I don't think I believe you. Is there anyone I can ask?
I never got around to writing about last week’s episode so here are some quick thoughts before we move on, because I already know I’m going to have tons of stuff to say about Operation Ann. In Bowling for Votes, we got yet another plot about one of Leslie’s flaws (for want of a better word) affecting her campaign, but I enjoy watching Leslie being overly intense and getting carried away about something way more than I enjoy when she’s being too naïve or bizarrely inept. It seems like a better way to get comedy out of Leslie’s candidacy without undoing any of the character growth from the past couple seasons. Her fixation on this one guy reminded me of her obsession with Greg Pikitis, and her crazy stalker binder on Derek might be my favorite Leslie binder yet. And I also really felt for her, having to listen to these focus groups and deal with the fact that she was putting herself out there, and some people were going to like her, and some people were not, and the way she responded to that was extreme, but extreme in a way that was completely natural to the Leslie we know. “All the things make me feel a lot of feelings about myself.” Awwww. And Amy Poehler was really at her best in this episode, showing her entire range and then some.
Ben punching that jerk, and Leslie reacting to that, was of course tons of fun and awesome and hot and I loved it enough to have to rationalize afterward why I loved that so much. He’s not a macho guy, and Leslie can take of herself, and he knows that, and he was immediately remorseful over hurting the guy, so it’s all good, I think. And Leslie, for her part, is a firm believer that assault should be legal if the person is a jerk. It doesn’t seem like something she should add to her platform of issues, but I’m not surprised it goes over well in the end. The cynic in me now thinks she might be better off drawing attention to her hunting skills than her work ethic. Ah, politics.
Ben went pretty fast from unperturbed to violent, though, didn’t he? It sucked that the jerk called her women’s second least favorite word, but unfortunately it’s a pretty common word, and it didn’t seem to have quite the extreme shock value a nonviolent guy like Ben would need to throw a punch. It’s network tv, though, so I guess they couldn’t exactly have Derek utter women’s first least favorite word. But what if Derek had said something offensive about Leslie’s relationship with Ben? When Ben broke up with her, he told Leslie he didn’t want anyone to think she got where she is by sleeping with him. So if the story had gone differently, and someone had accused her of that, I could see Ben losing his cool enough to punch someone. It could have been a way for the show to address the elephant in the room.
Really, it just seemed weird that the scandal of her relationship with Ben came up nowhere in this episode. The focus groups didn’t mention it. The press didn’t seem to notice that the guy who threw the punch was the former assistant city manager who resigned in disgrace. The passionate kiss afterward somehow didn’t make the front page of the newspaper. This is my one issue with an episode that otherwise I loved (the B and C plots were great this week, as well). Back in Citizen Knope we were led to believe that Leslie fell so far in the polls because of her relationship with Ben, so it’s so strange that her campaign has never tried to address that directly, and no one even seems aware of it. I’m starting to worry that her campaign advisers dropping her was supposed to be the extent of the fallout. Not that I want to see Leslie’s name dragged through the mud, but it feels like this huge hole in the storytelling. It could still come up later in the season, through media appearances or opponents’ mudslinging or something, but to act like the scandal doesn’t exist at this point makes no sense to me.
Stray thoughts:
- Ben teasing Leslie about her bowling skills (“Is there anyone I can ask?”), and their little exchange at the end when Leslie asks him to punch that guy for her and he just says “Yep” … I don’t really have a point here; I just love them so much.
- I love stories that involve April showing her warmer, more caring side, but the fact that we have no idea why Millicent meant so much to Chris made the story fall a little flat for me. What else did we know about her other than that she was surprisingly hot for a Gergich? Hard to feel sorry for Chris without more info, and hard to care about anyone being nice to him when I can’t really care about his plight. But go, April, having a story that didn’t revolve around Andy.
- My dream scenario for April (which I don’t expect to happen) would be for her to turn out to have some untapped political savvy. Since she started out as an intern at City Hall, I thought she might have been studying something at college related to politics or government. She’s smart, devious, perceptive … I could see how that might make her a good strategist. I want to see her come up with a plan to manipulate people to vote for Leslie. And then for Ben and April to partner up as freelance political consultants. Just kidding. Sort of.
- I am feeling all the Tom/Ann shippy feelings now and I’m not going to apologize for it. I wrote a post on tumblr a while back explaining why I think it works, but this story by americnxidiot really gets to the heart of it, and everyone should go read it.