Parks and Recreation - "Campaign Ad"

Season 4, Episode 12 

Even though I gave last week's episode a positive review, I've been thinking about it in the week since I've seen it, and I think I might have been a bit to complimentary. While it was both a funny episode, and one that was important to the overall plot, I'm not sure if the focus on the whole team was the best decision. In hindsight, the episode was perhaps a bit too ramshackle to fully work, and larger focus, specifically in the scene on the ice rink, made for an episode that lacked as much emotional or dramatic power of the series' best episodes. If “The Comeback Kid” focused on Leslie's campaign team, “Campaign Ad” has a much tighter focus on Leslie herself, and was stronger for it.

In the first half of the season, when we and the show were mostly concerned with Leslie's early attempt to launch a campaign, there was a (mostly unacknowledged) undercurrent of corruption, this question over whether Leslie's actions, with regards to her relationship with Ben and her use of the Parks Department, were completely on the up and up. It made for an interesting thematic addition to the show if you caught on to it, and while I'm usually all for shows that require the viewer to some of the work, I have to lament that the show didn't play this aspect up, if only to confirm that its existence was intentional.

Tonight, Leslie, and to a lesser extent the rest of her campaign team, dealt with another issue of political corruption, that of attacks ads. Now of course I'm using the term “corruption” rather loosely here – or, depending on your viewpoint, extremely tightly – since neither attack ads nor Leslie's relationship with Ben are really all that corrupt, either in relation to real world politics or even as they are presented here. But Leslie is such a wholly good person, that in context these transgressions feel like a large trespass of some sort of moral code, while also not being so large as to defy the show's internal logic. Still, I wish that there existed a connection between these two instances of “corruption”, in an attempt to show how the campaign was changing Leslie, albeit ever so slightly.

Instead, the show went a different, though dramatically equitable route, by having Leslie rise above the usual fray of politics and stay mostly on the level. Yes, the final ad that she produces is a mix between her original positive ad and Ben's attack ad, but we are still supposed to believe that she made the morally right choice. And what sells this is the build up to that moment, where we see how both teams approach their respective ads. While both processes were funny to behold – especially Leslie's aborted attempts to film hers, and the guys messing around with the narration to the attack ad – the struggle inherent to them gave the production of the final ad a sense of victory, and it became a major benchmark to the Knope campaign.

But what really makes it work is her interaction with rival Bobby Newport (played by Paul Rudd, though you wouldn't know it if you didn't watch the episode, thanks to NBC's shitty promo department), wherein she finally sees him for the entitled jackass that he is, and finally decides to get angry and aggressive in the campaign. As played by Rudd, Newport walks the fine line between charming and being completely repugnant in his stupidity, and it's to his credit that he doesn't come off as more of a villain, yet he still raises enough ire from both Leslie and the audience that their rivalry take on the air of reality. We want her to win now more than ever, and seeing her her become visibly angry as his general disinterest in the office ratchets up interest in the race that hasn't really existed so far outside of her general political ambition. So this campaign may not be corrupting her sense of morality, but it his making her more actively competitive, and only time will tell if that will bring out some deeper-seated demons.

Elsewhere, two other stories filled in the rest of the half-hour. Andy and April's trip to the hospital was the funniest story of the episode, but it's most portent quality was that it spun the two of them off into a story by themselves, as a working couple, instead of with someone else, as is the show's MO. For the first few minutes it looked as if Ann was going to be roped in, and while that would have been enjoyable, both because I like when the show comes up with new groupings, and because I would like to see that particular group chemistry at this point in the show, there was something reassuring about seeing that these two are a functional couple on their own.

Ron and Chris' time together did play into my desire to see new pairings from the show, and it played out like a larger version of their burger contest last season, letting their personalities bounce off of one another for a longer period of time. That there was a larger aspect to this – that Chris wants Ron to be the new assistant city manager – certainly holds some interest, and I'm looking forward to seeing it (you know it's going to happen), but it didn't really work here in the episode. I don't really need a reason for Chris and Ron to hang out together to enjoy a plotline with those two, but I was okay that with the fake reveal that Chris was trying to replace Ben as a friend, because it was both sweet and it seemed to play off his and Ben's time together last week. But adding a final twist just felt like too much, and I wish the show has made this a bit more streamlined.

Quotes and Other Thoughts:

So that was a large list of things that Leslie supported. You can see the whole thing here.

Nice callback to Leslie's gift to the department, with both Andy's gold record and Ron's office door closer coming into play.

“So, do you want me to sing that to Ms. Lope, or just Nesnie?”

“Hey Ann, are you still a nurse, or did they fire you because you slept with all the doctors?”

“The point is...I have a gold record.”

“And my campaign manager was Mr. Belvedere.”

“Ron Swanson. How are you?” “Present.”

“And with my head, or 'brain helmet'.”

“I once ate a Twix with the wrapper on it, and I've never seen the wrapper come out.”

“You can have Jerry.” “What?!” “Well, you wanted to go negative. Now you've got the biggest negative in the world.”

“Barack Obama said 'Yes we can', and now he's president. Ben said 'no we shouldn't', and now he's working for his girlfriend.”

“Smudge, smudge, middle finger, smudge...”

“All right, now we're just wasting time, Jerry.”

“Ann, you're beautiful and you're organized.”

“Some guy looked at my wiener – touched it – that was weird...” “That guy wasn't even a doctor.”

“Traitors! Ann, I painted your garage pink.” “I did not ask you to do that.”

“No, I'm not lonely; I have me.”

“Not like cheesy magic, like good magic.”