S2E8: Government Gals, right?

My personal favorite ghost from Ron's past

Episode 8 is one of the best episodes of Parks and Rec. It introduces to the double threat of: Ron’s ex-wife, Tammy 2, and The Library.

In episode 8, Leslie learns that another government department has filed a claim on her lot (no longer a pit!) and it’s none other than the hated, reviled, horrible, obscene Library. Why exactly Leslie hates the Library is unclear, but I was listening to the Parks and Recollection podcast for this episode, and the writer Alan Yang said that they just loved the idea of giving Leslie an enemy. A nemesis. And the Library is headed up by none other than Ron’s second ex-wife.

Leslie seemingly sweet talks Tammy into giving up her claim on the lot, but it’s revealed that Tammy was just using her to get to Ron. The two reunite by fighting and then making out over coffee (Ron rips a dining table booth out of the wall, which apparently is something Nick Offerman accidentally did in real life) before speed racing to the nearest motel, stripping off pants and bras in their run from the car to the room. Leslie thinks she’s won, but realizes that Tammy has actually manipulated Ron into giving her the lot behind Leslie’s back. She talks Ron into ending things with Tammy with Leslie’s help — after MUCH toil, he manages to, but loses half his mustache and takes a pushpin to the face in the process.

It’s great, it’s awesome, it’s fun, it’s a blast, it’s raunchy. It’s perfect.

Something I was thinking about this week watching this episode was character backstory — specifically, the ways we learn about various characters’ pasts, and how weird it is when we don’t know their histories.

To start with the first point: the way we learn about backstories. I think that there are 3 main ways we can get caught up on a character’s past, organized in order from least to most disruptive to the show’s chronological flow:

1. Dropping random facts into stories. Alexis from Schitt’s Creek is a total master of this. She’s constantly referring to times she was “kidnapped by Somali pirates” or talking about her “her 3-month affair with a Saudi prince” or when “Zac Efron was obsessed with her.” We’re intrigued, we’re on the edges of our seats, but we never REALLY unpack how all of these wild wild anecdotes lead to the present moment. Creed in The Office is another perfect example here. All we know is they’re hilarious.

2. Ghost from the character’s past becoming relevant again, which then forces us to learn about our main people. This episode of Parks and Rec is a perfect example — we’ve heard mention of Tammy ex-Swanson before, but we had no true concept that Ron goes batshit crazy around her until she becomes relevant again and we literally see him lose it. Another personal fave is Addison’s ICONIC entrance in the season 1 finale of Grey’s (“you must be the woman who’s been screwing my husband”). Talk about setting the show in motion.

3. My personal fave: the flashback episode!!! I absolutely love a good flashback. I think we can actually further subsegment the flashback down into least to most disruptive flashbacks:

   1. Flashback scene — just a glimpse: The Bear does this all the time, especially in season 3, episode 1 (no spoilers). We’re watching Carmy flash in and out of the present, so we’re getting all these broken little scenes about him in Chef Terry’s restaurant, him in Copenhagen with Will Poulter, him with that mean chef whose name I don’t know. It’s jagged and disorienting, but we get pieces of the story we need to know.

   2. Flashback sequence: the most iconic example I can think of is Robin Sparkles in HIMYM and I honestly dare you to name a better one. I’m not the biggest HIMYM lover on the planet BUT I love so, so many parts of it, and Robin Sparkles is one of them. For those who aren’t caught up, we learn that Robin Scherbatzky, Ted’s love interest, had a secret past as a Canadian pop singer, Robin Sparkles. “Let’s Go to the Mall” is a bop and no one can tell me otherwise.

   3. Flashback episode: exactly what it sounds like, we’re basically in a flashback for the entire (it’s okay if there’s a bit of beginning or end fluff to set the scene). This is NOT the same as a parallel universe episode, where a character bonks her little head and wakes up wondering what could have been (i.e. Grey’s Anatomy season 8 episode 13 where Meredith wears only pink the whole time???). Best example here is Friends, “The One With The Flashback,” where we learn that all of the friends almost hooked up 3 years prior. The Friends prom flashback episode gets an honorable mention, but contrary to popular belief, it really doesn’t take up the whole episode! It’s just a long scene!

      

Keep in mind, these 3 types + subtypes don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Oftentimes, we get a character telling us about their past, and THEN a relevant ghost crops up a few seasons later, and THEN we might also get a flashback. But the writers’ stylistic choices about when and if to intro us to the characters’ pasts fascinate me.

I was thinking about all of this because yes, we see #3 play out very obviously for Ron. But there are also a few weird minutes where it’s glaringly obvious how little we know about Leslie’s past. At the beginning of the episode, when Leslie breaks the news to the rest of the team that the Library has filed a conflicting claim to the lot, she goes “okay, well we need to make contact with the Library. Does anyone know anyone there…?” and Mark goes “uh, well WE kind of do….Tammy Swanson.”

It’s this weird little minute where it becomes clear that Leslie’s on the outside of the “we” and doesn’t know the full history of Tammy Swanson, something Donna later confirms when Ron and Tammy get back together. Leslie tells Donna “I told ya so” when gloating about how she solved the problem and Donna goes “you were not here when Ron and Tammy got divorced, I was. Those two are CRAZY.”

Personally, I forget that Leslie’s ever had a life outside of the Parks department, and particularly forget that there’s a time when this gang was together and she wasn’t around. It raises so many questions. What was she up to?? How long ago did Ron and Tammy get divorced? How long have Tom and Donna worked in City Hall??

I may be forgetting because I haven’t done a proper Parks rewatch in a few years, but I don’t think we ever TRULY get a more significant glimpse into Leslie’s backstory — we never get a flashback about what she was doing in her early years in government. We do later meet queen Kristen Bell as her counterpart in the Eagleton Parks Department and ex-best friend, but that’s … kind of it? Guess I’ll find out when I get there. Hindsight is 2020, and it’s weird knowing how much of Leslie’s future we glimpse by the end of the show (Knope 2024, anyone?) that we know so little about her time pre-Parks at our moment in season 2.

Not sure about you, but I would absolutely kill for a college-aged flashback of Leslie. Are the writers taking reboot requests??

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Bests:

• Nick Offerman (Ron Swanson) and Megan Mullally (Tammy Swanson) are married in real life. The podcast I was listening to said that they often come as a “package deal” and rarely do projects without each other. They also cowrote a book (The Greatest Love Story Ever Told) and host a podcast together, In Bed with Nick and Megan. I love them.

• The cold open with Old Gus, the shoeshine, retiring is fantastic. They give him an opening to say something nice and tap out with grace and he goes “screw Pawnee and screw your damn shoes.” Pour one out, Old Gus

• Absolutely love the scene when Leslie first meets Tammy and Tammy tries to prank her about her late fees

• Totally forgot about Ron’s red post-sex shirt

• Ron: “So, you met Tammy? What’s it like to stare into the eye of Satan’s butthole?”

• One of the best sequences of the show is what everyone’s doing when Ron’s talking to Tammy in the office (insert pictures here)

• All of Ron’s graphic descriptions about his and Tammy’s sex lives and Leslie HATES it

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