Leslie Knope is no Michael Scott (thank god)

A side-by-side on their love stories

Parks and Rec isn’t The Office. Even if it was initially incepted as a spinoff. The differences are a lengthy list.

Parks only runs for seven seasons to The Office’s nine, for one (The Office should have cut it at seven, let’s be real). The Office details the day-to-day of the private sector, while Parks focuses on the public. The Office focuses on the mishaps and ineptitudes of middle manager Michael Scott, while Parks follows Leslie Knope, low-level bureaucrat who dreams of a life in public service at the highest level. And she ultimately makes it, whereas I really have no idea what Michael’s doing by the end of The Office, other than living in Colorado.

But there are also many similarities: the common show runners, the mockumentary style filming, the ensemble casts, the way the shows — SNL-style — served as a launch pad for the careers of many of their now mega-famous actors.

Similarities and differences aside, season 3 episode 10 reminded me of a key difference between the two. It’s — I think — one of the best choices Parks ever made, and I think it’s one of the reasons I think the show has a real meat to it that The Office never had: it makes Leslie into a desirable little queen.

In season 3, episode 10 “Soulmates,” Leslie — who has very casually asked Ben out and been awkwardly turned down, so she thinks — signs up for an online dating website, where she gets matched with a little someone by the name of Tom N. Haverford. Unbelievably confused, she takes Tom out for lunch to try to get to know him better, only to realize that they have no interests or values in common (shocker). When she reveals that she matched with him on the 2010 version of Hinge, he starts to rib her in team meetings and in front of Ben. As revenge, Leslie asks Tom to step out of their meeting and plants one on him.

Chris spots this and gives Leslie a stern talking-to about interworkplace relationships, revealing that Ben had recently asked him about dating a coworker and Chris shut it down. Leslie, with a giddy little grin because she knows that Ben likes her and was asking about HER, gets even MORE giddy when Ben asks her to go sit up in front of the wildflower mural on the second floor of City Hall. It’s also her favorite spot, as she revealed on her Hinge profile! These two are made for each other.

I love this episode because I think of it as the real calm before the storm - it’s the last person we’ll see Leslie even entertain, however reluctantly, before she turns her full attention to Ben.

Leslie’s backstory has been realized enough by this point in the show that we understand her to be — shall we say — unlucky in love. She had a brief fling with police officer Louis CK, who moved to San Diego in early season 2 after a pretty lackluster relationship. She details a long montage of the various way she’s been dumped before in the “Indianapolis” episode earlier this season, when Ann’s been dumped so nicely by Chris that she doesn’t realize it. She slept with Mark Brendanawicz once, was hung up on it for 6 years, kissed him again later, and then he fell into the pit immediately afterwards. She has sleazy Joe from the sewage department hitting on her at the beginning of this episode. She’s not necessarily batting for 100 when it comes to dating.

But then Ben comes along and they’re both the exact same type of weird. They both really fucking love public service. They have their nerdy little jokes that only they understand. Starting basically right now in our rewatch, we watch them slowly fall in love and get together and we believe it. We believe it so much I still to this day cry at Leslie and Ben’s wedding vows!

We believe it because Parks and Rec never once made Leslie unappealing, or too ambitious, or sexless in any way. It just made it clear that her priorities were saving the world and if someone wanted to get on board with that, fantastic. By the time Ben rolls around, we’re not sitting here thinking that Leslie’s going to be alone forever. We just know that it’s going to take a seriously special person to deal with her 4 hours of sleep per night and incessant binder-making.

The Office does this differently. Michael Scott is an absolute fool, hilarious as he may be. He’s not only unlucky in love, but he’s also a chaotic mix of childish and lightly deranged. He has the sex appeal of a smelly boy pulling your hair at recess. In the iconic “Diwali” episode, he publicly proposes to his girlfriend Carol after four dates. Later, she dumps him because he’s photoshopped himself into her vacation photos with her sons. He dates (maybe marries? Who can remember) his boss Jan, who’s equally unhinged and throws a trophy at his mini flat screen TV during a dinner party.

And honestly, at no part during the show’s run am I rooting for him. He’s a totally unreasonable human being. He has his sweet moments, but in general he’s petulant and disruptive and pretty horrible to all of the people around him. He’s an overgrown manchild. I’m rooting for every single woman he dates to run the hell away, including Holly, who he ultimately ends up with.

The problem with introducing Holly in late season four is that, by this point, we’ve had so much time of just Michael being Michael that it’s hard to imagine ANYONE who can possibly deal with him. He hasn’t only been unlucky in love, but he has completely lost any and all faith I have in him to be redeemable. He’s this kind of sexless agent of chaos — I can’t imagine him with anyone at all, but I still find him hilarious.

The effect this has is that I don’t really care about Michael and Holly by the time we get around to them. I like them together. I think they’re sweet and good for each other. She’s probably the only person on the face of the fictional planet who could put up with Michael. But, gun to my head, I just don’t deeply care all that much.

Which is a huge problem, that I don’t care about the lead character in a nine (well, seven for Michael) season show’s endgame romance! Imagine not caring about Ross and Rachel, or Chandler and Monica. Maybe you didn’t like them, maybe you have opinions about whether or not they should have ended up together but … you definitely cared. Or imagine not caring about Nick and Jess in New Girl.

Sure, we have Jim and Pam in The Office to act as the show’s resident glue couple, but Michael’s the figurehead. That we don’t care who he ends up with kneecaps the show and takes away some intrinsic value that Parks just seems to nail. Simply put: Parks has a main character and a defining love story worth fighting for, and The Office doesn’t.

Parks and Rec’s decision to steer Leslie in a different direction and give her a real love story we root for by the middle of season 3 is the secret sauce of the show, in my opinion. It’s what makes me love Parks and Rec more than I love The Office, a million times over. Because I actually give a shit about Leslie’s happiness, and the thought of her not ending up with Ben makes me want to break something.

Leslie’s got her fair share of trials and tribulations in love, that’s for sure. But the writers never make her undesirable or hopeless. It would have been an easy trap to fall into: painting Leslie as the stereotype of the ambitious, career-driven woman who doesn’t have time for romance because she’s too busy saving the world. That they avoided that, while still making her not a smidge less ambitious or career-driven, is the mark of some really, really good writing. It’s the fingerprints of Amy Poehler, all over Leslie. This is a woman who literally gets her romantic happy ending on TV AND it’s heavily implied that she becomes President of the United States.

It makes Leslie into this nuanced, focused, passionate public servant with a soft, squishy, romantic little heart. And it makes me both love her and like her a whole lot more than I like Michael Scott.

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It’s a big week next week here — I have a really, really amazing surprise. Come back and you’ll see. And tell the homies: