Aired 2009 to 2015 (7 seasons) on NBC
Created by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur
Currently streaming on Netflix
For a brief introduction to this countdown, click here.
Parks and Recreation is the only show in my countdown that strives to be a traditional sitcom. As such, I think of it is as the best example of the form there is. It succeeds at this not just because of sheer hilarity, but also because of how well it uses different forms of humor, and how it tweaks the mockumentary format to lay the perfect groundwork for its laughs. It creates a memorable set of characters whose comic exaggerations work largely because they reflect the personalities of the people playing them. Its well-conceived multi-episode story lines help the show (mostly) avoid the narrative traps that befall all other long running series. The extended universe of the show transforms the setting of Pawnee, Indiana into one that is equal parts identifiable and surreal. And most impressively, Parks' fundamental warmth and its focus on the primacy of interpersonal relationships gives us a more meaningful treatise on "what we owe to each other" than Schur's subsequent direct examination of the matter.
The one caveat to all this praise is that Parks is a show about politics and the government, and can't be properly evaluated without a thorough and honest examination of the message it relays about those institutions. Parks ran concurrently with a political era where we were definitively disabused of all notions that vague allusions to hope and change were enough to transform our world into something better. And the series ended just months before the subsequent era descended a golden escalator. It doesn't take an advanced degree in political science to conclude that the naivety of the former laid some groundwork for the latter. And it doesn't take a cynical mind to conclude that anything unapologetically espousing the former's worldview has little to say about the way forward. So it would be pretty easy to just show you the following picture and dismiss Parks and Recreation out of hand.
The problem with this is that such a dismissal is just as simplistic of a statement as saying "I like the show because the bacon man is funny." I'll admit up front that there are aspects of the show's politics that are undercooked and problematic, but a simple declarative appraisal of the show's worth is insufficient. This isn't the same as The West Wing, where an otherwise solid drama is clearly undermined by its devotion to a cynical and toxic political mindset. And while critiques of the characters' archetypal flaws are valid, that Ron Swanson has (inaccurately) become a poster child for libertarian weirdos does not mean that he (and the others) are devoid of nuance and worth. After all, there exist people who unironically admire obvious condemnations of toxic masculinity like Walter White and Tyler Durden, but few would dispel their artistic merit as a result. Ultimately, if you are going to engage with Parks and Recreation and its relation to our political moment, you'll need to wrestle with competing thoughts and accept that the show is more than just one thing.
The Show Has Its Cake
I hinted at this in the introduction, but it's worth stating explicitly: Any analysis of Parks and Recreation's political themes must begin with an acknowledgment that the show often behaves like a satire. Virtually every tangential character is a comical exaggeration of some aspect of American society, and even the main cast displays farcical tendencies in most political subplots. While it's clear that this treatment is intended to some degree, it's mostly the organic result of a comedy show focused on people who work in the government. If you're not going to poke fun at an easy target, what are we even doing here?
To Parks' credit, there aren't many areas of modern American governance that go unremarked upon. The unfortunate primacy of boorish corporations in our daily lives is a favorite target of the show. The Sweetums empire* rears its head multiple times, most notably when it tries to get the family failson elected to the city council. Dennis Feinstein's cologne company serves little purpose other than to serve its owner's desire for power and wealth. And the introduction of Gryzzl in the final season is a succinct commentary on how powerful tech companies will hide behind banal rhetoric while doing whatever they want. Furthermore, the characters' interactions with the media holds up a mirror to how modern iterations of TV news tend towards the sensational rather than the informative.
*Leslie in earnest after Sweetums wins the vote to take over the parks' snack bars: "You know what? We did our job. We informed the public. That's all we can do." Whatever you want to say about the show's political leanings, it's not authoritarian in the slightest.
There's plenty of other mockery as well. The elected offices of Pawnee are filled with charlatans (Dexhart), out-of-touch old-timers (Milton), and power-tripping assholes (Jamm). The series is often critical of normal bureaucracy as well - in "Summer Catalog" we see how all past directors of the parks department are cynical careerists, the library and parks departments hate each for no real reason, and meddling from higher-ups often leads to work slowdowns. And the lampooning of Ron's libertarianism is the show's sharpest knife, as it's strongly implied that he is just a man of means who wants to be left alone and has grown his simplistic views of the world out of that basic desire.
