I also love Leslie Knope. It’s impossible not to if you’re in my shoes, spending now 2.5 years writing a rewatch newsletter about her and over ten years turning to her for comfort. I love her optimism, I love when she gets hammered, I love the times when she seems to short-circuit to the camera, I love her freaky little laugh. Amy once said that Leslie was the best character ever written for her, and I love Amy, so by the transitive property…it’s fate that I love Leslie.

But if we’re being honest, Leslie had to grow on me. I’m not unique in thinking that. If you’ve ever started Parks from the beginning, you’ll know that it had a rocky start. It took over ten episodes to find its footing. That’s a long time to ask viewers to be patient with you. And this was airing on cable, which was a whole different story. You had to tune in, week after week, just hoping things would start to take an uptick.

The show’s early days had many (oftentimes endearing) faults, but one of its primary struggles was Amy’s and the writers’ struggles to find Leslie’s voice. In the truncated season one, she’s a steamroller. She’s constantly the butt of her colleagues’ jokes. She’s a thorn in everyone’s side, with more enemies than allies on most days. Writers tried to pose her as a female Michael Scott: a bumbling, inept, small-town bumpkin with big dreams. That, on top of her relentless positivity and sunniness, made her downright unbearable at times.

She finds her footing later on, but she never loses this endless cheeriness. You grow used to it. It becomes endearing. Leslie’s not perfect, but she does become almost a caricature of what doing good looked like in a certain age of politics.

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But there’s really no getting around it: she can be really fucking annoying sometimes! It’s not always fun to root for the near-perfect protagonist. Think about Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Veep. She’s despicable. Every single moment of her behavior is worst than the next. And it’s an absolute blast the entire way through, even though sometimes my jaw is on the floor because of the horrible stuff she’s saying. It’s the same with Liz Lemon in 30 Rock. Liz isn’t at all horrible, but she is absolutely NOT perfect and she’s not optimistic. She’s a mess. I just watched the episode where she goes back to her high school reunion and learns she was everyone’s bully in high school. Would that ever happen to Leslie Knope? Not a chance. But do I love every minute of learning that Liz is this flawed, complex character? Absolutely.

I was reminded of this often-latent dichotomy in my feelings towards Leslie the other night, when I started the new season of Ted Lasso. I loooooved the first three seasons of Ted Lasso. I think it’s brilliant. It gave me a party level knowledge of the English Premier League and one of the best depictions of gentle masculinity since Ron Swanson. Whenever something stinks, I still say “coach, it’s poopeh” (which I said aloud in the Below Deck Med moment when Aesha finds out a guest has pooped in the shower).

Ted is endlessly optimistic. He models a certain kind of “when they go low, we go high” positivity for his team. He’s generally unruffled by criticism. He’s thoughtful, hopeful. He’s a cheery cup of tea. It’s hard to ignore his Midwestern roots when thinking about comparisons to Leslie. Ted hails from Kansas City, so embodies a lot of the Midwestern kindness that we see from Leslie as well. The similarities stop there for the most part, and I don’t really need to get into all of their differences. I care more about how it feels watching a show when someone’s just so damn cheery all of the time.

It’s exhausting. It can be polarizing. A lot of my friends actually don’t like Parks and Ted Lasso specifically because of that peppy, cheery vibe that’s laced throughout the show. Even The Office, for all of its Mike Schur-isms, has Michael Scott at the helm, who’s truly despicable half the time.

Sometimes these aren’t the shows I opt to turn on either, despite how much I love Parks very, very deeply. Especially now that I’ve discovered this thing called Bravo, sometimes I just crave some drama. Or I want to see characters screw up and be a little horrendous and not tie it up with a bow at the end!

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Glad to be back, Park It. What a summer! My suitcase has been ~ permanently ~ packed ~ since the end of June. I’m not joking, I’ve literally stopped unpacking my toiletries. But more Park It to come now that we’re through the dog days, aaaaaand I’m also launching my other project I teased back in June!

Camp Kids

Conversations all about summer camp: best memories, romances, friendships that still exist, most iconic themed costumes, and what camp means to you, however many years later.

By Bailey Dunn

Here’s a blurb about it:

That’s why I’m starting CAMP KIDS — a love letter to summer camp. We’ll talk to some amazing people about what camp has meant to them. We’ll talk about their best memories, the parts they hated the most, and how it changed their lives. We’ll do some revisits of those iconic books and movies I mentioned above, like The Parent Trap or Sleepaway Girls. I’ll chime in with some of my own camp anecdotes (my friends will groan and skip that post. They’ve heard it so much they want to rip their hair out by now).

