You had me at 'every dime we have left'
Let’s start with April and Andy for once, because I shipped them so hard in season 2, and this was one of the most satisfying episodes they’ve had. I would put it right up there with Fancy Party. Fancy Party was about two people being in love and impulsively committing to each other without thinking it through. They didn’t go to any Marriage Encounter courses. They didn’t, I assume, talk at all about what they wanted out of marriage or what they pictured for the future. They just jumped in, and it was wonderful. Then their bucket list storyline was like this fantastic payoff exploring what they are to each other and what their marriage is like. I had a good feeling in Fancy Party that in spite of how little “they thought this through,” they were going to be okay. And after this week, I feel that with so much more confidence. They’re together forever.
April was probably my favorite character before Ben came along. I think my favorite season 2 storyline was seeing her character develop, as she figured out who she was and dropped some of her attitude and fell for Andy. Right away in Pawnee Zoo we saw her get really fired up about the issue of gay rights. She’s not apathetic. She’s just … selective about what she’ll be outwardly passionate about. Then we saw her friendship with Derek and Gay Ben deteriorate. You could see her losing patience with being too cool for everything and making fun of anyone who was actually daring to enjoy themselves. Her developing feelings for Andy, who was basically the antithesis of her previous friends, was sooooo sweet. With Andy she found someone who brings out that side of her but also accepts her for exactly who she is.
In her wedding vows, she told him “I never really seem to hate you.” But in End of the World, I really felt how strongly she loves him and how important his happiness is to her. You know how much Derek and Gay Ben and maybe Season 1 April would have made fun of a bucket list like Andy’s. But April embraced it, and it evolved from “let’s do something weird tonight” to her really looking out for Andy’s happiness. From reading the more general spoilers for the season (which were so general, I think it’s okay to just mention it), it seems like April pushing Andy to do more with his life is going to be a theme this season, and I think that has something to do with what she wants out of life too. She’s not content to just eat pizza and watch Andy play Xbox and make crank calls every single night forever. She wants more, and I’m not sure exactly what that’s going to be, but it looks like April’s going to be the driving force making sure they go after it. And I just had this wonderful feeling seeing them at the Grand Canyon together of how good they are for each other and how in love they are and how wonderful their life together is going to be.
Did people watch the webisodes? Weren’t they the best thing ever? In the third one, April makes a joke about good school districts, which Andy doesn’t get, and she gets this look on her face, and it made me wonder. I do picture them with kids someday (not during the show’s run, but eventually). It surprised me to find out that maybe, possibly, April might already be looking that far ahead. It was probably just a joke, and the look was just a reaction to how dense Andy can be sometimes. But they’re newlyweds, on this romantic journey, daydreaming about the future, and if April were going to ask, hey, what do you think about having kids someday?, she wouldn’t just come out and ask it. She’d self-consciously back into the conversation by making a joke that didn’t give away at first that she in any way cared. In the producer’s cut we find out that Andy had put having a son on his bucket list. So maybe April’s wondering about that. If Andy really wanted children, and April was on board with that, she’d be the one to recognize, well obviously we can’t do that now, the way we currently live, and maybe make sure they started taking the steps so that someday taking care of a baby would be slightly more plausible for them. Eventually. Or, you know, maybe it was just a joke and a look and it meant nothing at all.
So … Ben and Leslie. Leslie feelings. Ben reacting to Leslie feelings. Let’s start with Leslie. It’s been really hard to tell since the premiere how strongly Leslie’s feelings for Ben were, and how much she had been able to move on from him. I was nervous about seeing her in jealous or possessive mode, because that’s not a kind way to treat someone, but she was so obviously distraught, I couldn’t be mad at her at all. And also I’m relieved that she does have strong feelings, maybe even in-love feelings, and she is so not over him. I don’t think she realized when they broke up (and maybe he didn’t know this either) that she was going to lose having him in her life at all, as a friend or anything more than a distant colleague, or that he wasn’t going to sit around waiting for her indefinitely. However supportive he was of her choices, however amicable it was, it was still a real breakup. There might be a circumstance where she could reasonably suggest waiting for each other, but only if she was willing to say, yes, this is serious, this is long-term, this is for real, and possibly forever. But they dated for such a short time, it’s hard to say that. And then how long could they put your lives on hold while figuring out how to make this work? How do you ask someone to do that for you at the same time as you’re actively choosing not to put that person first? I’ve gone off on a tangent somehow. I like the idea of them promising to each other that they’re going to be together, someday, somehow, and not giving up. But I also can’t seem to find a way to make that work in my head.
Anyway. It was a bit of a cliché to have another woman flirt with Ben and to see Leslie get jealous. But maybe it’s a cliché because that’s what reasonably happens. You break up with someone, and eventually you have to face what that means, that they will eventually replace you with someone else. Faced with losing Ben, for real this time, Leslie has an epiphany about how much he means to her. If it really were her last night, she’d want to be with him, and as Ron said, that’s significant.
I’m struggling to process what that means. It seems so accepted, by people in the fandom, by Leslie’s friends on the show, by Leslie herself, that she wouldn’t sacrifice her career for a guy. And I’m not entirely sure of that. Leslie’s ambitious, but she’s also impulsive, and she seems to put her friendships above anything else in her life. She cared more about being there for Tom when she found out his business had failed than about the damage he had potentially done to her campaign that night. She helped Ron when he was battling his ex-wives, and if it had occurred to her that drinking in the middle of the workday at City Hall was a risky decision for a political candidate, I’m not sure that would have stopped her. A romantic relationship is different. But Ben was her friend first, and just because he’s the friend she wants to make out with, would she be able to give him up completely? He is the one she’d want to be with at the end, not Ron or Ann or Tom. I don't know. It just wouldn’t shock me to see her second guess the breakup after seeing how broken up she was about it on Thursday.
As for Ben … oh, poor Ben. Just when he started to be a little bit more okay without her, Leslie throws a wrench in things. I’ve seen different interpretations of Ben’s feelings during this episode, but all I can imagine is how conflicted he must have been. Annoyed at Leslie initially because her behavior was immature and unfair, but also maybe a little relieved to find out she cared more than she had been letting on since the breakup. Then to feel stupid about being relieved, because it didn't change their situation, and he still needed to get over her, and she was just making it harder. I still can’t get over the look on his face when she showed up at his door and told him the romantic part of their relationship was over. Short of saying I made a mistake. Please love me forever, letting him go is pretty much the only thing she could have done, and it was something he knew already, but still … so awfully painful to hear the words out loud. And maybe he hadn’t realized how strongly she felt about him until that moment. So he’s finding that out and losing it again, all within seconds. And I’m not sure what that means for his feelings for her or his ability to get over her going forward … I picture an inner war in which he knows he has to focus on the last part of her sentence, that it’s over, but keeps coming back to the first part of the sentence, that she’s only now accepting that, and wondering what she’s been thinking/expecting all this time until that moment. And then kicking himself for going down that road again.
April was probably my favorite character before Ben came along. I think my favorite season 2 storyline was seeing her character develop, as she figured out who she was and dropped some of her attitude and fell for Andy. Right away in Pawnee Zoo we saw her get really fired up about the issue of gay rights. She’s not apathetic. She’s just … selective about what she’ll be outwardly passionate about. Then we saw her friendship with Derek and Gay Ben deteriorate. You could see her losing patience with being too cool for everything and making fun of anyone who was actually daring to enjoy themselves. Her developing feelings for Andy, who was basically the antithesis of her previous friends, was sooooo sweet. With Andy she found someone who brings out that side of her but also accepts her for exactly who she is.
In her wedding vows, she told him “I never really seem to hate you.” But in End of the World, I really felt how strongly she loves him and how important his happiness is to her. You know how much Derek and Gay Ben and maybe Season 1 April would have made fun of a bucket list like Andy’s. But April embraced it, and it evolved from “let’s do something weird tonight” to her really looking out for Andy’s happiness. From reading the more general spoilers for the season (which were so general, I think it’s okay to just mention it), it seems like April pushing Andy to do more with his life is going to be a theme this season, and I think that has something to do with what she wants out of life too. She’s not content to just eat pizza and watch Andy play Xbox and make crank calls every single night forever. She wants more, and I’m not sure exactly what that’s going to be, but it looks like April’s going to be the driving force making sure they go after it. And I just had this wonderful feeling seeing them at the Grand Canyon together of how good they are for each other and how in love they are and how wonderful their life together is going to be.
Did people watch the webisodes? Weren’t they the best thing ever? In the third one, April makes a joke about good school districts, which Andy doesn’t get, and she gets this look on her face, and it made me wonder. I do picture them with kids someday (not during the show’s run, but eventually). It surprised me to find out that maybe, possibly, April might already be looking that far ahead. It was probably just a joke, and the look was just a reaction to how dense Andy can be sometimes. But they’re newlyweds, on this romantic journey, daydreaming about the future, and if April were going to ask, hey, what do you think about having kids someday?, she wouldn’t just come out and ask it. She’d self-consciously back into the conversation by making a joke that didn’t give away at first that she in any way cared. In the producer’s cut we find out that Andy had put having a son on his bucket list. So maybe April’s wondering about that. If Andy really wanted children, and April was on board with that, she’d be the one to recognize, well obviously we can’t do that now, the way we currently live, and maybe make sure they started taking the steps so that someday taking care of a baby would be slightly more plausible for them. Eventually. Or, you know, maybe it was just a joke and a look and it meant nothing at all.
