It's just a fuse, people! Just a fuse.
Ben backstory! I think we now know more about his parents’ marriage than we do about Leslie’s parents (do we even know for sure that Leslie’s parents were divorced before her dad died?). I didn’t really have a head canon about Ben’s parents, except that I liked to think that he had a supportive family who helped him get through Ice Town, just because that’s a nice thought. But I really liked having an explanation for his intermittent passive-aggressive tendencies. Without even thinking of it that way, I think I wrote him like that in my third chapter of Envelope fic (he’s mostly passive up until he snaps in the grocery store). In that AU world where he’s not trying to win over Leslie and the conflict is ramping up between them, he doesn’t do much to defend or explain himself. And by not engaging with her much, he gives this impression of not caring or respecting her.
That’s how I picture him being on the road before Pawnee. He would deliver the bad news, directly and honestly, because it was necessary. But he’s uncomfortable with confrontations, so then he’d get out of there as quickly as he could if things got heated. It was Chris’s job to smooth things over. And by being kind of a meek guy who didn’t bother to stand up for himself, he left an impression of not caring that rubbed people the wrong way, even if it wasn’t really accurate. I think this is going to be my head canon for how a sweet guy like Ben could have been someone who had ever gotten death threats. I will never believe he was Mean Ben before Pawnee.
He’s not always passive, obviously, depending on his mood, the necessity of the situation, his confidence level at the time, his comfort level with the person. With someone like Leslie in The Bubble, there’s a friendship and a trust level there, and also, probably, some self-awareness. Ben knows what destroyed his parents’ marriage, so it seems like he’d make a conscious effort to not make the same mistakes with Leslie. So when he’s upset about the meeting with her mom, he asks her about it outright, and they talk about it like adults. As far as his interaction with Marlene in that episode … if it had been any other government employee, he probably would have denied the request pretty quickly and gotten out of there. Since the fact that Marlene was Leslie’s mom was sprung on him at the last moment, he turned all human disaster. And later was able to confront her, but only after some coaching from Leslie.
With April and Andy in Meet and Greet, he’s not comfortable with them, and his confidence level is low these days, and he probably is just not in the mood to deal with it, so he slips into the habits that were ingrained into him in childhood. The party's already in progress, and it's not exactly an ideal time to talk about his hurt feelings or the lack of respect. It seems like he wouldn’t be so wary of confrontation that he’d allow the headlock situation to go on like that, but at that point, I think he’s just being stubborn, because Andy’s behavior is ridiculous. Also I liked the suggestion of someone on tumblr who thought Ben seemed like he needed human contact, however he could get it. He did seem pretty comfortable with his head in Andy’s lap for a few moments there in the middle.
That’s how I picture him being on the road before Pawnee. He would deliver the bad news, directly and honestly, because it was necessary. But he’s uncomfortable with confrontations, so then he’d get out of there as quickly as he could if things got heated. It was Chris’s job to smooth things over. And by being kind of a meek guy who didn’t bother to stand up for himself, he left an impression of not caring that rubbed people the wrong way, even if it wasn’t really accurate. I think this is going to be my head canon for how a sweet guy like Ben could have been someone who had ever gotten death threats. I will never believe he was Mean Ben before Pawnee.
He’s not always passive, obviously, depending on his mood, the necessity of the situation, his confidence level at the time, his comfort level with the person. With someone like Leslie in The Bubble, there’s a friendship and a trust level there, and also, probably, some self-awareness. Ben knows what destroyed his parents’ marriage, so it seems like he’d make a conscious effort to not make the same mistakes with Leslie. So when he’s upset about the meeting with her mom, he asks her about it outright, and they talk about it like adults. As far as his interaction with Marlene in that episode … if it had been any other government employee, he probably would have denied the request pretty quickly and gotten out of there. Since the fact that Marlene was Leslie’s mom was sprung on him at the last moment, he turned all human disaster. And later was able to confront her, but only after some coaching from Leslie.
With April and Andy in Meet and Greet, he’s not comfortable with them, and his confidence level is low these days, and he probably is just not in the mood to deal with it, so he slips into the habits that were ingrained into him in childhood. The party's already in progress, and it's not exactly an ideal time to talk about his hurt feelings or the lack of respect. It seems like he wouldn’t be so wary of confrontation that he’d allow the headlock situation to go on like that, but at that point, I think he’s just being stubborn, because Andy’s behavior is ridiculous. Also I liked the suggestion of someone on tumblr who thought Ben seemed like he needed human contact, however he could get it. He did seem pretty comfortable with his head in Andy’s lap for a few moments there in the middle.
- I really liked the range of emotion we got to see from Leslie in this episode: nervous and out of her element in the campaign situations, increasingly angry at Tom’s shenanigans. She seemed more human to me, and I appreciated that. Of course I like to see her happy and doing well, but what’s going on inside her head has seemed so opaque at times. I’m not criticizing how she’s been the past few episodes, but I appreciate seeing cracks in the armor and the peeks behind the curtain and all that. Great acting by Amy, too.