Come subscribe - it’ll be a lot of fun :)

I’m not writing to you today with a new dispatch on Parks and Rec, even though I wish I was! Life has been crazy between work, work travel, personal travel, a new relationship (!), my reality TV kick, and my continual Pepper sagas. I just haven’t been watching as much scripted TV as I normally do.

Regardless of that, I’m so grateful to all of you for subscribing. There are over 600 (!!!!) of you here now, tuning in and sticking around even though I’ve been writing less than I want to. So THANK YOU for being here today!

At the same time, I’ve also been kind of working on a new project. As many of you know all too well, I’m a big summer camp person. It’s a very key part of my lore and something that has been very formative in my life. I think the same is true for so many fellow camp kids. I have coworkers, online friends, real-life friends, family members, and strangers on the street that I end up talking to about our mutual summer camp experiences. But there’s REALLY not enough camp discourse out there, despite how much it shaped so many of us.

I’m not totally ready to go into details about the new project yet and really ~hard launch~ the thing, but I did want to clue you all in about what I’ve been working on. I’m planning to spend vacation time noodling and planning over Aperol Spritzes, every bite of pasta to be found on the Amalfi Coast, and some fresh ass croissants. Hoping to actually be able to launch this thing before the end of July, but we shall see.

I DO know that it’ll be a love letter to summer camp. If that sounds at all interesting to you, I would love it if you’d subscribe here. You’ll get notified about my first post whenever I get my shit together:

Camp Kids

Conversations all about summer camp: best memories, romances, friendships that still exist, most iconic themed costumes, and what camp means to you, however many years later.

By Bailey Dunn

Overall though, I am NOT winding down on Park It. I love this place and I love talking about Parks and Rec. I still have two seasons left in my rewatch! Our next episode is the iconic “Women in Garbage” and I can’t wait to discuss.

So don’t go anywhere. Leslie Knope wouldn’t.

See you after draining Europe of their Aperol Spritzes, just like the Scots drained Boston of their beer!!!

For all the magic that comes from the writing itself, an equal amount comes from the place Bridesmaids occupies in the history of comedy movies.

Before we get into Bridesmaids, it’s worth remembering the era it was released in. The 90s and 2000s were very much the Judd Apatow-era of comedies: bros on a mission, oftentimes surrounded by women-as-the-perpetual-best friend or women-as-the-love-interest or women-as-side-characters. Think of Anchorman or Knocked Up or Superbad. They’re all about a group of dudes being dudes. Women weren’t the main characters. They certainly weren’t raunchy main characters. If there are women, they’re really only there as a punchline.

On top of this, Chris Hitchens’s “Why Women Aren’t Funny” 2007 article in Vanity Fair inspired a cascade of discourse. Critics on both sides argued about the role women could occupy in comedy, but — with more funny women cropping up than ever on SNL and in late night and stand-up — the article was effectively the spark that lit the powder keg. Only a year later in 2008, Vanity Fair ran a rebuttal to itself: an article called "Who says women aren't funny?" that spotlit Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, and their contemporaries. Cult-favorite 30 Rock had aired a few years and in 2009, Parks and Rec premiered. More women than ever were leading sitcoms while Kristen Wiig continued to run the show at SNL.

Enter: Bridesmaids.

Prior to Bridesmaids’ release in 2011, critics and industry execs weren’t sure that women could lead R-rated comedies at the box office. The “women aren’t funny” question did loom large, but it was more than that: the skepticism was also rooted in deep questions about whether or not women should be allowed to be raunchy at all.

Here’s where I’ll continue to nerd out. (I should say, I’m writing this all off the dome. I haven’t even consulted my notes! Senior thesis really burned this all into my brain.) Throughout all of this hemming and hawing about whether or not women were funny, two archetypes were emerging amongst female comedians: the Tina (Fey) and the Chelsea (Handler).

Defined by journalist Kaitlin Fontana in an article as the “Female Flubber” and the “Female Fuckup,” this dichotomy suggested that humor fell into one of two camps: it was either PG-rated, rooted in quippy witticisms, and all about that comics all too “horizontal life;” or it was deeply explicit, detailing the comedian’s sexcapades and intimate details of their lives. Tina Fey’s style of humor dominated SNL and later most of the NBC-verse. Chelsea Handler defined comedy for an era of women (Hannah Berner credits Chelsea as the reason she’s in comedy), but she had fewer contemporaries following her model of raunchiness. Sarah Silverman is probably the only other true A-lister in that camp. By the late ‘00s and early '10s, similar voices — think Amy Schumer — were JUST starting to emerge. The “Tinas” were much more mainstream.

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This is the era Bridesmaids was born into. To say it had a tough hill to climb is a deep understatement.

