Unhatched Observations: Parks and Recreation

As I’ve been using my love of movies and TV to explore my neurotype over the last year, much of that has been in looking at stories I already love through a new lens. As I’ve said repeatedly, so many of “my” shows have Big Neurodivergent Energy, so much so that I realized a mere Top Five would be insufficient. To that end, I recently started looking through my old posts on some of these shows, at what I wrote about them as an “unhatched” AuDHDer. And to put it mildly, a big theme is “I love everything autistic/ADHD about you,” even if I didn’t have those exact words for it.

So, I’d like to revisit some of those posts periodically through a new feature called Unhatched Observations. We’re kicking things off with Parks and Rec!

 

Favorite Characters: Leslie Knope

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.

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She puts her head for obsessively-detailed minutiae into furthering these goals, and she fights tenaciously to see those goals realized.

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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.

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Like many people, her best qualities can just as easily become her worst ones under particular circumstances. She’s very confident and take-charge, 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.

 

Favorite Characters: Ben Wyatt

While Chris is the chipper good cop ready to approve everything, Ben is the spreadsheet junkie who makes the tough calls and the hard cuts. But that doesn’t mean Ben is the heartless villain Leslie imagines, a la Ebenezer Scrooge or Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life. Rather, he’s exceedingly practical and doesn’t mince words about it—when cities are bankrupt, hard decisions have to be made, and he’s prepared to do it. 

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The man named his calculator, bless him.

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He’s not a player like Tom or a “man’s man” like Ron, but Ben is very self-assured. He knows who he is, and he doesn’t mind. So he takes it when others tease him about being nerdy or liking calzones (Pawnee is relentlessly anti-calzone.) When he gets flustered or overwhelmed, he doesn’t play it off or pretend he’s more confident than he is. He openly admits to being afraid of cops, and roller skates are a turn-on for him.

 

Relationship Spotlight: Ben Wyatt & Leslie Knope

While Leslie comes in hot, determined to crusade against Ben the evil budget-slasher that she believes is champing at the bit to fire everyone, Ben is just a guy doing his job, one who demonstrates a surprisingly-high tolerance for her manic steamroller tendencies from the jump. It isn’t long before they start to get to know each other and immediately develop a friendlier relationship.

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Leslie and Ben, delightfully, are simpatico and complementary at the same time. They’re both hardworking policy wonks with a devotion to government who pay great attention to detail. With Ben, we see that come out in his love for budget minutiae, and nothing makes Leslie happier than filling an enormous binder with every last scrap of information about a planned project. They also share a similar dorky glee for a job well done, a tendency to spiral out when they’re stressed, and a fondness for Model UN. Meanwhile, Leslie is a sunshiny dreamer who uses hyperbole like it’s going out of style and brings an Energizer-Bunny-like determination to the proceedings, while Ben thrives on logic and pragmatism, responding dryly to Leslie’s over-the-top enthusiasm.

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We see how they get along, and what’s more, we really see how they like and admire each other. Yes, they’re both physically-attractive people and that’s part of their attraction to one another (over time, we learn how much Leslie loves Ben’s butt,) but that’s never presented as the reason why they like each other. Instead, first and foremost, they like one another as people, and the love is born out of that.

Big Neurodivergent Energy Shows: 1-5

What do I mean by Big Neurodivergent Energy shows? It’s not just an abundance of ND-coded characters (in my case, autistic and/or ADHD,) although that’s definitely a factor. It’s something in the bones of the show itself. I don’t usually know why—maybe one or more of the creatives behind the camera are neurodivergent, knowingly or otherwise. But whatever the reason, something deep in the show feels so neurodivergent. It feels like home, it feels like me. I’ve loved all kinds of shows over the years, but many of these are the ones that really seep into my soul and don’t let me go.

By the way, when I first got the idea to do a Top Five post on this, I came up with seven shows. Rather than cut two of them out, at first I thought I’d just sit on it until I came up with enough for a Top Ten, because I couldn’t bear to exclude any of them. But then suddenly I had fourteen! So, this post is going to recur in new batches of five whenever I feel like it, because every show with Big Neurodivergent Energy needs to be celebrated!

For this first five, a few particular commonalities emerged: 1) People who are weird and broken are still beautiful and deserving of love. 2) Grace, kindness, and forgiveness can be extended regardless of whether someone has “earned” it. And 3) life can be harsh and small and suffocating, but we can reenvision life and try to make our own version of it. Lovely principles to stand by!

 

Doctor Who

I love, love, love that every incarnation of the Doctor feels AuDHD, but their neurodivergence looks a little different with each regeneration. From Ten’s repetition of words to Eleven’s constant stimming to Twelve’s bluntness, the Doctor demonstrates the many varied possibilities of autism and ADHD within a single character. I love that so much, and I love that, in their travels over the centuries, they’ve been able to meet so many people who appreciate those qualities in them. The Doctor is the walking, talking embodiment of the notion that life needs to be lived on your own terms rather than by any list of “rules” that you’re told you’re supposed to follow.

 

Our Flag Means Death

This is the show that helped me realize that so many of my favorite fictional couples are autistic- and/or ADHD-coded. Stede and Ed’s romance plays out in such a beautiful, unconventional, neurodivergent way, and I just love that they adore the things in one another that other people denigrate. And beyond the central pairing, the whole ship is bursting with neurodivergent swag. Just as the Revenge is a safe, welcoming place to be queer, it’s also a place that invites all sorts of minds. Everyone on the crew gets to be exactly who they are, and that makes me so happy!

