Parks and Rec - "Meet 'n' Greet"

Season 4, Episode 5

The problem with Tom

“Tom won’t be down for long.”

-Leslie

How much does Parks and Rec believe in all of its characters? We know that one of the show’s main tenets is showing Leslie Knope to be a confident, competent bureaucrat, but it doesn’t tend to spread the praise around equally to its other characters. I don’t exactly mean this as a complaint – it’s sort of de jure for comedies that have a strong lead, even if they pretend to be an ensemble, to give one character more moments of pathos over the other, and the show’s usually uses the other characters to enough comedic effect that it’s generally not the noticeable.

However, it becomes a bit noticeable when the show begins to parcel these moments of pathos to anybody who isn’t Leslie. This usually involves pairing said characters up with Leslie, and apart from Ron, whose cynicism and manliness serve as a strong counter balance to Leslie’s optimism, their moments tend to feel overshadowed by her presence, or at least pale in comparison to the moments of pathos that we know her character’s capable of delivering.

Which is perhaps why Tom’s subplot in “Meet ‘n’ Greet” wasn’t as powerful as I thought it could have been. As a comedy set piece, putting Tom and Leslie, who are both optimists, but in morally opposing ways, is a great idea, and it made for a solid body of laughs. However, the story was undone in two ways. First, it was quite obvious, based on that early phone call that Tom yielded from Jean-Ralphio, that he was going all out on Leslie’s event because the business was going under. It’s something that the show has been building to for a long time, and while I’m not a fan of out-of-leftfield twists, I think Tom’s sad admission in the hot tub might have meant more if there was more of a shock to it.

Second, and more importantly, is that it’s hard for us to really feel any sympathy for Tom, for two reasons. Though Tom’s always had higher aspirations, they’ve never really been defined beyond “being famous”, and Entertainment 720 just feels like a bigger version of say, his part-ownership of The Snakehole Longue, or his peddling of Snake Juice. It’s a stretch to say that E720 is an actual “dream come true” for him, and thus it’s hard to sympathize for his loss as anything other than “yet another failed business enterprise”. Also, given how poorly he and Jean-Ralphio ran the businesses, and how much they acted like jackasses doing it, it feels as if they had this business failure coming to them, and schadenfreude never leads to satisfying pathos.

And it doesn’t help knowing that part of the reason for Tom’s failure is meta-textual, in that the writers are using this arc just so that he can eventually return to the Parks Department, which takes away even more of the emotional impact. Which is too bad, because as divisive as Aziz Ansari and his intentional jackass persona are, he played Tom’s defeated attitude just right, and had the external circumstances not gotten in the way, that would have been a spot on performance.

What I was perhaps more interested in, and wished that the episode had explored further, was the idea of Leslie embracing a darker side of herself during her campaign. The idea came to me while watching Leslie repeatedly dunk Tom’s head under water in the hot tub. While she had every right to be angry with him, and this wouldn’t seem like that big of a reaction for a normal person, Leslie is not normal. She is overbearingly sweet, and for her, this was a relatively dark way for her to release her anger on someone.

There has been some internet chatter recently on whetheror not Leslie’s recent actions mark her as a corrupt politician, and though this episode only adds to the debate, it’s not something I ever would have predicted, based on her character. However, I do think it’s an interesting angle that the show could feasibly explore, and if they’re going to do so, they need to make sure to enough aside enough time of an episode to do that, and it didn’t happen here.

That all of this ended sweetly – with Tom fixing the mistakes he made, and showing Leslie the rather uplifting ad spot he had planned on showing, and Leslie forgiving him – and while that fits perfectly well within the show’s general tone overall, here it feels like a band-aid slapped on a story that didn’t work as well as it should have.

Everything at the Halloween Party, however, was both much more solid emotionally and funnier, given that three plots took place in the same place and were allowed to intersect with one another. The main plot here, which features Ben and Andy & April again having another disagreement over boundaries in their shared living space, feels like a retread of last season’s “Jerry's Painting”, but with one important twist. Here, Andy beating up Ben until he tells him what the problem is, and April doing mean things to him, are identified as things that both of those characters does with their respective siblings. These aren’t actions of cruelty, but rather love; they see Ben almost as a sibling, and that’s a really sweet turn in their relationship. (I also like that we learned just why Ben reacts to conflict as he does, but I don’t think that’s a revelatory a moment, nor will Ben grow from this.)

Meanwhile, Ron’s busy delivering on a wedding gift for Andy and April, by fixing up their house, which has a lot of work that needs to be. That Ron would give a wedding gift seems out of character for him, even considering his hidden sweet side, but I was far more interested in him roping in Ann to help, and her learning life skills. I’ve long been interested in the show’s halting attempts to grow Ann as a character, and while I doubt this is something that will come up again, I liked watching her become more and more enthusiastic about learning at Ron’s feet.  

Quotes and Other Thoughts

Chris’ subplot with Jerry and his daughter may not have built much on what we saw in the last episode, but was worth it just for the gag of April turning the smile on Jerry’s Mr. Potato Head costume upside down.

“No blood orphans….I don’t know what that is.”

“I talk about myself constantly. People love me for. I really am amazing.”

“And after 36 years, they are still…divorced.”

“It’s always been a dream of mine to be rug, and it’s finally happening.”

“You’re beautiful…on the inside. Where you’re spirit lives.”

“You can text without looking?” “I believe it’s rude not to maintain eye contact.”

“And a flashlight…filled with jelly beans.”

“I’ve never seen you buy a salad at Sue’s salad.” “That’s because I don’t hate myself.”

“When in Pawnee and in doubt, blame salad.”

“Tom, come over here and tell Martin how great I am.”

“I don’t like to throw around the word…‘butthead’…too often. I believe if you thrown a word around too often, it loses its meaning. But I can say without hesitation that Tom is being a real dick.”

“Thanks for that. Your fingers are salty.”

“You’re lucky that Martin Kersten is here, because you’re going to need another nipple.”

“A sense of accomplishment and pride. Dammit, I just love it so much.”

“I hope you liked this story….I invented Facebook.”

“You’re angry with me, and you’re not talking about it, and I’m going to beat you up until you do. Because I’m mature.”

“Look at me…I don’t want to see your face.”

“Nice form son. Make sure to keep pressure on the cranium.”

“It’s just a fuse people, just a fuse.”

“I wanted to shock you into expressing yourself, and…Fuck, my nose is broken.”

“Hey Tom, you’re a smart guy, and charming, occasionally.”

“We just can’t use Ben’s comforter for our pillow forts.” “Aww, then what are we going to have sex on?”

“Jerry, I’ve decided to take your daughter home. And we may have intercourse.”