Jerry scared all the fish away with his loud personal stories.
Parks and Rec
Goddddddd, perfect show is perfect. I liked the camping episode even more than Harvest Fest, but I think that's because I was way too spoiled for Harvest Fest -- I need to go back on my Office era TOTAL SPOILER BLACKOUT. But man, this episode was just treading so delightfully close to fic tropes that I was totally expecting Ben and Leslie to have to share a room in the B&B IN WHICH THERE WOULD OF COURSE ONLY BE ONE BED.
Haha, although maybe I think it's very fic trope-y because I received this text from moireach just as the episode started: "The Parks and Rec preview seems to be the exact plot of your most recent slashfic idea." Which I would be extremely pleased with myself over, except it's not exactly the most creative idea ever. (If it were a prompt in some kind of comment ficathon, it would look like this: Ben/Ron, "What's a not-gay way to ask him to go camping with me? So.)
(Also not having fandom people in town anymore is laaaaaaame. I hadn't quite realized just how annoying it is until I was down in Atlanta last weekend visiting M for a Wretch Reunion and it felt like I was finally getting to speak in a secret twin language I had forgotten I had. I mean, it's just nice when you can say, "I kind of want to write Ben/Ron. Like, if Ben was just totally gay and had a thing fo--" and M immediately interrupted to finish, "-- thing for bears? Intriguing!" YES EXACTLY, A THING FOR BEARS. We always finish each other's sandwiches. UM ANYWAY, I DIGRESS.)
But God, Parks. I laughed out loud like thirty times ("I'm just going to sleep on the floor." "Andy, you have to save me, I'm camping with people I work with!" "I married Alf, and we're pretty happy." "If that's a coyote, someone has to pick me up off the ground, NOW."), and I totally shipped Leslie/Ron, and Ben and Leslie looked at a beautiful pollution sunset together, and everything was amazing except Ann, who makes me want to die. (Ugh, on the one hand, I am so happy she has more to do now that there's this Chris storyline, but on the other hand, IT IS SO MORTIFYING AND ALSO I FEEL LIKE RASHIDA IS STILL SORT OF UNDERUSED? Ugh, idek, they're just always off on their own and it's dumb. Also I love Rashida so freaking much but I kind of hate Ann? She's just so boring. I mean, her? Egg? Plant? Why don't you and Bland go wait in the car?)
Also obviously I still ship Ben/Leslie like burning, though I was thinking the other day that I actually kind of miss when she was yelling at him all the time, I don't even know why. I just feel like I shipped them even more when she'd call him an ass even though he held her fate in his hands like a small bird, and then they'd go out for beers together. MAYBE IT WAS JUST MORE PASSIONATE OR SOMETHING. But I also feel like, oh my God, Ben, just ask her out already, this show is not one to drag these things out! On Parks people meet, they like each other, they go out on a date, JUST LIKE PEOPLE IN REAL LIFE, there are no ridiculous years of sexual tension. And it is at the stage where I am ready for them to do it. I mean, for God's sake, Ben, SHE ASKED YOU ON A WALK AND YOU LOOKED AT A POLLUTION SUNSET TOGETHER AND THEN YOU TOLD HER HOW AMAZING YOU THINK SHE IS, OH MY GOD JUST KISS HER ALREADY, YOU NERD.
Also, does anyone deliver the word "No" more hilariously than Adam Scott? "But is it worth the asthma?" "No," should not be, like, the funniest exchange in the episode, and yet.
Which reminds me, I was catching up on the last three episodes of Fringe yesterday, and you know that part where Lincoln Lee shows up in our universe as a regular old FBI agent, and he exposits this long thing about how this lady got murdered, but then her body disappeared, and now her fingerprints keep showing up at double-suicides where there's only one body left afterwards, and DUN DUN DUN this sounds crazy, but he thinks she can't die! And then William Bell, currently possessing the body of Olivia Dunham, says, "Well, stranger things have happened." And then Lincoln Lee, FBI, stares at him and after a second says, "No, they haven't." I LOLED FOREVER and then I told multiple people about it because ahahahaha, omg, why doesn't that kind of exchange happen all the time on these types of shows?
Anyway, so then I told tearupthesky about it, and she was like, "Haha, that sounds like if Ben Wyatt was an FBI agent." AND IT TOTALLY DOES, RIGHT? And that made me really, really want an AU where Ben and Leslie are Mulder and Scully style X-Files FBI agents, where Leslie is the crazy driven believer one and Ben is dubious all the time, and that is an AU that would serve no purpose but would be totally delightful. Law enforcement partners! Make out on the stakeout! Probably having to be naked in front of each other in decontamination showers after exposure to alien parasites! Leslie maybe losing it in interrogations a la Elliot Stabler and Ben having to pull her and her tiny fists off perps! ("I WILL waterboard you.") Man, sometimes sitcom fandoms are just so sad, because if there was tons of regular Parks fic I would totally go write crazy AUs all the time, but it feels so insane when there is not very much non-AU fic. BUT GODDAMMIT, WHY DO INCEPTION AND SGA AND BANDOM GET ALL THE AMAZING AUS? Unfair, fandom, unfair.
(Also talking about Ben and Leslie as Mulder and Scully made me think about the gender dynamics there -- people always talk about how Mulder & Scully was a nice gender-flip kind of situation, because Scully was the calm logical scientist and Mulder was the one who just had a lot of feelings. [Though this is a little complicated because, yeah, Mulder was the crazy one, but he was also pretty much always right, so, whatever.] But I actually feel like Leslie Knope would be one female character who would make a really excellent Mulder, in that she would work crazy hard and be insane and believe in aliens and go chasing weird cases across the country, but it would somehow not come across as being an hysterical female, it would just be awesome. So there's that.)
