S2E20: Why is my cup so tiny?

The One In Which I Grapple With My Feelings for Tom Haverford

Hey everyone!! Sorry for the one week gap between P&R episodes — wild week we had last week, in case you haven’t heard. Hope everyone got some great SNL binging done this weekend from the sketch guide though. I haven’t yet watched this week’s SNL because I decided to do a full League of Their Own rewatch over the weekend (show, not the movie) and of course cried at the last episode several times, despite having seen it twice before already. Something about the scene where they help Jo around the bases just really gets me. And THE song when they sing it! In all fairness, the movie also makes me cry every single time I watch it. I tried to watch it on a plane recently, thinking I would be desensitized after viewing number eight. Boy was I wrong.

But enough about the best baseball movie of all time. Back to our show!

I have a confession: I’ve been avoiding this week’s post for a while now, but I can no longer get around it. It’s finally time for a Tom post.

I’ll be honest, I have incredibly mixed feelings about Tom. They seem to change at a moment’s notice. Sometimes he grinds my gears and sometimes he ‘s hilarious. Sometimes I love his crazy abbreviations for common words and sometimes I damn near have to change the channel when he says stuff like “chickie chickie parm parm.”

A large portion of the P&R fandom is equally conflicted about Tom. One initial search in the r/PandR subreddit turned over dozens of threads where users just vent about all of Tom’s worst moments. Many threads are called things like “does Tom get any better?” and “why do people hate Tom Haverford?” Scattered amongst these, there are a few uplighting “what are your favorite Tom Haverford moments?” and I found one thread that opens with:

More to come about the tiny cup!!!!

It actually almost feels rude to devote this episode to Tom, because he’s only in the B plot and the A plot is soooo good. It’s the “Summer Catalog” episode and Leslie organizes a picnic with the four most recent Parks Department directors to try and get a picture for the annual Pawnee summer catalog. The men end up being horrible old sexist creeps and Leslie leaves very disillusioned about her government forefathers. Ron reassures her that his job is ultimately hers whenever he gets promoted, so she’ll one day have a real chance to make her own impact as the head of the Parks Department, changing the legacy left by some very misogynistic old men and leaving Pawnee better than they did.

April and Andy tag along to the picnic and flirt all day long. Andy even asks April to get a drink after work and workshop lyrics for a new song he’s writing!! Little hearts are flying everywhere until they get to the bar and April gets carded, which is no bueno for our friend because it turns out she’s only 20. (I always forget at this point in the series that April was hired as an intern and is, in fact, a baby). Andy pretty immediately dips out when he hears this — which, fair enough — and April mopes around for the rest of the episode, even though the two of them end up being the cover of the summer catalog with this absolute framer of a photo:

like shut the fuck up

While all of this is happening, Tom is running the B plot. He contracts out Ann and Mark as models for summer catalog photos and runs the shoot at the local playground like he’s at Paris Fashion Week. He struggles to get a good photo of Ann despite how pretty and seemingly photogenic she is, which ultimately has more to do with her lack of chemistry with Mark than anything. I got giddily excited when I heard about Ann and Mark’s impending doom, because it spells the end of the road for my favorite wet blanket Brendenawicz.

This episode shows Tom at his most classic. The entire cold open features him hitting on women for hours in the City Hall lobby, testing out Ron’s fur hat to see if it helps him pick up dates. He swings 100 times and strikes out 100 times (guess I’m leaning into baseball analogies this week?). Then, when Leslie asks everyone to present their ideas for the summer catalog, Tom pulls out a similar pitch to what we’ll hear later in the show when he starts his company Entertainment720. Aka: some abstract backdrops of actors we don’t know, a dramatic voiceover, and ultimately, a focus on Tom.

While ridiculous, the pitch thankfully does give us one of the best exchanges of the series thus far, when Tom “accidentally” pulls up this photo of himself:

Tom: “What is that guy thinking?”

April: “Why is my cup so tiny?”

Don’t get me wrong: Tom has some really good moments. This tiny cup exchange is proof of that. Often, his very presence is essential for setting up bits and lines so ridiculous that we’re still quoting them, 15 years after the show first aired. But despite his good moments, Tom’s easily the most hatable character in the main cast and most P&R fans have trouble disentangling deeply complicated feelings about him.

