Parks and Rec: "Eagleton"

Season 3, Episode 12

A queasy comparison of class differences

“You’ll get a lot of job offers in your life, but you always have only one hometown.”

-Ron Swanson

This isn’t the first time we have heard about Eagleton. They have been mentioned a few other times throughout the series, and it has been made clear before this episode that Eagleton is the richer of the two cities, and that they look down on Pawnee. But this was the first time that we saw them in action, and to me it loses something in its physical presence. While it was easy to write Eagletonians off a rich haughty douchebags before tonight (and okay, that did act that way tonight as well), their presence tonight meant that the show was forced to deal with the fact that Pawnee isn’t all that great of place. All of a sudden the town’s quirks– their poverty, their obesity, their health issues, the knee jerk reaction to use trash as an avenue for revenge – all become much less funny and endearing, and far more pitiful and sad. The towns becomes far more real, not isolated in a magical, far off world, and it becomes much harder for me to laugh at Pawnee and all its faults. Can’t we just go back to the way things were? Please? I promise to forget that Eagleton even exists.

The problem to me is that the show introduces what could be an interesting issue – class disparity – and doesn’t do much with it. To be sure, the show makes sure that we find faults with/laugh at both the upper crust and lower classes of Indiana, so it’s not like the show can be accused of trying to make Pawnee look bad. And in fact, given how many warm, caring people the town in populated with, I’m sure it’s the shows position that Pawnee is the better town. But to me, bringing up the class difference and not doing anything with it only seeks to highlight the class difference even more, as it become the only thing to really focus on. And as someone who would probably hate living in the town of Pawnee in real life (it’s a little too conservative for my tastes, among other things), being reminded of how flawed this town is only helps to push me farther away.

But you know what doesn’t push me away? Leslie Knope. She’s smart. She’s strong willed. She will take down any woman who disrespects waffle. She’s awesome, and she just might be a woman after my own heart. Just look at the way she handles the new fence that Engleton builds: She decides to use it as the backdrop to Pawnee’s new baseball field. And in order to make sure they don’t bottom out their baseball budget, she manages to recruit a good number of Eagleton kids, who can go and retrieve the lost balls at anytime. Plus, this means she can stick to her suggestions that the towns work together. She finds a way out of the problem, and still maintains the moral high ground.

But what’s more, the fence provided us a door into Leslie Knope and how she operates. Season one aside, it’s kind of surprising that Leslie is still so low in the government bureaucracy, given that she is so good at her job. And the answer is simple: Leslie loves her hometown, and she would be hard pressed to leave it. Sure, she will probably one day leave the job for say a shot at the Indianapolis, but the same position in a more upscale town? In Leslie’s mind, it’s not worth it. (Of course, she’ll probably never be able to get to the capitol building unless she does make such a move, but don’t tell her that. She probably wouldn’t even believe you.) She’s not Lindsay Carlisle Shay. She’s better. She’s Leslie Fuckin’ Knope.

And one more thing that Leslie is excellent at: throwing birthday parties. It was fairly obvious early on that Leslie was essentially playing Ron the whole time, that she was always going to give him the exact birthday he would enjoy, steak and all. But that in my opinion was what made it so funny. While most other shows would have played this more straight-laces, trying to keep the final reveal a total secret, this show was most certainly aware that people would catch on, and it played to this expectation. But for those who did, well they still got to see Ron freak out – which may be my new favorite Ron mode, by the way – and they got the nice twist ending. For those of us who saw that twist coming, well it was still worth our while as the show made sure to include yet another nice character beat for Ron and Leslie.

Parks and Recreation. All things, to all people.

Quotes, Etc.:

"There are a lot of terrible things about Leslie. But the worst one is how thoughtful she can be."

“Birthdays were invented by Hallmark to sell cards.”

“Our side is a scrappy piece of land where kids go to smash light bulbs. But it’s got a lot of heart.”

“Where are my kids supposed to play, the rock quarry? There’s rocks down there.”

“I’m just going to suggest one more time that we burn it down.”

“You can take it if you want, I have many copies, and negatives. I also have a JPEG.”

“Yes, Eagleton is nicer than Pawnee, and yes because of the cupcake factory, the air always smells like vanilla.”

“Did you guys get you public forum gift bag? There’s an iPod Touch in here.”

“No, no. no Lelsie, you promised me we could through garbage everywhere.”

“Don’t you dare feed that waffle to that dog to get it to poop.”

“I doth proclaim that I am a stupid fart face.”

It’s cool, Andy forgets to put on a shirt all the time.

“Scone? They only have maple walnut.”

“I believe assault should be legal if the person is a jerk.” Amen to that, sister.