S2E10: Bitches be crazy

Parks and Rec gets a whole new lease on life

I’m back, baby! Thank you again to my pal

Hannah

for her simply enlightened post from last week. This week’s episode is “Hunting Trip,” which features Leslie inviting herself, Ann, and Donna (and also Tom lol) on an annual hunting trip with the men of the Parks department. While they’re there, someone (Tom) accidentally shoots Ron in the back of the head. It sounds way more dramatic than it is, and in reality Ron ends up being fine, albeit a little drugged up, Scotched up, and with a shaven back of his head. Meanwhile, April and Andy are left alone in the Parks department office for the first time ever and HIT. IT. OFF. I love those two so goddamn much.

The whole impetus of the hunting trip is very much Leslie trying to break up the old boys’ club that’s hanging around the Pawnee Parks department. There’s this great scene at the end of the episode where she tries to get off the hook with a sexist park ranger (she’s taking the blame for shooting Ron to cover for Tom’s lack of a hunting license) and pulls out all of the classic reasons men always give for believing women shouldn’t hold positions of power:

“I let my emotions get the best of me.

I cared too much I guess.

I was thinking with my … lady parts.

I was walking and I felt something icky.

I thought there was gonna be chocolate.

I don’t even remember..!

I’m wearing a new, um, bra and it closes in the front so it popped open and it threw me off.

All I want to do is have babies!

Are you single?

I’m just like, going through a thing right now.

I guess when my life is incomplete I wanna shoot someone?

This would not happen if I had a penis!

What? (putting on lipgloss).

Bitches be crazy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’m good at tolerating pain, I’m bad at math, and … I’m stupid.”

Which really got me thinking - have I published a Park It post since Biden dropped out of the race and Kamala became the nominee?? I don’t think so??

It’s a whole new world out there!! We only have ONE crusty old man in the running!!! We might ACTUALLY have our first female President! Kamala’s having a Brat summer! Vibes are freakin’ great.

And it’s also a whole different world watching Parks and Rec now that Kamala’s the nominee. Before, it felt like I was watching a period piece from the archives. The whole spirit of “Yes We Can” hope felt very much from a different era, and every single day felt more like we were crossing our fingers and trudging towards November and just hoping things wouldn’t take a very very bad direction. Watching Leslie fight her sweet little heart out to make a sweet little difference in her sweet little town was equal parts hilarious and a pipe dream, with a hint of depressing. Especially considering, in the later seasons, Leslie has a crush on Mr. Joe Biden himself. This tweet said it best:

I can’t remember exact specifics, but I think I first watched Parks and Rec during or just before my freshman year of college. I coincidentally got to Berkeley in the fall of 2016, so Trump was elected just a few months later. I grew up in a pretty conservative part of southern Virginia. I knew that I definitely wasn’t conservative myself, but also didn’t have much exposure to anyone like myself, so I kind of just hovered in an apolitical state throughout high school.

My first few months at Berkeley were a shock to the system in many ways and I sleep-walked (sleptwalked?) through most of the hype leading up to November as I focused instead on joining clubs and figuring out my friends and keeping up with my heavy reading load. But being in such a charged, open-minded, liberal place like Berkeley quickly rubbed off on me (lmao literally every Southern parents’ nightmare — kid goes to Berkeley, comes back a registered Democrat. Sorry!). That election was my first time ever voting, and I remember so vividly bubbling in my little black dot for Hillary. Virginia’s always a swing state, so voting absentee really felt like I was ~ making a difference ~.

By election night, I was done sleepwalking. I watched the updates with a friend at Cafe Durant in Berkeley (only place that would take my Connecticut fake ID), sipping on some giant and objectively shitty margs. The moment that Florida turned red, every single person at the tables around us started legitimately crying, and the next day thousands and thousands of Cal students marched throughout campus in protest. You know it wouldn’t be Berkeley without a student protest. It was impossible to be tuned out in a place like this.

All that is to say, it felt particularly dark to watch Parks and Rec during those 4 years when Trump was in office. I absolutely still did, multiple times, and it didn’t lessen my love of the show at all. At one point, my friend Mikaela and I had a Knope poster hanging on the wall of our shared room:

I cropped Mikaela out this pic to spare her dignity but the broader photo is her making the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ face. Here’s a corner of her hand. Maybe she feels ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ about Knope …. big red flag …

But it was like peering at Narnia through the coats in the wardrobe. The strange little magical land of Pawnee that was rapidly losing its basis in reality. And during the Biden time, it’s been frustrating at best, rewatching this show. There’s very much the feeling amongst my generation that yes, of course, we need younger people in power, but when the hell is it going to happen? How long could we possibly have to wait?

But now! Kamala! Hello! It’s giving Parks and Rec a whole new lease on life!

I can’t help but feeling that this is how Parks and Rec was made to be watched. With this Obama-esque spirit of the future in the air, and this idea that Leslie’s aspirations for the Oval Office might actually land her there someday. (Spoiler alert: they just might.) Sincerely sincerely sincerely hoping I won’t have to make a tail-between-the-legs post come November. Talk about the ultimate womp womp. Guess I gotta get to binging between now and then while the vibes are good!

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But I would be REMISS to not talk about this amazing episode’s best moments:

• Andy giving Leslie a piggyback ride at the beginning around City Hall, and when they run into Councilman Houser, Leslie basically takes a meeting with him from Andy’s back

• Love our first glimpse at Jerry’s family, where it turns out later that his wife and daughters are the most beautiful people alive. All he ever says is “I’ve got a wife, and three BEAUTIFUL daughters at home.”

• THE MOMENT WHEN DONNA’S BENZ GETS SHOT. IS ONE OF THE BEST SCENES IN THE WHOLE SHOW.

• Hilarious rewatching April and Andy’s first interactions like in their spit take scene. April looks so smitten

• Ann and Leslie wrestling Ron after he drinks several cups of Scotch and Ann goes “Leslie, grab his mustache”