All of this serves to build a comprehensive satirical worldview, but the obvious critique is that the vast majority of this commentary is high-school debate level pablum. Virtually every one of the satirical concepts I've mentioned is expressed in a set of supporting characters that are one-dimensional beings created seemingly only to prove a point. While this approach allows the show to make simplistic condemnations of specific behavior, it doesn't really lend itself to anything beyond surface-level readings. Companies left to their own devices will use whatever power they have to enrich themselves, television news will chase the lowest common denominator, bureaucracy serves to drain the life out of government work - these may all be correct observations, but that's mostly where the show's insight ends. And lest one argue that it's asking a lot of a network sitcom to cut deeper, don't forget that the medium has a pretty rich history of doing just that. Parks' commentary may be factually sound, but it fails to incisively speak truth to power.
...But Tries to Eat It, Too
More to the point, all this critique of the show's satirical bent is rendered irrelevant when you contrast that aspect of the show with how it treats Leslie Knope as a paragon of political virtue (if you don't believe it does this, watch her final speech in "The Debate"). This isn't to say that Leslie is ever portrayed as perfect or that the show doesn't make some jokes at her expense. But none of these mild critiques of her go-getting style ever actually chip away at her relentless facade of positivity or stop her from accomplishing more and more. That might make the show sound a bit insufferable (and maybe it is!), but I would argue that this apparent veneration of Leslie Knope actually works as a compelling thematic force. The reason for this is simple - the positive effect she has on the world is grounded in a set of principles that are consistent, well-formed, and relevant to today's world.
The most notable of these themes is also the most obvious: public servants should, uh...serve the public. Whatever Leslie's faults, the show makes it clear that her undying goal is to devote herself to making her fellow citizen's lives better. As a parks department employee, Leslie spends her time on projects large (replacing the pit with a park, the Harvest Festival) and small (picking up trash, building a ballpark). In her brief stint as a councilwoman, she uses her marginal increase in power to focus on the same type of things (ie. lengthening pool hours). As part of the National Park Service, her work with Gryzzl simultaneously creates a national park (with former Sweetums land, no less) and revitalizes a downtrodden part of Pawnee. And the show ties a bow on this in the finale, when Leslie and crew work with the drunk from the pilot to repair a swing. This commitment to portraying Leslie as unabashedly committed to her duties is a refreshing reminder of what the everyday goals of government can and should be.
There's a second aspect of Leslie's behavior that is highly relevant to our post-Gamergate world: Her refusal to give in to bad-faith actors or apologize for following her convictions. This key tenet stands in direct contrast to how most people in power today respond to malevolent forces. As I re-watched portions of the show I was shocked at how consistently this was portrayed as one of Leslie's primary virtues:
To be fair, such a streak of unapologetic behavior could be taken as a negative or self-righteousness in a different context, but it's clear that Leslie is correct in all these situations (here's where the show's simplicity is a good thing). Furthermore, when she does legitimately screw up ("The Trial of Leslie Knope"), she's willing to own up to it. Leslie Knope's determination to live her morality is an earnest beacon of hope amidst TV's obsession with the anti-hero, and it's one of Parks' biggest strengths.
Making a Cake is Hard
So if Parks is less of a satire and more of a story of the triumph of one woman against all odds, why does that description still ring a bit hollow? The easiest answer to this question comes from the show's predecessor, The Office. As great as that show was, it suffered a bit from the lack of clarity around what exactly its version of Michael Scott was supposed to be. While Parks was more consistent in its characterizations, there's still enough inconsistency to poke holes in any sweeping assertion about what Leslie Knope is and what she represents.
The most obvious example of this is how the show re-invented itself in between its first two seasons. The Leslie of season one was not endearing, only semi-competent, and lacked a coherent vision of governance. And even as the show improved into its second season, it took some time for her to become Leslie f'in Knope (if you watch "Pawnee Zoo" again, you'll see how she was pretty reluctant to take up the mantle of gay rights, even though she was clearly supportive). Some of this development can be construed as the character of Leslie growing over time, but it's mostly that the creative team self-admittedly took a while to figure out what worked best about the show.
What's a little more worrisome is some of the unevenness in Leslie's character once she begins running for city council in season four. Her basis for seeking office is consistent with her primary ethos of helping people. When Bobby Newport asks why she's running, she replies "I want to improve the lives of the people I love in the greatest city in the world." This sentiment would remain her primary message for the rest of the campaign. While there is nothing inherently inconsistent about this stance, it's a pretty vague platitude for a woman who regularly creates entire binders full of project plans about much smaller matters in the parks department. Furthermore, what policy objectives we do see are often unclear and contradictory. When we see a young Leslie in her home videos from "Campaign Ad," she mentions policy specifics such as "a progressive tax on residential properties." But then one of her very first initiatives as a member of the council is to push for an extremely regressive soda tax.
To be fair, there's a couple rebuttals to this. The first is that any show that runs for seven seasons is going to inherently have inconsistencies. Time passes, the creative team adds and subtracts people, and the world itself changes. And even if none of that was true, perfect continuity should not be the most important goal of any show, especially a sitcom. This doesn't mean that over-reliance on retcons is a good thing, but they're an acceptable imperfection if the end result is that the story benefits more than it is harmed. In the case of Leslie Knope's story arc, the only significant casualty of these missteps is a little less thematic clarity, which is far from a fatal flaw.
The second rebuttal is that Parks is a show where a definitive understanding of the characters is not something it seeks to achieve, and thus should not be held to that standard. While we have a good idea of who Leslie Knope is and what she stands for, there's rarely a moment in the show where we get inside her head. We also rarely see her in a reflective state where she's not reacting to those around her. Part of this is because of how the show uses its flavor of mockumentary - rather than use the style as a confessional device for its characters (a la The Office), it's mostly a visual method to deploy its goofy sense of humor. But the main reason for this is that once again, this is not what the show is or what it wants to be. Episodes are rarely centered on personal growth and development, instead focusing on the interpersonal dynamics of its relationships and/or farcical parables about working in city government. Parks may have laid the groundwork to develop a rich set of characters, but it rarely uses that to do straightforward character study.
In Conclusion, Baked Goods are a Land of Contrasts
Thus far I've concluded that Parks is a satire but a weak one, puts Leslie on a pedestal but not really, and isn't really designed to be a incisive examination of its characters. But if I'm calling it one of the finest programs of the decade, it must be something beyond just incredibly enjoyable. So what is it? The most instructive answer to this comes from one of the series' high points, "Leslie and Ron," where the titular characters are forced to overcome a dispute of unknown origins. Over the course of the episode, we learn that Ron's anger stems from a time Leslie blew him off for lunch because she had to travel for her job. Leslie realizes she had been a bad friend and feels as ashamed as we've ever seen her. If this were merely a one-off oversight where an otherwise perfect Leslie Knope had slipped up, it would be a nice dramatic touch in a mostly comedic series. But a closer inspection of the series as a whole reveals this to be a culmination of its primary ethos - that friendship and caring for others is the most important trait of humanity, and the ultimate cause of success in our lives.
Once you start watching the show with this in mind, it's obvious that this is the unifying theme. Much like in "Leslie and Ron," the behavior that Leslie later regrets is rarely related to her work and instead almost always concerns her actions towards her friends. Whether it's when Ron usurps her for "woman of the year," the brief period where she tries to stop April and Andy's shotgun wedding, or after she forgets Jerry's birthday, it's clear that the only thing she will apologize for is when she isn't the kind of friend that she strongly expects herself to be. This is never underlined more clearly than after her fight with Ann (in the appropriately named "The Fight") when she sums up the lesson at the end: "We need to remember what's important in life: Friends, waffles, and work (...) and work is third." Leslie clearly views her vocation as an opportunity for good, but does her best not to let that overshadow her true priorities.
This brings us back to the city council campaign. When viewed through this prism, it becomes a much more simple and coherent political statement than anything previously proposed. Her friends joining her campaign simply because of what she's done for them isn't pie-in-the-sky optimism; it's just payback for what she's done for them. Her seemingly vague campaign platitudes about caring about the people of Pawnee aren't really vague at all. She's walked the walk by literally making caring about people her job, and considers elected office the next step of that journey. Caring about others isn't just important to Leslie - it's her main philosophy and guides everything she does.
So if Parks really is just a goofball show about being a good friend after all, does it still hold up as something worthy of adulation? I would answer with a resounding yes. The story of Leslie Knope offers a compelling narrative of her fundamental ideology, which is an aspect of political thought that is largely ignored by pundits. Failing to center Leslie's appeal around her policy or likability is not only not a weakness, but an affirmation that the best public servant is one that strives constantly towards their ideals. Parks is not a perfect political treatise, but it succeeds at making a case for an optimistic view of the world, and that's a good thing.
Created by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur
Currently streaming on Netflix
For a brief introduction to this countdown, click here.
Parks and Recreation is the only show in my countdown that strives to be a traditional sitcom. As such, I think of it is as the best example of the form there is. It succeeds at this not just because of sheer hilarity, but also because of how well it uses different forms of humor, and how it tweaks the mockumentary format to lay the perfect groundwork for its laughs. It creates a memorable set of characters whose comic exaggerations work largely because they reflect the personalities of the people playing them. Its well-conceived multi-episode story lines help the show (mostly) avoid the narrative traps that befall all other long running series. The extended universe of the show transforms the setting of Pawnee, Indiana into one that is equal parts identifiable and surreal. And most impressively, Parks' fundamental warmth and its focus on the primacy of interpersonal relationships gives us a more meaningful treatise on "what we owe to each other" than Schur's subsequent direct examination of the matter.
The one caveat to all this praise is that Parks is a show about politics and the government, and can't be properly evaluated without a thorough and honest examination of the message it relays about those institutions. Parks ran concurrently with a political era where we were definitively disabused of all notions that vague allusions to hope and change were enough to transform our world into something better. And the series ended just months before the subsequent era descended a golden escalator. It doesn't take an advanced degree in political science to conclude that the naivety of the former laid some groundwork for the latter. And it doesn't take a cynical mind to conclude that anything unapologetically espousing the former's worldview has little to say about the way forward. So it would be pretty easy to just show you the following picture and dismiss Parks and Recreation out of hand.
The problem with this is that such a dismissal is just as simplistic of a statement as saying "I like the show because the bacon man is funny." I'll admit up front that there are aspects of the show's politics that are undercooked and problematic, but a simple declarative appraisal of the show's worth is insufficient. This isn't the same as The West Wing, where an otherwise solid drama is clearly undermined by its devotion to a cynical and toxic political mindset. And while critiques of the characters' archetypal flaws are valid, that Ron Swanson has (inaccurately) become a poster child for libertarian weirdos does not mean that he (and the others) are devoid of nuance and worth. After all, there exist people who unironically admire obvious condemnations of toxic masculinity like Walter White and Tyler Durden, but few would dispel their artistic merit as a result. Ultimately, if you are going to engage with Parks and Recreation and its relation to our political moment, you'll need to wrestle with competing thoughts and accept that the show is more than just one thing.
The Show Has Its Cake
I hinted at this in the introduction, but it's worth stating explicitly: Any analysis of Parks and Recreation's political themes must begin with an acknowledgment that the show often behaves like a satire. Virtually every tangential character is a comical exaggeration of some aspect of American society, and even the main cast displays farcical tendencies in most political subplots. While it's clear that this treatment is intended to some degree, it's mostly the organic result of a comedy show focused on people who work in the government. If you're not going to poke fun at an easy target, what are we even doing here?
To Parks' credit, there aren't many areas of modern American governance that go unremarked upon. The unfortunate primacy of boorish corporations in our daily lives is a favorite target of the show. The Sweetums empire* rears its head multiple times, most notably when it tries to get the family failson elected to the city council. Dennis Feinstein's cologne company serves little purpose other than to serve its owner's desire for power and wealth. And the introduction of Gryzzl in the final season is a succinct commentary on how powerful tech companies will hide behind banal rhetoric while doing whatever they want. Furthermore, the characters' interactions with the media holds up a mirror to how modern iterations of TV news tend towards the sensational rather than the informative.
*Leslie in earnest after Sweetums wins the vote to take over the parks' snack bars: "You know what? We did our job. We informed the public. That's all we can do." Whatever you want to say about the show's political leanings, it's not authoritarian in the slightest.
There's plenty of other mockery as well. The elected offices of Pawnee are filled with charlatans (Dexhart), out-of-touch old-timers (Milton), and power-tripping assholes (Jamm). The series is often critical of normal bureaucracy as well - in "Summer Catalog" we see how all past directors of the parks department are cynical careerists, the library and parks departments hate each for no real reason, and meddling from higher-ups often leads to work slowdowns. And the lampooning of Ron's libertarianism is the show's sharpest knife, as it's strongly implied that he is just a man of means who wants to be left alone and has grown his simplistic views of the world out of that basic desire.
All of this serves to build a comprehensive satirical worldview, but the obvious critique is that the vast majority of this commentary is high-school debate level pablum. Virtually every one of the satirical concepts I've mentioned is expressed in a set of supporting characters that are one-dimensional beings created seemingly only to prove a point. While this approach allows the show to make simplistic condemnations of specific behavior, it doesn't really lend itself to anything beyond surface-level readings. Companies left to their own devices will use whatever power they have to enrich themselves, television news will chase the lowest common denominator, bureaucracy serves to drain the life out of government work - these may all be correct observations, but that's mostly where the show's insight ends. And lest one argue that it's asking a lot of a network sitcom to cut deeper, don't forget that the medium has a pretty rich history of doing just that. Parks' commentary may be factually sound, but it fails to incisively speak truth to power.
...But Tries to Eat It, Too
More to the point, all this critique of the show's satirical bent is rendered irrelevant when you contrast that aspect of the show with how it treats Leslie Knope as a paragon of political virtue (if you don't believe it does this, watch her final speech in "The Debate"). This isn't to say that Leslie is ever portrayed as perfect or that the show doesn't make some jokes at her expense. But none of these mild critiques of her go-getting style ever actually chip away at her relentless facade of positivity or stop her from accomplishing more and more. That might make the show sound a bit insufferable (and maybe it is!), but I would argue that this apparent veneration of Leslie Knope actually works as a compelling thematic force. The reason for this is simple - the positive effect she has on the world is grounded in a set of principles that are consistent, well-formed, and relevant to today's world.
The most notable of these themes is also the most obvious: public servants should, uh...serve the public. Whatever Leslie's faults, the show makes it clear that her undying goal is to devote herself to making her fellow citizen's lives better. As a parks department employee, Leslie spends her time on projects large (replacing the pit with a park, the Harvest Festival) and small (picking up trash, building a ballpark). In her brief stint as a councilwoman, she uses her marginal increase in power to focus on the same type of things (ie. lengthening pool hours). As part of the National Park Service, her work with Gryzzl simultaneously creates a national park (with former Sweetums land, no less) and revitalizes a downtrodden part of Pawnee. And the show ties a bow on this in the finale, when Leslie and crew work with the drunk from the pilot to repair a swing. This commitment to portraying Leslie as unabashedly committed to her duties is a refreshing reminder of what the everyday goals of government can and should be.
There's a second aspect of Leslie's behavior that is highly relevant to our post-Gamergate world: Her refusal to give in to bad-faith actors or apologize for following her convictions. This key tenet stands in direct contrast to how most people in power today respond to malevolent forces. As I re-watched portions of the show I was shocked at how consistently this was portrayed as one of Leslie's primary virtues:
- In "Pawnee Zoo," Leslie refuses to resign when religious groups condemn her for marrying two male penguins.
- In "Christmas Scandal," Leslie calls Councilman Dexhart's bluff when he claims they've been having an affair.
- During her campaign, Leslie refuses to fire Ben as her campaign manager when he punches a boorish man at one of her campaign events ("Bowling for Votes").
- And in the show's clearest display of its ethos, Leslie ends "Pie-Mary" with a rant against every gender-related issue she's encountered during Ben's campaign.
To be fair, such a streak of unapologetic behavior could be taken as a negative or self-righteousness in a different context, but it's clear that Leslie is correct in all these situations (here's where the show's simplicity is a good thing). Furthermore, when she does legitimately screw up ("The Trial of Leslie Knope"), she's willing to own up to it. Leslie Knope's determination to live her morality is an earnest beacon of hope amidst TV's obsession with the anti-hero, and it's one of Parks' biggest strengths.
Making a Cake is Hard
So if Parks is less of a satire and more of a story of the triumph of one woman against all odds, why does that description still ring a bit hollow? The easiest answer to this question comes from the show's predecessor, The Office. As great as that show was, it suffered a bit from the lack of clarity around what exactly its version of Michael Scott was supposed to be. While Parks was more consistent in its characterizations, there's still enough inconsistency to poke holes in any sweeping assertion about what Leslie Knope is and what she represents.
The most obvious example of this is how the show re-invented itself in between its first two seasons. The Leslie of season one was not endearing, only semi-competent, and lacked a coherent vision of governance. And even as the show improved into its second season, it took some time for her to become Leslie f'in Knope (if you watch "Pawnee Zoo" again, you'll see how she was pretty reluctant to take up the mantle of gay rights, even though she was clearly supportive). Some of this development can be construed as the character of Leslie growing over time, but it's mostly that the creative team self-admittedly took a while to figure out what worked best about the show.
What's a little more worrisome is some of the unevenness in Leslie's character once she begins running for city council in season four. Her basis for seeking office is consistent with her primary ethos of helping people. When Bobby Newport asks why she's running, she replies "I want to improve the lives of the people I love in the greatest city in the world." This sentiment would remain her primary message for the rest of the campaign. While there is nothing inherently inconsistent about this stance, it's a pretty vague platitude for a woman who regularly creates entire binders full of project plans about much smaller matters in the parks department. Furthermore, what policy objectives we do see are often unclear and contradictory. When we see a young Leslie in her home videos from "Campaign Ad," she mentions policy specifics such as "a progressive tax on residential properties." But then one of her very first initiatives as a member of the council is to push for an extremely regressive soda tax.
To be fair, there's a couple rebuttals to this. The first is that any show that runs for seven seasons is going to inherently have inconsistencies. Time passes, the creative team adds and subtracts people, and the world itself changes. And even if none of that was true, perfect continuity should not be the most important goal of any show, especially a sitcom. This doesn't mean that over-reliance on retcons is a good thing, but they're an acceptable imperfection if the end result is that the story benefits more than it is harmed. In the case of Leslie Knope's story arc, the only significant casualty of these missteps is a little less thematic clarity, which is far from a fatal flaw.
The second rebuttal is that Parks is a show where a definitive understanding of the characters is not something it seeks to achieve, and thus should not be held to that standard. While we have a good idea of who Leslie Knope is and what she stands for, there's rarely a moment in the show where we get inside her head. We also rarely see her in a reflective state where she's not reacting to those around her. Part of this is because of how the show uses its flavor of mockumentary - rather than use the style as a confessional device for its characters (a la The Office), it's mostly a visual method to deploy its goofy sense of humor. But the main reason for this is that once again, this is not what the show is or what it wants to be. Episodes are rarely centered on personal growth and development, instead focusing on the interpersonal dynamics of its relationships and/or farcical parables about working in city government. Parks may have laid the groundwork to develop a rich set of characters, but it rarely uses that to do straightforward character study.
In Conclusion, Baked Goods are a Land of Contrasts
Thus far I've concluded that Parks is a satire but a weak one, puts Leslie on a pedestal but not really, and isn't really designed to be a incisive examination of its characters. But if I'm calling it one of the finest programs of the decade, it must be something beyond just incredibly enjoyable. So what is it? The most instructive answer to this comes from one of the series' high points, "Leslie and Ron," where the titular characters are forced to overcome a dispute of unknown origins. Over the course of the episode, we learn that Ron's anger stems from a time Leslie blew him off for lunch because she had to travel for her job. Leslie realizes she had been a bad friend and feels as ashamed as we've ever seen her. If this were merely a one-off oversight where an otherwise perfect Leslie Knope had slipped up, it would be a nice dramatic touch in a mostly comedic series. But a closer inspection of the series as a whole reveals this to be a culmination of its primary ethos - that friendship and caring for others is the most important trait of humanity, and the ultimate cause of success in our lives.
Once you start watching the show with this in mind, it's obvious that this is the unifying theme. Much like in "Leslie and Ron," the behavior that Leslie later regrets is rarely related to her work and instead almost always concerns her actions towards her friends. Whether it's when Ron usurps her for "woman of the year," the brief period where she tries to stop April and Andy's shotgun wedding, or after she forgets Jerry's birthday, it's clear that the only thing she will apologize for is when she isn't the kind of friend that she strongly expects herself to be. This is never underlined more clearly than after her fight with Ann (in the appropriately named "The Fight") when she sums up the lesson at the end: "We need to remember what's important in life: Friends, waffles, and work (...) and work is third." Leslie clearly views her vocation as an opportunity for good, but does her best not to let that overshadow her true priorities.
This brings us back to the city council campaign. When viewed through this prism, it becomes a much more simple and coherent political statement than anything previously proposed. Her friends joining her campaign simply because of what she's done for them isn't pie-in-the-sky optimism; it's just payback for what she's done for them. Her seemingly vague campaign platitudes about caring about the people of Pawnee aren't really vague at all. She's walked the walk by literally making caring about people her job, and considers elected office the next step of that journey. Caring about others isn't just important to Leslie - it's her main philosophy and guides everything she does.
So if Parks really is just a goofball show about being a good friend after all, does it still hold up as something worthy of adulation? I would answer with a resounding yes. The story of Leslie Knope offers a compelling narrative of her fundamental ideology, which is an aspect of political thought that is largely ignored by pundits. Failing to center Leslie's appeal around her policy or likability is not only not a weakness, but an affirmation that the best public servant is one that strives constantly towards their ideals. Parks is not a perfect political treatise, but it succeeds at making a case for an optimistic view of the world, and that's a good thing.