In conclusion, the fuck is a German muffin?
Goddddddd, perfect show is perfect. I liked the camping episode even more than Harvest Fest, but I think that's because I was way too spoiled for Harvest Fest -- I need to go back on my Office era TOTAL SPOILER BLACKOUT. But man, this episode was just treading so delightfully close to fic tropes that I was totally expecting Ben and Leslie to have to share a room in the B&B IN WHICH THERE WOULD OF COURSE ONLY BE ONE BED.
Haha, although maybe I think it's very fic trope-y because I received this text from moireach just as the episode started: "The Parks and Rec preview seems to be the exact plot of your most recent slashfic idea." Which I would be extremely pleased with myself over, except it's not exactly the most creative idea ever. (If it were a prompt in some kind of comment ficathon, it would look like this: Ben/Ron, "What's a not-gay way to ask him to go camping with me? So.)
(Also not having fandom people in town anymore is laaaaaaame. I hadn't quite realized just how annoying it is until I was down in Atlanta last weekend visiting M for a Wretch Reunion and it felt like I was finally getting to speak in a secret twin language I had forgotten I had. I mean, it's just nice when you can say, "I kind of want to write Ben/Ron. Like, if Ben was just totally gay and had a thing fo--" and M immediately interrupted to finish, "-- thing for bears? Intriguing!" YES EXACTLY, A THING FOR BEARS. We always finish each other's sandwiches. UM ANYWAY, I DIGRESS.)
But God, Parks. I laughed out loud like thirty times ("I'm just going to sleep on the floor." "Andy, you have to save me, I'm camping with people I work with!" "I married Alf, and we're pretty happy." "If that's a coyote, someone has to pick me up off the ground, NOW."), and I totally shipped Leslie/Ron, and Ben and Leslie looked at a beautiful pollution sunset together, and everything was amazing except Ann, who makes me want to die. (Ugh, on the one hand, I am so happy she has more to do now that there's this Chris storyline, but on the other hand, IT IS SO MORTIFYING AND ALSO I FEEL LIKE RASHIDA IS STILL SORT OF UNDERUSED? Ugh, idek, they're just always off on their own and it's dumb. Also I love Rashida so freaking much but I kind of hate Ann? She's just so boring. I mean, her? Egg? Plant? Why don't you and Bland go wait in the car?)
Also obviously I still ship Ben/Leslie like burning, though I was thinking the other day that I actually kind of miss when she was yelling at him all the time, I don't even know why. I just feel like I shipped them even more when she'd call him an ass even though he held her fate in his hands like a small bird, and then they'd go out for beers together. MAYBE IT WAS JUST MORE PASSIONATE OR SOMETHING. But I also feel like, oh my God, Ben, just ask her out already, this show is not one to drag these things out! On Parks people meet, they like each other, they go out on a date, JUST LIKE PEOPLE IN REAL LIFE, there are no ridiculous years of sexual tension. And it is at the stage where I am ready for them to do it. I mean, for God's sake, Ben, SHE ASKED YOU ON A WALK AND YOU LOOKED AT A POLLUTION SUNSET TOGETHER AND THEN YOU TOLD HER HOW AMAZING YOU THINK SHE IS, OH MY GOD JUST KISS HER ALREADY, YOU NERD.
Also, does anyone deliver the word "No" more hilariously than Adam Scott? "But is it worth the asthma?" "No," should not be, like, the funniest exchange in the episode, and yet.
Which reminds me, I was catching up on the last three episodes of Fringe yesterday, and you know that part where Lincoln Lee shows up in our universe as a regular old FBI agent, and he exposits this long thing about how this lady got murdered, but then her body disappeared, and now her fingerprints keep showing up at double-suicides where there's only one body left afterwards, and DUN DUN DUN this sounds crazy, but he thinks she can't die! And then William Bell, currently possessing the body of Olivia Dunham, says, "Well, stranger things have happened." And then Lincoln Lee, FBI, stares at him and after a second says, "No, they haven't." I LOLED FOREVER and then I told multiple people about it because ahahahaha, omg, why doesn't that kind of exchange happen all the time on these types of shows?
Anyway, so then I told tearupthesky about it, and she was like, "Haha, that sounds like if Ben Wyatt was an FBI agent." AND IT TOTALLY DOES, RIGHT? And that made me really, really want an AU where Ben and Leslie are Mulder and Scully style X-Files FBI agents, where Leslie is the crazy driven believer one and Ben is dubious all the time, and that is an AU that would serve no purpose but would be totally delightful. Law enforcement partners! Make out on the stakeout! Probably having to be naked in front of each other in decontamination showers after exposure to alien parasites! Leslie maybe losing it in interrogations a la Elliot Stabler and Ben having to pull her and her tiny fists off perps! ("I WILL waterboard you.") Man, sometimes sitcom fandoms are just so sad, because if there was tons of regular Parks fic I would totally go write crazy AUs all the time, but it feels so insane when there is not very much non-AU fic. BUT GODDAMMIT, WHY DO INCEPTION AND SGA AND BANDOM GET ALL THE AMAZING AUS? Unfair, fandom, unfair.
(Also talking about Ben and Leslie as Mulder and Scully made me think about the gender dynamics there -- people always talk about how Mulder & Scully was a nice gender-flip kind of situation, because Scully was the calm logical scientist and Mulder was the one who just had a lot of feelings. [Though this is a little complicated because, yeah, Mulder was the crazy one, but he was also pretty much always right, so, whatever.] But I actually feel like Leslie Knope would be one female character who would make a really excellent Mulder, in that she would work crazy hard and be insane and believe in aliens and go chasing weird cases across the country, but it would somehow not come across as being an hysterical female, it would just be awesome. So there's that.)
In conclusion, the fuck is a German muffin?