"Now I am fluent in German ... words related to dogs."
Something strange is happening when I enjoy the Chris subplot as much as, if not more than, the rest of a Parks episode. That’s kind of what happened last week, even though it was such a minor plot, and it got me thinking about why Chris is so much more likable in the second half of season 4 than he has been for a long time. General distaste for Rob Lowe aside, the man has consistently shown surprising comic timing and a flair for physical comedy. Maybe that’s why people outside of fandom have seemed to enjoy him more all along-if you’re less invested in character development and more interested in pure jokes, I can see how pre-2012 Chris Traeger might have gone over okay. But around these parts, we’re all pretty invested in these characters, and so someone who’s been written as being pretty one dimensional, static, and inconsistent, able to be contorted to whatever the plot requires, hasn’t been so popular.
I think my main problem with Chris has been that he was overly and equally enthusiastic about everything. He was always happy. And it’s not that I would begrudge someone their total happiness, but what’s left for us to root for? How do you relate to someone who has no vulnerabilities-who doesn’t appear to want anything? They briefly humanized him in the first and last episodes of Season 3, with mentions of his health condition, and those moments made him more interesting/appealing, but it was too little, and not often enough. Now we’re being treated to lonely/trainwreck Chris, and suddenly I like him more. He’s more human, and he’s more interesting. What we’ve seen recently even seems like a better explanation for his relentless positivity than the health issues. He is lonely, and he wants to be liked, and maybe that’s one reason he hates to deliver bad news, and he has to put a positive spin on everything. Maybe that’s why he thrived for so many years traveling around as an auditor-people responded to his charm, in quick shallow bursts, and then he moved on to another town, where a new group of people would boost his ego in the same way. Maybe that’s what happened with Ann too-he loves first dates; he loves the newness, and when that wears off, he doesn’t know how to sustain or build real relationships. He’s used to moving on. But now he’s staying in Pawnee, and so he’s sticking around to see the Chris Traeger Effect wear off, long enough to notice that everyone around him is involved in deeper friendships/relationships than he is. Now his first(?) attempt at a longer, deeper relationship with someone has failed, and it seems like his despair might not be specific to losing Millicent who, jogging abilities aside, never seemed that special to us. I like to think it also has something to do with the fact that Ben, perhaps his most significant long-term relationship, has moved on, and Chris is not even close to being the most important person in Ben’s life anymore. He’s not important to anyone. If he were my real-life friend, I’d want him to be happy, but on my television, I like him this way better. He has room to grow. And from here, it could be more satisfying to watch him forge stronger friendships or even perhaps to meet Millicent 2.0.
Enough rambling about Chris, though, who I still just barely care about. Weirdly enough, this bizarre train of thought got me to thinking about Leslie and what’s happening to her this season and what’s in store for her. We’ve watched her make a lot of progress toward getting the things she wants. Now she has a large group of loyal friends, she has professional respect, she’s in love, and she’s running for office. It looks like there’s a good chance she’ll even win, considering the way the writers have structured the story to get us super emotionally invested and the laughably incompetent guest star she’s running against. We’ve been rooting for her for several years, and how could she possibly be more deserving of getting everything she wants-dream friends, dream guy, dream job. But what happens next? We need a reason to keep rooting for her. The show has always been about an extremely positive optimistic woman who stays that way even when she has difficulty achieving the things she wants. It seems like even if she wins, the writers have to keep her struggling in some way, to keep things interesting, so I’m curious how that would play out. Is the dream job going to turn out not to be everything she dreamed it would be? Are her City Council duties going to conflict with her loyalty to the parks department? It would make sense if she had difficulty achieving her ideas, as one vote on a City Council in a city with a limited budget. The show has been realistic about the obstacles to achieving anything in government before (all the steps it takes to build one park). I have to assume that Leslie’s ideas are actually workable ideas, because one, they're her ideas, but also two, because Ben supports them, and Ben knows more about Pawnee’s budget situation than probably anyone, but I’m guessing the show's going to be somewhat realistic about the difficulty of bringing about change, even from the inside. Maybe adjusting to that becomes part of her character arc.
It’s interesting to find out that city council is part-time. It would be in real life, but Pawnee’s unusual in a lot of ways, and the way the writers have built up this “dream job,” it seemed like they were treating it as more of a full-time gig. The acknowledgement that it’s part-time, and that Leslie could keep working in the parks department, seems to suggest she could win without changing the focus of the show too much. It also might be a sign that they’re hoping to tell somewhat realistic stories about how local city councils operate next season so wanted to keep the nature of the job more down to earth. Michael Schur’s a nerd like that, and he’s built plots in the past over how local governments really do/don’t work (see: building a park).
The plot about Leslie being spread too thin seemed a little odd to me, though. One, it was abrupt-I don’t remember seeing any signs that she was having trouble keeping up before this. Two, she’s still working 50 hours in the parks department; I could see how she’d lack the time to go above and beyond in the ways she has in the past (or forget something like Jerry’s birthday), but it surprised me that she’s working that much and somehow letting basic things slip through the cracks. Three, how is the campaign that demanding? She’s already got a boyfriend who works full-time on it, a team of loyal volunteers, plus Ron hired her an assistant specifically because he was expecting her to need more time for the campaign (granted, it’s Andy, but still). Also, she needs three hours of sleep a night (or maybe she’s superhuman when they’re writing a joke but a flesh-and-blood woman when they’re writing plot). The fact that she suddenly can’t do both seems contrived to me specifically to set up a conflict between Leslie’s loyalty to parks and her pursuit of her dream. But in the same episode, we found out she can do both, so there’s not as much of a conflict. I’m just really curious where they’re going with this.
Stray thoughts …
- I guess I don't understand how the Hatch Act works. Even if she steps outside the building, isn't that still during work hours? Also, it looked like everyone else was doing campaign work inside the building.
- Ron’s story about his childhood jobs and his line about “whole-assing one thing” were excellent, but I feel like they go to the Yoda well too often with him. I wish his advice wasn’t consistently that perfect-I wish we got to see Leslie credibly disagree with him sometimes (Tammy encounters aside).
- I don’t feel like I have much to say about Tom and Ann that hasn’t already been said. They don’t seem to like each other, and anything interesting about them seems to be happening off screen. (The one conversation we really wanted to see happened behind glass! What was that?). I’m starting to wonder if Rashida and Aziz even have any chemistry-it’s easier to buy a romance between two characters who don’t like each other if there’s chemistry, and there's really not. It was so weird to even see him put his arm around her. It seems like they could have tweaked the plot somehow to help out-maybe a less creepy gift/more flattered reaction in their first scene. Maybe Ann at any moment seeming to enjoy Tom, or Tom appreciating anything at all about Ann. (What happened to what he said to her in Freddy Spaghetti? “I might joke about how you have a nice booty, but I think you’re a really nice person, and any guy would be lucky to have you.”)
- I’m not completely buying this “oh no no” list. Did Lucy care about thread counts or champagne brands? I guess I don’t know, but I didn’t get that vibe from her. Also, Lucy’s a grad student now. I’m sure she reads! And so does Tom for that matter, even if it’s just Twilight. He was also in love with his neurosurgeon wife once upon a time, so there’s that. My point is, we’ve seen Tom have less superficial feelings about women, so why not now? They’re turning him into a caricature of himself for “comedy,” and it’s annoying me.
- "I really don't care what happens to them ... or anyone." Nothing ... I just really love April lately.
- If Chris had a dog whistle, why did he wait so long to use it?
- Ben didn’t have much to do in this episode, but he makes excellent set dressing.