London until April makes him see it through (that galaxy ain’t gonna guard itself, after all) and the two coolest people in Pawnee, Ron Swanson and Donna Meagle, surprise me by bonding over hunting, both the real and video game kind.
Ron’s homemade chairs become the next big thing according to Joan Callamezzo and lifestyle guru/phone book model Annabelle Porter (Erinn Hayes), but he opts out of having his work mass-produced, much to Tom and Donna’s disappointment. Tom had been hoping Ron’s success would help ailing Rent-A-Swag. Ron urges Tom to finally sell to Doctor Saperstein so he can salvage some money to invest in his next idea. Meanwhile, Chris tries to cheer up April, missing Andy especially on Halloween.
As feared, Leslie is recalled in favor of Ingrid De Forest and Ann and Ben try desperately to ply her with various favorite things to keep her from doing something crazy, but when Leslie maneuvers Ben into getting miserable and drunk with her, they run amok and nearly get very unsafe tattoos. Ann rescues the both of them and convinces Leslie to use the time she has left in office to accomplish the goals she set when elected, as many as she can in lame duck status.
She sets about to do just that, working to get the Pawnee reservoir fluoridated. Jamm is a dentist, so he drums up a media circus to ruin it until Tom re-brands the idea as T-Dazzle with social media activities. Then Jamm and Jessica Wicks try to get the public behind filling the reservoir with Drink-ems, a more sugary Gatorade (do I detect and Idiocracy reference?). Leslie berates Sweetums to the press and Jessica fires Ben from the foundation. Leslie tries to get Ben’s job back, but Ben stops her, realizing most of the charitable efforts at Sweetums were “to compensate for messes they caused.” Anyway, she and Tom win the public over again with yet another rebrand: H2-Flow.
Meanwhile, the gang picks “spirit dogs” for everyone in the department (and CRAIG!) and April angers Donna when she picks a poodle because “you’re pretty and you like makeup and stuff,” believing it’s superficial and that April doesn’t even try to know her. April interviews Donna, then decides Donna’s not a dog at all, but a cat. There’s a hug. Writing it out, it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s one of my favorite series of interactions on this show. In other news, Chris bonds with Ron over building a crib with metaphors and wisdom. Ron just builds a crib.
Ben, once again, takes that accounting firm job, though he takes his week between jobs to invent an insanely elaborate role-playing board game called Cones of Dunshire. Barney Varmn and pals bear him no ill will for quitting twice. They just want him to stay this time. He does, having calzone parties, dissolving trusts and changing lives… for an entire week. Ben is offered Chris’ position as City Manager and he quits again. He leaves the firm Cones of Dunshire and the official rules as a parting gift. Everything about this arc delights me. Donna (who’s also a licensed real estate agent because what can’t she do?) helps Ron sell his third cabin, but he doesn’t want it to go to the trendy buyers Donna attracts, thinking they won’t appreciate it. He sells it to April for what’s in her purse (eight dollars, loose cough drops, and Larry’s inhaler).
Leslie takes her very last week to ensure the funds she raised for Pawnee Commons stay in a lockbox for only that. Of course, Jamm is in the way, once again. She has Chris mediate as she tries a Tea With Cthulhu strategy on Jamm, putting up with his vague, creepy, racist and inaccurate Asian fetishizing and bad karaoke until he agrees the money won’t be touched for a year. That’s not enough. Leslie wants to secure the park no matter what, thinking Ann (who’s been visiting her parents in Michigan) will ultimately decide not to move. Chris wakes her up to the fact that Ann’s away making arrangements and they are definitely moving, but Chris does help Leslie secure her park by promising Jamm favors in his next term as City Manager (which will not exist).
Leslie surrenders her seat to Ingrid on her last day, finally accepting the end… until Councilmen Dexhart gets into yet another unbelievable sex scandal. Thinking his seat is vulnerable, Leslie tries to rally the others to help her run again, but none of think the council has been good to her. Tom gives the gang their investment money back and they help him interview inventors as Tom hopes he can finance someone’s idea and gain mogul status without the work this time. They’re all terrible, but Tom goes to Ron with the idea of him becoming a business liaison for the city, working to get more private sector money in the town. Ron supports it fully.
Ben gives Leslie two gifts to ease the sting. One is an hour of Jennifer Barkley’s time to give Leslie insights on her political future. She thinks Leslie has been working under morons in Pawnee and needs to dream bigger. She finally lets the council go… for real this time. What’s the second gift? She and Ben take a little trip to Paris.
Ann’s back (yay!). She and Chris see Doctor Saperstein, who tells them their baby is a very symmetrical superhuman, but they’re not sure they want to know the sex. He gives them a sealed envelope and they waffle before opening it, then can’t read Saperstein’s writing. Even Doctor Saperstein can’t. He gives them a second ultrasound and it’s a boy (also Jean-Ralphio propositions Ann… and Chris because Chris is just that good looking). Oh! Andy’s back and extremely jet-lagged, also suspiciously muscular these days (enough to fight dinosaurs?).
