Sadness Baths and Geopolitical Problem Solving: Aka Cy has thoughts

[cypanache]

Normally I would just post this over on tumblr but it's long and tumblr hates me right now.  So the point is I have now seen 'The Treaty' twice and have watched the preview clip for 'Smallest Park'.  And given this and what I've read of the spoilers for the next two episodes, I have some thoughts that I'm working through regarding this arc.

These

Comments

[rikyl]

I was quick to take Ben's side in this ep but spent a lot of today considering Leslie's POV. First of all, I think she's not okay with just friendship either, but she's trying to convince herself she is. She looked so unhappy when she was describing what a friend is vs. what a boyfriend is, it seemed pretty clear to me that she wanted the love and marriage part of it with Ben. But is trying to make the best of a bad situation by having him in her life in some way. I don't think she'd be happy being friends with Ben forever, though--she's just not facing the reality entirely yet. I can't picture her getting over him or moving on while Ben is still in her life. I keep thinking of the last scene of Soulmates, where even though she hasn't figured out how it's going to work with Ben, she decided she didn't want to even consider anyone else

[cypanache]

I completely agree that she probably wouldn't have been happy being friends with Ben forever, I just had kind of wished for her to face her dissatisfaction with it rather than Ben forcing the question. But as I said above I think Leslie is still in this place where she needs the emotional jumpstart of prospectively losing Ben.

Like we talked about on chat. I think this a good character observation about Leslie feeling betrayed. I also think there's a potential that Ben is unintentionally leading her on, by letting himself be talked into trying to be friends and then realizing he can't only to try to take a step back, and then letting himself get talked into it all over again. So I think for all his efforts at forthrightness, given Leslie's emotional state he's sending some mixed messages.

[rikyl]

I was thinking today for some reason about Ben confessing his feelings to Leslie in Road Trip. What he said was basically, translated: I like to hang out with you, I find you attractive, and we share similar interests. And that is almost exactly how Leslie feels about him. It just got me thinking about the admiration aspect of it and what that has to do with actually falling in love ... the moments we think of Ben "falling" for Leslie are really more like Ben crushing on Leslie, because you can admire someone without actually being romantically compatible with them. And the real falling part seems to happen once they're spending more time together, laughing together, having fun together, fitting together. So the fact that Leslie thinks of her feelings for Ben in terms of how well he fits with her actually might be fairly comparable to his feelings for her. And that explains why he is so much more lovesick now after having a brief relationship with her than he was when they were just working together

[cypanache]

I think that could be a fair interpretation of the storyline. Like I said a lot of my issues stem from this whole 'inkblot' problem I have with Leslie

[rikyl]

Okay, I see what you mean, and I would love to see that too. He definitely brings something to the relationship, in being more grounded and practical than she is. I'm not convinced everything that happened for her last season would have gone as well and led to being approached for the city council seat if he hadn't talked to her about responsibility initially and then helped her every step of the way with the festival. We didn't see it, but I just assume he made all the numbers work, and if he hadn't ... (I really really want to see that It's a Wonderful Life AU to explore this :). She did give him half the credit at the end of Harvest Festival, but like you said, the line in Road Trip kind of diminishes that. Maybe she just meant in terms of which of them is more known to passionately defend Pawnee. But she is Marlene's daughter, so no matter how much she loves and appreciates someone, it may sometimes come out sounding ... backhanded