- I don’t know how I feel about Leslie’s almost instantaneous forgiveness of Tom. Yes, he had arguably sympathetic reasons for his behavior, and Leslie’s a forgiving person. But this is her campaign! Her lifelong dream, as they keep hyping it! She gave up Ben for this! So it’s understandable to try to drown him (obviously she wasn’t really trying to drown him, but I enjoy thinking of it that way). But then she immediately set all that aside as soon as she realized why Tom had done that to her. Leslie’s a generous friend and the kind of person who regularly puts other people first, so it makes sense. But I can’t seem to shake this annoying, probably irrational pebble in the bottom of my shoe that somehow, in that scene, she reordered her priorities so that Tom’s dream, or being a good friend to Tom, suddenly outranked her own dream, which we already know outranks her relationship with Ben, and … I know there’s a flaw in my thinking here, and it's not like being mad at Tom for longer would have helped her in any way, and this doesn't mean Tom somehow means more to her than Ben, but ... I don't know. It's just a weird thing I can't shake.
- The show is really hitting the friendship themes hard so far this season, isn’t it? I can’t tell why yet, but it seems like it must be deliberate. It could be just that they’re making up for last season, when some of Leslie’s friendships were put on the backburner (at least on screen) to focus on her relationship with Ben. Now that she and Ben aren’t interacting, there’s some time to address that. It could be that, in the writers’ room, they were concerned about audience backlash to Leslie breaking up with Ben for her career (NOT that she deserves backlash for that, but if I were a sitcom showrunner, I would be concerned about it). So they might have purposely concentrated on friendship storylines that emphasize Leslie’s caring qualities to offset that. But I wonder if there’s even more behind it than that, if it’s some sort of groundwork for themes that will come up later this season. I have the impression that the season will have Leslie repeatedly evaluating what she wants and what’s important to her. I don’t think all of that will concern Ben. Waffles, friends, work-if “work” is her dream career, does it still fall below friendship? Will the two ever come into conflict? Will her loyalties to the parks department be challenged?
- Speaking of friendships, what is going on between Leslie and Ann? Give them a scene together that’s not Leslie inadvertently putting down Ann!
- Random thought of the week: One of Leslie’s flaws (which she compensates for by her many great qualities, of course) is that she occasionally, inadvertently, obliviously puts someone down. It occurred to me that it makes sense, because she is Marlene’s child, and Marlene puts people down all the time. Leslie’s a much nicer person, but it’s a theme this week about how our parents’ flaws seep into our own personalities.
- The chemistry between Ann and Ron was great, and for the first time I could see what people were saying about the romantic potential there. I can see it. I don’t think I quite ship it right now though. I’m hesitant because Ann’s enthusiasm for home maintenance reminded me of her enthusiasm for fitness when she was dating Chris. When she dates someone with a strong personality, she’s too malleable. Also, Ron prefers strong, self-possessed women, and Ann has many great qualities, but I don’t really see her that way. I really liked the friend dynamic, though, and Ann needs friends in City Hall other than Leslie, especially since Leslie’s a little busy this year. I’d just have to see Ron and Ann together more before embracing any shippiness.
- Mini rant: I think the problem with Chris Traeger is that he’s played by Rob Lowe, and I don’t even mean that as a slam on Rob Lowe (although certainly there are slams to be had). They brought him in as a more visible boss figure, and if that’s the role, he should only be in stories where the boss figure is needed. But he’s played by Rob Lowe, which means that Chris gets a story arc every single episode, whether they have a good story for him or not. And it’s hard to have good stories when he’s not really connected to anyone as more than a boss (except maybe Ben, but we haven’t seen much of that friendship, if there is one). They haven’t connected him to other characters or made us care about him, so they make him do ridiculous Traeger stuff, but that gets old when there’s not much to ground the character. And he’s all over the place character-wise-perceptive enough two episodes ago to help Leslie get perspective on her birthplace situation, but oblivious enough now to not understand how uncomfortable his oversharing is making Jerry. Making out with Millicent all over the party was gross, but it also didn’t seem to make sense for image-conscious Chris to be acting like that in front of several of his subordinates. He just seems like the one character the Parks writers haven’t figured out what to do with, and possible the only one they’re willing to sell out for a joke.
- I am pretty much in love with the fact that Ben has a writer’s reference set on his desk, including a dictionary, thesaurus, and a third book that we can’t see. Clearly this means that in addition to working on spreadsheets, he also writes memos, and when he does he cares about things like spelling and grammar and precise word usage. These are things I get super flaily about. One of my favorite Ben lines ever was when he said, “This building has feelings?”--just the dry observation of a charmingly misplaced modifier. I think I loved the character from that moment forward.
- There was a moment just before Andy started moving Ben's mouth that April glanced down, and her mouth twitched, and it looked like she felt badly. It just made me think ... it seemed like we got more sweet, vulnerable moments from April in the second season, and to a lesser extent the third season, to balance out her harder edges. We haven't really gotten April-centric stories this season, so there's not much to go on at the moment. I just hope we get to see some different sides of her this season.
- Wasn't the nurse in the hospital one of the nurses who was at Ann's party in Pikitis? So I guess she already knew Andy.
- Apparently every thought I ever have gets a bullet point. Probably I should self-edit more to keep these to a more reasonable length.