Screw romantic dinners. Let's go rub it in their faces!
Time sort of got away from me, and I realized I had not posted any Parks thoughts, more than a week later! I’ve actually been trying to focus my spare thinking and writing energies onto finishing the next chapter of my WIP, if that’s any consolation. I know, excuses, excuses. But Operation Ann turned out to be an incredible episode, featuring both major fluff and major plot, and I feel weird having not written up my thoughts yet, even though most of this has been discussed already in various places.
I wasn’t expecting to love this episode, to be honest. I have a huge fondness for Season 2’s Galentine’s Day, in which three of the four romantic stories that happened had very little to do with the holiday. Galentine’s Day was incredibly refreshing because it avoided most of the usual sitcom clichés of in-love people feeling pressure to prove it and uncoupled people feeling bad about not being in a couple (and the one true Valentine’s Day story of Mark giving Ann some clichéd gifts in weird ironic fashion felt right because they were starting to seem like two people going through the motions of being happy rather than truly happy). By the episode description of Operation Ann, it seemed like we were going to get at least one of those sitcommy plots, and I figured that being Parks, it would probably not be too bad, but I was nervous for some reason.
As it turned out, I thought the A plot worked surprisingly well. Ann wasn’t bemoaning her single status; she was just a tiny bit wistful about it, and that’s understandable. We haven’t seen her dating anyone since The Fight, and no one seriously for much longer than that. And of course Leslie being Leslie took any sign of discontent from Ann as a reason to launch a full-scale remedy for whatever was ailing her. The “beautiful spinster” comment did make me wince (and it seemed a little contrived that Leslie was asking everyone about their love lives at a brunch celebrating friendship). But overall I decided to take my cues from Ann herself, who seemed to view the whole thing as misguided but well-intentioned. And Ann didn’t seem too bothered about meeting men that night, so when she gave Tom a chance, it didn’t strike me as an act of desperation at all.
And that brings us to Tom and Ann, which I am really excited about, and I don’t even know where to begin to be able to explain it. I think it starts with my love for Tom. He is a flawed character, but I enjoy flawed characters, and find him particularly interesting (and entertaining). He spent years in a green card marriage to a gorgeous doctor, who he was apparently faithful to, and how did that come about anyway? His super-hot wife never loved him and he lives in a small town where he’s not even that big of a fish. He strikes me as insecure and inexperienced, hence the ridiculous act he puts on sometimes. And then sometimes we see the “real” Tom shine through, in situations where he’s feeling more at ease. It’s no coincidence that the one time he told Ann how he really saw her, in Freddy Spaghetti, was when he was happily dating Lucy. Does the fact that he sometimes shows his inner good guy excuse all of his behavior? Probably not. But it makes him interesting to me as a character, and his feelings about someone like Ann, which run deeper than thinking she’s hot, give him a depth that someone like, say, Jean-Ralphio doesn’t have.
But the big question, of course, is why Ann would want to date Tom. Well, she said she wants someone nice and funny who likes her and treats her well, and as April pointed out, Tom could be everything on that list. He is funny, and he makes Ann smile-that is huge. Everyone wants to be with someone they enjoy being around. And he adores her (or he would if he thought he had a chance with her). And I think he would treat her well too. He probably goes over the top in romance in the same way he does everything else. He plans things, over-the-top things. He’s a little like Leslie in that he’s passionate and ambitious and gets carried away sometimes, and I think Ann is attracted to that quality. Tom is not perfect, but I don’t know if Ann wants the perfect mature stable guy. I think of Ann in The Master Plan drunkenly saying how much she loooooooooved Andy, the epitome of immaturity. And the thing she said she was missing in her relationship with Mark is that they didn’t fight. Ann likes a little friction. Tom’s a good guy, and I can’t see him taking advantage of her in the way that Andy did, but he’s just ornery enough that they’d keep that spark. And she stands up to him-he brings out that side of her that is more sure of herself, and I like seeing that.
I don’t think people fall for people because they’re perfect, anyway; they fall because they fit. Maybe Tom and Ann fit, maybe not-but it seems worth a try. Schur says he’s going to play the pairing more for its comedic qualities, anyway, and that could be a lot of fun. I get the reservations people have about them, but I think the reason I’m not too worried is that Ann has those same reservations. She is as skeptical as anyone, so if this continues I’m sure that will be addressed. And come on, this is the same woman who dated the Douche. At least Tom’s not the Douche.
Moving on. The scavenger hunt plot was ridiculously awesome, and I’m not going to go into detail over why because that’s been covered extensively elsewhere. I will go on record that I adored Ben’s line, “This is the woman I have chosen to love.” There’s something about that sentiment that feels very much like a real relationship to me, as opposed to the crush or bubble stages we saw last season.
On a barely related tangent, I really like to think about what the past couple months have been like for them. They are in this sort of weird position where they’ve declared feelings and committed to each other by making big sacrifices, all before they really got to experience that real relationship part. Getting to know each other as smitten coworkers or short-term secret daters isn’t quite the same as being in it for real. This might be slightly demented of me, but I would read all the fic of them awkwardly discovering and navigating each other’s idiosyncrasies in those first few months back together.
Has anyone else tried to figure out what the five-letter word on the cryptex actually was? Someone on TWOP speculated that it might have been “mural,” since the clue had something to do with the murals, and the wildflower mural was such a significant part of their story. Other people shot that idea down because Ben and Leslie weren’t officially together in Soulmates. But my imagination ran a bit wild with the idea, and I think I like it. First date=the Bulge. Second date=calzones on Idiot Avenue/Beating a Dead Horse Boulevard. Third date=burgers by the wildflower mural. Maybe after they jumped straight into bed together without preamble, they were like, well, yeah, but it feels like we’ve been dating for so much longer and they recap what those “dates” were. Or maybe Leslie just thought about that and never said it out loud. And then, on the night of the scavenger hunt, Ben wants to know what the five-letter word was, and she tells him. And then Ben is all, “Oh. Well that explains it. Turns out I was thinking about our actual third date. What was I thinking?” Then they laugh about it and have sex. And … there you go, if you made it through my all my Tom/Ann ramblings, that’s practically a little fic for your trouble.
Lastly, I wanted to mention April/Andy. I’m usually on board with anything Alan Sepinwall writes but he really threw me for a loop last week when he speculated that April and Andy might be headed for some rocks, based on April’s line about the cookie cutters and Andy’s recitation of things April hates. I do not think they are in trouble. I do think it’s possible that having gotten married so quickly, they might be reaching the point where they are more aware of each other’s less attractive qualities than they were when they said their vows. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be very believable as a married couple. But I still love them for each other. April’s had some nice character growth recently, and it’s possible even that Andy’s helped to bring that out in her, because he’s a more open sort of person, and when she’s with him she’s more open like that. It would be nice to revisit that band manager/life manager stuff we were supposed to get, though. Whatever happened to that?