There are many things to love about Parks and Rec, but Leslie is first and foremost in my heart. Amy Poehler struck gold with this character, who manages to be hilarious, heartwarming, inspirational, and bonkers, often all within a single episode.
The deputy director of the Pawnee Parks and Recreation Department, Leslie takes her job very seriously. At most, she’s a slightly-bigger-than-small fish in a small pond, but that doesn’t stop her from working her butt off day in and day out for the wildly-unappreciative citizens of Pawnee. Whether it’s overseeing a crazy-making public forum, raising money for an ambitious new park project, or searching for a rogue possum spotted in the vicinity of the golf course, she consistently puts in 125%. Leslie thrives on solving crises, and she never met an issue she couldn’t tackle head-on, usually armed with a fastidiously-assembled binder on the subject and an increasingly-complex multi-point plan.
For me, Leslie is the best kind of Hufflepuff, because while she’s undeniably smart, bold, and ambitious, those are all qualities she channels into helping people. She really sees her job in the government as being one of public service, and when she eyes higher positions, it’s always with the aim of the good she can do. The parks department is an ideal place for us to meet her, because she never stops coming up with ways to make people happy and offer them places where they can come together and have fun. She puts her head for obsessively-detailed minutiae into furthering these goals, and she fights tenaciously to see those goals realized.
There are plenty of shows in which the driven career woman is shown regularly dropping the ball in her personal life, but Leslie puts just as much effort into her relationships as well (to be fair, it probably helps that nearly all the people closest to her work in the same building, many in the same office.) Among her friends/significant others, she’s known for her thoughtful gifts, her love of scrapbooking fond memories, and the irritating degree to which she believes in people and pushes them to be their best. Not to say that work never gets in the way of a relationship or vice versa, but it’s never because Leslie is consciously letting something fall by the wayside. It’s just that she cares about so much that she inevitably loses track of something or someone every now and then, if only for a short while.
I appreciate that Leslie is unabashedly feminist. When we look at strong female characters (or Strong Female Characters, which aren’t precisely the same thing,) we often look at women that kick butt physically and/or have a lot of power. Leslie isn’t in a position of power, not in the grand scheme of things, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t a leader or that she doesn’t display strength and determination in everyday ways. I like that her office features a bevy of photos of inspirational women in politics, and I love that she fosters romantic relationships in which she’s an equal partner.
And yet, for all of this, Leslie isn’t a flawless superwoman. Like many people, her best qualities can just as easily become her worst ones under particular circumstances. She’s very confident and take-change, and that means she sometimes “steamrolls” over people under the assumption that she knows what’s best. She cares deeply about what she does, but when she inflates the importance of a situation too far beyond what it warrants, the whole thing can spiral out of control and turn into an even bigger mishap. She’s honest to a fault, and she’s been known to unintentionally hinder herself in her refusal to be crafty or diplomatic. This is why she’s funny as often as she’s badass, and why both come from equally-true places within her character. It keeps her endlessly interesting and eternally rootable. I love this character to bits, and I’m glad to have had her on my TV.
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