For starters, there’s a lot about Tom that simply didn’t age well. He’s consistently predatory and gross towards women, which surfaces mostly prominently in his interactions with Ann. He hits on her constantly over the course of the series, makes rude comments towards Leslie, and objectifies essentially any woman he comes into contact with. Case and point: this cold open shows him trying to pick up over a dozen women in his government workplace. Literally in the City Hall hallway!

This type of humor wasn’t uncommon in the 2000s & 2010s, especially in workplace comedies. Michael Scott is a prime example of someone who talks about the women in his office in ways that are less than appropriate, and he’s a superior to all of them. Half of the script of 30 Rock is Jack Donaghy making deeply problematic comments to his staff. What flies in a workplace has evolved so much since these shows first aired that it makes a large facet of Tom’s personality deeply unpalatable.

Tom’s also a character that doesn’t really grow all that much by the end of the series. In the show’s finale, we flash forward to different moment’s in each character’s futures. Tom’s moment flashes forward to a near future where he’s written a successful book about personality types, based on the people in the Parks and Rec department. When he gives Ben and Leslie their autographed copies, they just say "best wishes, Tom Haverford”, even though he writes an effusive, lengthy dedication to Kendrick Lamar.

the tiny cup strikes again!!

I personally find Tom’s character arc (or lack thereof) incredibly disappointing. He has a million chances to show up for his friends again over the course of the show, but over and over again, he drops the ball! There are MULTIPLE instances throughout the show where Tom’s supposed to introduce someone else on stage for big speeches, and rather than talking about them, he talks about himself. He’s a bad friend, he’s a clout chaser, and he’s quite honestly just an asshole.

Exhausting as it is though, it’s important to look at Tom’s “narcissistic baller personality” as a defense mechanism (one Reddit thread used this term and I think it was perfect). He’s rarely genuine, but this is as much about him struggling to express his true feelings as it is about him even knowing what his feelings are. Think back to the episode where the whole Parks department assembles their own submissions for the mural contest. Tom tears up looking at the abstract painting an art student makes for him. He’s an emotionally repressed human being who leans into his early 2010s boy humor as an excuse to keep people at arm’s length and do whatever he wants. But while people like Ben Wyatt meaningfully grow and change over the course of the show by leaning into bonds with others around them, Tom just turns more and more into himself.

At a certain level, his unabashed, unflappable confidence is admirable. He is, at his core, a hustler and an entrepreneur. All he really wants to do is retire rich with a hot wife and ball out in a big ass mansion (that’s how Tom would say it). And the show really never lies about that! Tom is who he is, from the very first episode to the very last. Take it or leave it.

That’s also where I find it helpful to zoom out and remember exactly what Parks and Rec is: a TV show. A TV show with an ensemble cast that needed one consistently ridiculous character who could make everyone else seem sane and normal and thoughtful. Tom’s almost the show’s default foil for every single character. As crazy as Leslie might be, Tom’s a whole lot crazier. As little as April cares about her job, you can bet that Tom cares a hell of a lot less. He speaks almost exclusively in one-liners and coins some of the show’s most iconic lines and traditions, as a result (treat yo’ self, anyone?). He’s a ridiculous work of fiction that drives the show forward, whether we like him every single moment of it or not.

But Tom’s also a character in a MIKE SCHUR TV show. The whole point is they all grow and change and make each other better! He’s an essential piece of the Parks department crew, but I’m hard pressed to find how they change him by the end of the series, or how he changes them. He has his moments, sure, but on the whole, I think it’s fair to say that Tom doesn’t follow this broader Mike Schur theory of mutual improvement through the bonds of friendship. Sometimes it feels like he was just dropped in for the plot.

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If anyone here has any alternate ideas about Tom, I am ALL ears! Let me know in the comments. Like I said, I’m deeply conflicted about him and waffle back and forth. I’ll definitely be writing more about him here.

On that note, can you BELIEVE that there are only 4 episodes left in season 2????? Catch you all next week for this iconic episode: