S1E1: Hi, I'm Leslie Knope from the Parks and Recreation Department
Or — a guide for belly flopping into a pool
Hey hey, welcome to season 1, episode 1 of Park It! I’m a total sucker for a good TV pilot and this one’s no exception.
There are so many iconic TV pilots — Rachel busting into Central Perk in the wedding dress, Meredith waking up on the floor of her house after sleeping with Derek, Ryan meeting Marissa Cooper at the end of her driveway while smoking a cig. But I think the Parks and Rec pilot ranks up there for one of my all time favorites.
I’ve watched Parks and Rec at least five times straight through, and it’s always been one of those shows that I tell my friends to “just get through the first season, it gets better, trust me.” The first season is rusty in so many ways. It’s only six episodes, many of the characters we grow to love are thoroughly unlovable, the jokes are rough around the edges. But on this rewatch, I’m realizing truly how perfect the pilot is as a set-up for the rest of the show. Particularly, how perfect a set-up it is for Leslie Knope.
The pilot accomplishes a lot in its tight twenty-two minutes: the cold open is bar-for-bar perfect; we meet everyone from gruff Ron Swanson to hustler Tom Haverford to background characters Jerry and Donna (who, thankfully, are only in the background for a few episodes); Ann Perkins, Leslie’s later other half, crops up at a local town hall to complain about a pit next to her house; we get a tour of the show’s set, City Hall, as Leslie guides Ann through the hallways’ gruesome murals; and Leslie decides to build a park on a decrepit lot in town, a project that will become the show’s first main arc and be Leslie’s personal “Hoover Dam.”
It’s rough around the edges and it’s cringe at moments. The Office’s type of humor is similar (no shocker there — same show runners, legendary Mike Schur and Greg Daniels) but by the end of its nine seasons, you’ve forgotten how much you cringed that first time Jim looked into the camera and made his signature ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ face. The moments of stiff awkwardness become the funniest because we understand inherently what makes the characters tick. That’s what makes Michael Scott bearable in the early seasons: the fact that we love him (however begrudgingly) by the end, so when you go back through, you know how he turns out. The Parks and Rec pilot is cringe in the same way, but watching that first episode, it’s easy to forget where we started with The Office. We don’t yet know what makes Leslie tick, so it’s painfully awkward watching her just be herself.
The pilot knows this about its type of humor, so it leans hard early on into teaching us more about Leslie Knope, the character who’s the beating heart of the show and, later, one of the most iconic sitcom characters of all time.
For long time Amy Poehler fans, Leslie’s both a character that felt entirely new for Amy and also oddly familiar at the time. I tend to think of Amy Poehler as a very physical, performance-based comedian — she’s almost the perfect contrast to Tina (Fey, obviously), whose comedy is very cerebral. Tina’s a writer first, Amy’s a performer. (Because of their legendary friendship, they’re mentally a package deal for me.)
I’ll have to restrain myself from totally nerding out about this right now (it’s only post number one, after all), but there’s this quote from Amy that I love that sums up their dichotomy perfectly. It’s from a 2003 New Yorker profile of Tina Fey, and Amy (talking about Tina) says: “‘She’s not the first girl to belly-flop into the pool at the pool party. She watches everyone else’s flops and then writes a play about it.’” Tina’s being a smart ass in the corner, and Amy’s the one putting her body on the line to entertain everyone.
We were used to this Amy for so long — the co-host of The Bronx Beat, the messy and titular character in 2008’s Baby Mama, who can’t work the baby-proofed toilet and instead squats in the sink to pee, feet and all. But Amy and Tina made headlines in late 2008 with another banger of a cold open, this time on SNL: Sarah Palin and Hillary Address the Nation. Tina played Palin and Amy played Hillary in a sketch where both politicians unite to talk about the injustices women face in the political sphere, regardless of party lines. Because of her cameos as Hillary, audiences were somewhat used to Amy playing a politician by the time Leslie was introduced, and her long tenure as the cohost of Weekend Update had made us accustomed to seeing her in a power suit. It wasn’t intentional, but seeing Amy more buttoned up on SNL laid the ground work to introduce audiences to a whole new era of Amy. Now, Amy Poehler is synonymous with Leslie Knope.
The pilot very much makes Leslie’s big dreams clear. She puts herself on a figurative Mt. Rushmore with Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi and talks about how “it’s a great time to be a woman in politics” (sure). I almost got chills with Leslie’s ending line:
“I like to tell people to get on board and buckle up, because my ride’s going to be a big one. And if you get motion sickness, put your head between your knees, because Leslie Knope’s stopping for no one.”
The pilot does a fantastic job laying out Leslie’s deeply ingrained ambition and her desire to change the world, as well as showing us how seriously she takes her small-town problems. But I think that arguably the pilot’s at its most genius when it shows us all of that sunny optimism and ambition of Leslie’s, and then shows us that she’s still a total mess. A mess who wants to be President of the United States (no spoilers), but a mess for sure.
The first of these moments is: The Fall.
When Leslie goes to visit the pit, wearing her power suit, hard hat, and heels, she tries to get down into the pit by slowly backing down the large hill versus climbing down by any other means (charting a forward path? a ladder? being slowly rappelled in by a rope? the possibilities were endless). But then she almost immediately she starts to fall backwards.
Dear reader, any marginally loose acquaintance of mine knows that my absolute favorite form of humor is videos of people falling. I can’t help it. I think I may have watched so many America’s Funniest Home Videos when I was younger that it forever broke my brain, but videos like "Girl Wears Wrong Shoes to Graduation, Falls Hard” or that tweet of a deer tripping through a playground set to that song from Risky Business seriously have me howling. Leslie’s fall into the pit is one of the most perfect moments in sitcom history.
We hear the calamity before we see it by a millisecond: Leslie gives this panicked “no” gasp while the camera’s trained on Ann and Tom, before we flash back to a shot of Leslie’s face as her arms whirl around her. We then see this entire, amazing sequence of her fully tumbling backwards down the hill, doing an upside down somersault, losing her hard hat, and barrel rolling down into the dirt at the bottom of the pit, all the while moaning and groaning, her skirt flying up around her. Ann shouts down to ask if she’s okay and she gives this one-eyed grimace and a thumbs up.
Ann plays nurse and patches her up a bit, but just to be doubly cautious, Leslie wears a makeshift neck brace (travel pillow duct-taped together) to work the next day. Ron immediately calls her out on this in a one-on-one meeting with this classic, Nick Offerman confused face: “Is that a travel pillow around your neck?” It’s seriously iconic and it shows the audience that, buttoned up as Leslie may try to be, she’s a klutz. It quite literally brings her down to earth a bit.
The second genius move of the pilot is getting Leslie hammered at the end of the show. Celebrating the formation of her subcommittee to build a park, Leslie and her coworkers pop champagne in the office. Tom immediately tells us why he loves these parties:
“Every now and then, we have one of these little gatherings, and Leslie. Gets. Plastered. One time I convinced her to try and fax someone a Fruit Roll Up, she one time made out with the water delivery guy in her office. On Halloween, she was dressed up as Batman. Not Bat Girl. Batman. And I convinced her to go stop a crime that was going on outside. And it is my favorite thing in the world.”
I absolutely love that Leslie is a sloppy drunk and I love that her coworkers love it. It transforms her from this untouchable, big-dreaming politician into someone who just wants to do some good in the world and is taking it day by day. Sure, she’s the butt of her coworkers jokes, but they love her. She’s a mess who wants to be President one day and we get to follow her every step of the way.
I had never really noticed before this rewatch how perfectly the pilot lays the ground work for Leslie’s growth over the next seven seasons. I love the fact that everything that follows happens because Ann Perkins comes to a town hall meeting to complain about a pit and Leslie decides to build a park. The pilot does a fantastic job world-building, but really makes the main narrative of the show very simple: Leslie Knope’s stopping for no one.
I’m trying to restrict myself from word vomiting sooo early onto this project, so I’m cutting myself off there. But here’s a highlight reel of some of the episode’s (other) best moments:
Aubrey Plaza’s debut as the Parks department’s college intern
Leslie, sitting on Ann’s couch nursing a “broken clavicle” after her fall in the pit, complaining about her injury. Ann says “honestly, you’re fine” and Leslie looks at the camera with a this bitch is crazy look and mutters under her breath “well honestly, my clavicle’s broken” the same way you’d sass your mom if she were to ever pull that line
Ron Swanson’s office tour and our intro to his teetotal distrust in government
Tom asking Ann out in the town hall and then, when she turns him down, totally gaslighting her by showing her his wedding ring
This is not a highlight but I was consistently reminded that Mark Brendenawicz is the absolute WOAT
Leslie asking the drunk in the slide during the cold open to “put your arms to your sides and that’ll help you slide down a little easier?”
Donna’s short hair!!!
Leslie treating City Hall like it’s Disneyland and her encyclopedic knowledge of Pawnee’s history
If you have any perfect moments from this gem of an episode that I forgot, then:
And plz:
to keep reading more of my deeply introspective, boundary-pushing, highly academic, genre-busting future posts. I can absolutely guarantee your brain will grow at least three sizes if you return.
See you next week for episode 2!
I'm in the at-least-five-times club too: P&R and 30R both have run all the way through in our house countless times. Very excited for this series!!!