So … Ben and Leslie. Leslie feelings. Ben reacting to Leslie feelings. Let’s start with Leslie. It’s been really hard to tell since the premiere how strongly Leslie’s feelings for Ben were, and how much she had been able to move on from him. I was nervous about seeing her in jealous or possessive mode, because that’s not a kind way to treat someone, but she was so obviously distraught, I couldn’t be mad at her at all. And also I’m relieved that she does have strong feelings, maybe even in-love feelings, and she is so not over him. I don’t think she realized when they broke up (and maybe he didn’t know this either) that she was going to lose having him in her life at all, as a friend or anything more than a distant colleague, or that he wasn’t going to sit around waiting for her indefinitely. However supportive he was of her choices, however amicable it was, it was still a real breakup. There might be a circumstance where she could reasonably suggest waiting for each other, but only if she was willing to say, yes, this is serious, this is long-term, this is for real, and possibly forever. But they dated for such a short time, it’s hard to say that. And then how long could they put your lives on hold while figuring out how to make this work? How do you ask someone to do that for you at the same time as you’re actively choosing not to put that person first? I’ve gone off on a tangent somehow. I like the idea of them promising to each other that they’re going to be together, someday, somehow, and not giving up. But I also can’t seem to find a way to make that work in my head.
Anyway. It was a bit of a cliché to have another woman flirt with Ben and to see Leslie get jealous. But maybe it’s a cliché because that’s what reasonably happens. You break up with someone, and eventually you have to face what that means, that they will eventually replace you with someone else. Faced with losing Ben, for real this time, Leslie has an epiphany about how much he means to her. If it really were her last night, she’d want to be with him, and as Ron said, that’s significant.
I’m struggling to process what that means. It seems so accepted, by people in the fandom, by Leslie’s friends on the show, by Leslie herself, that she wouldn’t sacrifice her career for a guy. And I’m not entirely sure of that. Leslie’s ambitious, but she’s also impulsive, and she seems to put her friendships above anything else in her life. She cared more about being there for Tom when she found out his business had failed than about the damage he had potentially done to her campaign that night. She helped Ron when he was battling his ex-wives, and if it had occurred to her that drinking in the middle of the workday at City Hall was a risky decision for a political candidate, I’m not sure that would have stopped her. A romantic relationship is different. But Ben was her friend first, and just because he’s the friend she wants to make out with, would she be able to give him up completely? He is the one she’d want to be with at the end, not Ron or Ann or Tom. I don't know. It just wouldn’t shock me to see her second guess the breakup after seeing how broken up she was about it on Thursday.
As for Ben … oh, poor Ben. Just when he started to be a little bit more okay without her, Leslie throws a wrench in things. I’ve seen different interpretations of Ben’s feelings during this episode, but all I can imagine is how conflicted he must have been. Annoyed at Leslie initially because her behavior was immature and unfair, but also maybe a little relieved to find out she cared more than she had been letting on since the breakup. Then to feel stupid about being relieved, because it didn't change their situation, and he still needed to get over her, and she was just making it harder. I still can’t get over the look on his face when she showed up at his door and told him the romantic part of their relationship was over. Short of saying I made a mistake. Please love me forever, letting him go is pretty much the only thing she could have done, and it was something he knew already, but still … so awfully painful to hear the words out loud. And maybe he hadn’t realized how strongly she felt about him until that moment. So he’s finding that out and losing it again, all within seconds. And I’m not sure what that means for his feelings for her or his ability to get over her going forward … I picture an inner war in which he knows he has to focus on the last part of her sentence, that it’s over, but keeps coming back to the first part of the sentence, that she’s only now accepting that, and wondering what she’s been thinking/expecting all this time until that moment. And then kicking himself for going down that road again.
- Ron puzzles me. He’s anti-government. He’s definitely anti Leslie’s kind of government. Obviously he still respects Leslie a lot in spite of their differences and cares about her and wants her to be happy. It just surprises me that he’s the one who pushes her to prioritize career over relationships. I don’t know exactly what I’m basing this on, but Ron strikes me as someone who would prioritize his own life in the opposite way-something about his romantic history and things that he said to Leslie at April and Andy’s wedding, combined with the fact that he doesn’t care about his own job. But he doesn’t advise her based on what he would want; he advises her based on what he seems to think Leslie would want. And completely leaves out of it the fact that if Leslie leaves the parks department, he will actually have to do his job, and that the sorts of things Leslie would try to do as a City Council member are probably not things he’d personally support. I guess being able to set all that aside makes him a pretty great friend, but it surprises me when his advice to her doesn’t come out with a more Swansonesque spin on it. Where is Ron’s romantic streak? Where is his libertarian annoyance that the government can dictate what Leslie does in her free time? For that matter, where is the moment when he actually asks her what she wants instead of assuming?
- The other piece of it is that maybe Ron hasn’t realized how strongly Leslie feels about Ben. He seemed to have opinions on what kind of person Leslie deserves in Galentine’s Day. Maybe all he has known before this was that Ben’s the boss who was foolishly sleeping with his subordinate. When Ron finds out that Leslie would want to be with Ben at the end of the world, he says that’s significant, maybe for the first time realizing their relationship was more than an affair. But his advice to her is still very realistic.
- Someone (sorry I can’t remember who, I’ve read so many opinions, I can’t seem to keep who said what straight) thought that in addition to being grateful and relieved by how easy Ben made the breakup for her and how supportive he was of her career, she might also have been irrationally a little bit hurt that he’d be willing to give her up. In the deleted scenes of I’m Leslie Knope, you could see she expected him to be pretty broken up about it. So that’s an interesting thought to me.
- I feel like I owe the fandom an apology because I currently have a slight Ben/Shauna situation, in that … I can sort of see it, and I think it’s kind of cute (and I kind of want fic). She’s smart. She’s a journalist, so she’s probably into politics. She’s a writer, so she’d flip over the fact that Ben has a writer’s reference set and a canister of yellow pencils on his desk at home. She seems like a nice person, but she has this skeptical/bemused attitude going on, and she and Ben would totally bond over the fact that Li’l Sebastian is just a small horse, etc. I can see them enjoying each other and laughing a lot together. Just the fact that she looked at Ben and Chris standing next to each other and zeroed in on Ben, and that she appreciated Ben’s dry self-deprecating sense of humor and wanted to spend more time with him, that makes me like her more. I like people who like Ben. I can’t help it. Don’t shoot!
- Not that it’s going to happen. I don’t really mind the show going there, because he and Leslie have been broken up for a while now and it was for her career, and Ben shouldn’t sit around moping and waiting, because that’s so unhealthy. But I don’t think he’s ready to date anyone else, and he’s never seemed like the kind of person to use someone for a rebound, so it doesn’t seem plausible at this point either.
- The fact that Shauna’s a reporter is a little concerning. Leslie was acting really weird, and Shauna could easily put together why and start poking around looking for the scandal. Maybe the storyline’s not over, but it’s going in that direction instead of continuing the Ben-dates-someone-else path.
- I still wish we had gotten to see the actual flirting, not just in the background and out of earshot. This is mostly because I’m hungry for clues about Ben’s romantic history and how he is or has been with women other than Leslie. Also, it’s Ben/Adam Scott! It’s fun to watch him react to things. I thought getting female attention from someone other than Leslie would be something he’d react to … in some way, even if it was just a little oh, this is happening kind of reaction. And that that would be interesting to watch. He seemed to just take it in stride. Of course he did. He’s in his upper 30s, so he knows how to talk to girls. I just … I don’t know what I expected. But also … Shauna was flirting with him, while Leslie was standing not too far away. Regardless of how smooth Ben is, that’s a little bit uncomfortable. Didn’t seem to faze him until Leslie started freaking out.
- I don’t have as much to say about Tom, except that his part of the episode was really satisfying too. Lucy’s comeback was great. And I love the idea of the spectacular failure that leads to something else, even though we don’t know what that will be for Tom yet.
- Really, I’m just blown away by how they took this goofy Zorp thing, didn’t have anyone taking it seriously, but managed to use at is this framing device for everything else in the episode. End of Entertainment 7wenty. End of Leslie and Ben (for now!). For April and Andy, the relevance was a little more vague but it still seemed to fit with the theme. It was sort of like April was recognizing there was an expiration date for how long they could be young and stupid and she was making sure they were their youngest and stupidest while they still could be.
- All will be well. You can ask me how, but only time will tell. How perfect was that? Truly perfect. And yet I’m still picturing a different version set to “The Pit.”
- In conclusion, the season is young, but this was my favorite episode so far, and might even be one of my favorites of the series. Really excellent stuff.
- I swear to god, last week I promised myself I was going to stop writing to such excess about every single detail of every single episode, because seriously this is getting ridiculous, but the show really foiled those plans. Thanks to everyone who reads and comments. I love talking about Parks and really appreciate it.