 

Parks and Recreation

Leslie Knope, my AuDHD-coded queen! She’s the one steering the ship, but the whole Parks and Rec department radiates neurodivergent vibes. I love the beautifully autistic romance between Leslie and Ben, and I love that, while Ron and Leslie are so different on the surface, their minds still resonate with one another and contribute to their lovely friendship. I appreciate this show for every binder and scrapbook, every repeated meal of waffles, and every bluntly deadpan retort.

 

Pushing Daisies

I was a big fan of other shows before this—I was really into Lost and the early seasons of How I Met Your Mother, and Breaking Bad started around the same time—but Pushing Daisies is the first show that, like, consumed my soul. Everything about it just felt made for me, from the delicious wordplay to the whimsical settings to the oddball characters with their heady blend of sweetness, sadness, and sharpness. Pushing Daisies is the first show I loved that sent me racing to IMDb, not just to check out the actors, but to check out the showrunner. I thought, This is my show. I need to see more of what this mind created.

 

Ted Lasso

This is an interesting case for me. Even though it’s loaded with quirky characters, has found-family vibes coming out its ears, and I knew I loved it in my soul, its Big Neurodivergent Energy crept up on me. None of the characters struck me as autistic- and/or ADHD-coded at first (I know, right? Beard???) But then, as I was picking up on the pattern that so many shows I’ve deeply loved feel hella neurodivergent, I started wondering if any of the characters on Ted Lasso could fit into my headcanons. And as I looked, I soon realized I was hard-pressed to find one who didn’t exude neurodivergence. Roy’s flat facing, growling, and frank honesty has my heart, but I also love Ted’s people pleasing and empathy, Keeley’s tendency to abandon words when she’s excited, and Dani yelling his own name as a verbal stim. And I really like the message that everyone has their broken parts, but 1) that doesn’t mean they’re incapable of change and 2) they don’t need to “fix” themselves before being worthy of grace and love.

Neurodivergent (Headcanon) Alley: Ben Wyatt (Parks and Recreation)

I already talked about my AuDHD Leslie headcanon, so it only makes sense to talk about Ben’s autistic coding too. He has a lot of similar traits to Leslie along with a number of different ones, and the way their brains work is part of what makes them such a great couple.

When Ben is introduced at the end of season 2, he’s the matter-of-fact “bad cop” to Chris’s relentlessly cheery energy, the one who’s deep in the weeds of Pawnee’s budget spreadsheets and is prepared to tell them what they can’t afford. He’s not a miserly hardass—it doesn’t bring him joy to slash budgets and tell people no. At the same time, he’s not all that sentimental about it and doesn’t try to sugarcoat things. Instead, he sees numbers as plain and truthful, and he’d much prefer to be honest about the reality that cities are facing with their budget woes. There’s something that feels really autistic about this to me, not just Ben’s approach to the whole thing but the way other people react to him. He’s assumed to be the penny-pinching villain from the state budget office, and people assign mean motives to his value-neutral statements, thinking he gets off on their budget crises when he’s just doing his job.

Ben’s attention to detail and love of numbers/spreadsheets is something that makes him very good at his job and also brings him a lot of personal satisfaction. It’s not boring or busy work to him, and he genuinely likes it. He’s into rules in general—he loved the regulations and protocol of Model UN in high school, and when he designs a board game, it’s so fastidiously complicated that it’s only really embraced by fellow accountants.

Ben’s initial job, traveling around Indiana to help different cities with their budget issues, might seem at odds with his autistic traits, but it’s actually a good fit for him. Even though he’s constantly going somewhere new and meeting new people, the transitory nature of his work means he never has to really get invested in those people; he’s just passing through, and each city has enough commonalities with the others that they all start to feel familiar with one another. Not to mention, with Chris as his partner, Ben is often left to deal with the numbers while Chris handles more of the interpersonal aspect. If anything, becoming a more permanent fixture in Pawnee is a little harder for him, actually becoming part of the fabric of the local city government and viewing the other characters as colleagues and friends. By that point, his affection for Leslie is obvious, so it’s worth the effort for him, but it takes time for him to find his footing within the group.

Just as I’m realizing that so many of the shows I really love have Big Neurodivergent Energy, I’m also figuring out that a lot of my favorite romantic pairings involve two neurodivergent-coded characters. Like I said at the start of the post, part of what makes Ben and Leslie work so well together, as coworkers and as a couple, is the similar way their brains work. They have plenty of dissimilarities, but they’re both obsessive about policy minutiae and get genuinely excited about working through the finer points of local ordinances. Both have certain struggles and insecurities, but rather than covering them up and putting their best neurotypical-passing foot forward, they’re open and honest about what’s hard for them, what scares them, and what they don’t understand. In Ben’s case, he’s great at his work but gets really nervous under public scrutiny and can flail—his first media appearance in Pawnee is impressively disastrous. They’re not really shy about how much they like each other, and when they have a problem, they talk it through. Even if interpersonal relationships can be difficult for autistic folks, they often have fewer barriers in communicating with other autistic people, and they’re less likely to succumb to the neurotypical pitfall of letting an issue fester because both parties are pretending everything is fine. Ben and Leslie’s mutual honesty and willingness to talk about things, even when it’s awkward, makes them pretty unstoppable when they get together.