It’s a pass for the full season. Exact numbers and notes to come in the next part.
The Women of Pawnee
Leslie filibustering despite knowing it won’t save her job shows how hard it is for her to compromise her ethics. Maybe that kind of person doesn’t belong in politics, where compromise, whether against opponents or for your constituents, might go with the territory. Either way, I wasn’t upset when she was voted out because it was hard to watch her try so hard just to fail. I also think the show suffered in having her so often away from the rest of the gang.
I know Rashida Jones has more than Parks on her mind and is busy acting, writing, directing, and producing across various mediums. I mean, this woman has insane skills and a great work ethic, and no wonder, considering her parents. I wish her well, but on a selfish viewer level, I don’t want Ann to go. The friendship between Ann and Leslie is the emotional anchor this series started with. Ann’s character alone grounded this show in so many ways and the energy will become sort of manic without her.
I feel like the showrunners had no idea what to do with April after dropping the vet arc. All of her plots in the first half are mild B-plot hijinks with the gang without much substance. I do adore her bonding with Donna in “Flouride” and a lot of other moments, but in trying to summarize what happened to her, there’s not much there. She did buy a cabin. I guess that’s something.
Finally! Donna gets an A-plot! It made a lot of sense, too. Donna has a certain cool exterior, but the show’s been going to her for reaction shots since before she was in the credits, so you know she has a lot to say about the insane people she works with, and Leslie especially.
I’ve mentioned before how much I like that Diane is not just a woman version of Ron, but they do have certain qualities that match up. They’re both no-nonsense hard-asses who never mince words with anyone, including each other. I’m still perfectly happy with this relationship. My only complaint is that we see almost no Diane in the latter half.
The thing I like about Ingrid is that the show could have made her a generic mean girl, but they didn’t. You can see her bewilderment and maybe a wee bit of hurt when Leslie makes snide Eagleton remarks and, even when Ingrid says awful, condescending things, she really doesn’t seem to mean to. She’s almost the epitome of Spoiled Sweet.
I loved seeing Jennifer one last time and I really loved her encouraging Leslie even though she had no reason to. Jessica Wicks also makes just one cameo as does Shauna. We meet Annabelle Porter just once, but I loved it, mostly because the inanity of what makes a Pawnee celebrity cracks me up. We’ve got a phone book model, a jerk who makes awful cologne, a guy who shot a winning basket decades ago in high school, Larry Bird’s Aunt Tilda, Li’l Sebastian, and… Well, Joan. I think we can all agree Donna is a bit of a celeb as well, being a tastemaker and queen of social media. Mona-Lisa (along with her brother) only shows up a weensy bit, which is as it should be.
Other Notes…
In going over season five, I kept trying to find meaning in Leslie’s failed time in council, but what if there was none and (like the dropped arcs for Andy and April), it was all showrunner shenanigans? I do have a theory that the powers that be had some idea of letting Leslie successfully run for office and hold it as endgame in season four, also that the only reason they had it go so badly for her was because they were surprised at being renewed for a fifth season (this show was on the bubble almost every season). So they had to undo their preferred ending to be done again later. We shall see by the end if my theory is right or if this was all some deep lesson the showrunners wanted Leslie had to learn.
Fangasms…
Just so proud of Chris Pratt for all he’s been doing even if, as a Parks fan, it annoys me I had to go through half a season without him. There’s an uncomplicated sweetness to Andy that I really felt the absence of in his time away. I’ll forgive him, not because I loved Guardians of the Galaxy, but because he is bringing me DINOSAURS next! Is it weird that I don’t even care if the Jurassic World script is any good? I just want to see a T-Rex without feathers! Scientific accuracy has ruined dinosaurs! I mean, they’re still scary, but more creepy than cool and it just bums me out!
Can I ship for a sec? I said last time how much I liked the relationships on this show and they always hold up, keeping things fun even after the wedding without any manufactured relationship threats or hastily added love triangles (looking at you, The Office, with that Boom Mic Brian crap!). Writers shouldn’t threaten the relationship to keep viewers interested. It’s a cheap trick and most of us see through it. I will magnanimously speak for all viewers when I say just stop! All you need to do is write more of the interactions that made us love the couple in the first place and it’s something that Parks has managed to do well.
Leslie and Ben as Wesley and Buttercup are PERFECT! I absolutely love Drunk Leslie already, but drunk Ben is a hell of a lot of fun as well. Just look at these two:
It’s not every couple that I still enjoy once the tension is over. Most shows don’t manage to keep them fresh once the Will They/Won’t They is over. But damned if these two aren’t still so much fun! And let’s not forget these two…
Next up: Season 6 (part 2)
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All images from Parks and Recreation are property of NBC Universal, Greg Daniels, Michael Schur, Howard Klein (among many other entities) and used here for criticism and analysis only. All gifs are thanks to the tireless efforts of the anonymous gif-makers all over the internet.