And of course it smashed ever expectation possible. It made over $306M at the box office. It featured this messy, gross, raunchy, hilarious group of women who fuck each other over and fight and ultimately become friends. Their husbands are so insignificant that we only know the name of one of them (it’s the groom, and I only know it because I won’t be forgetting the name “Dougie” anytime soon). They’re undeniably the film’s stars and its heart. They brought the humor of the “Female Fuckup” to the mainstream.

The film’s tension comes to a boiling point in the wedding shower scene (“look at that FUCKING. COOKIE.”), but its best and most unforgettable moment is undeniably the plane scene when the women are all on their way to Vegas for Lillian’s bachelorette. The jokes are so rapid fire they leave you a little breathless. I’ve already gone into detail about how I once dressed up as Stove the flight attendant (my best costume yet). Mrs Iglesias is next on my list.

The “Two Parties” episode of Parks got me thinking about the Bridesmaids plane scene. Specifically, the fact that Maya Rudolph never gets her bachelorette party in Bridesmaids. In “Two Parties,” Ben and Leslie have their bachelor / bachelorette nights. The boys have the best night ever: they go to a steak house and play football with the Colts and a club with experimental forms of alcohol. The girls’ night implodes quickly, after Councilman Jeremy Jamm last minute blows up Leslie’s plan for the lot next to Ann’s house. She spends her bachelorette party sabotaging his plan and un-sabotaging his plan, which is so very Leslie of her.

I think it’s pretty criminal that we never actually see the bachelorette party in Bridesmaids. I shudder to think about what that would have been like. Annie’s already in full crash out mode on the plane (let’s not forget the colonial woman churning butter). What would Vegas have done to her?

I like to think that everyone would have been staying at the Venetian, while Annie would opt for a lower-budget, off-Strip motel. She’d meet them for poolside clubbing, but sneak in her own alcohol (Fireball, woman after my own heart) — and get caught for it. Later, at a brief stint gambling, Helen would be cleaning house and Annie, getting jealous, would try to cheat off Helen and get kicked out of the casino. Melissa McCarthy would be running the craps table, Zach Galifianakis-in-The Hangover-style. And there would certainly be a passive aggressive dance-off on the floor of the Omni Nightclub to some Black Eyed Peas song.

I’m not the only expert on Bridesmaids here. I crowdsourced some ideas from my friends. Here’s what the group chat thinks:

If anyone here is trying to hire four deeply unqualified girls to write a Bridesmaids sequel, bang my line.

I’ve also been finding myself imagining what a Bridesmaids x Parks and Rec bachelorette party crossover would be like. I think Leslie would be a stick in the mud at the beginning, but then get into classic drunk Leslie territory (à la the pilot, the Penguin Wedding, the prairie drink off with Paula Pell, or her dance with Snakejuice) and get arrested alongside Annie. She’d constantly reassure Ann Perkins that she was her favorite Ann. But while Annie wallowed about hitting bottom, Leslie would be a stressball about this going on her permanent record. She’d team up with Melissa McCarthy’s security clearance to clear her name from official government records, call Ben, Ben would call in favors with Jen Barkley, and Jen Barkley would show up on a chopper to bring them all home. Milwaukee and Pawnee can’t be that far away!

Signed, sealed, delivered. I’d give my left arm to be on that girls’ trip.

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It’s a tale as old as time. It has given birth to the entire friends-to-lovers trope that’s so prevalent in romance novels, movies, and TV shows. It’s the plot of rom-coms like Love, Rosie; Friends with Benefits; He’s Just Not That Into You; Always Be My Maybe; Love & Basketball; Just Friends.

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It makes for great TV and film, but it’s an infuriating concept in real life for anyone who has actual platonic male friends. Sometimes a guy friend is just a guy friend. My first year out of college, I lived with two boys and my friend, Mikaela. It was like New Girl. We played obscure drinking games and had kooky neighbors and were always fixing something broken about the apartment. The way New Girl interprets this living situation is — of course — to couple up two of its main characters. Friends led the pack on this in prior sitcom years, with How I Met Your Mother following afterwards. All of them are about found family, the people you bond with in your twenties, and a big communal apartment. All of them center a (frankly incestuous) core friend group of four-to-six key figures, who all date each other in a revolving door of relationships over the show’s run.

If our apartment were a TV show, the temptation would, of course, be for two of the roommates to fall in love. I shared a Jack and Jill bathroom with my friend Jordan Golden for a year; in a movie, this would be a convenient way to have a secret romance without the other two knowing. And to be fair, I actually have friends who have fallen in love with roommates in communal apartments like this. It has been the exception rather than the rule, but the entire romance genre would have you believe otherwise.

Hate to break it to you, but the two guys I lived with are like my brothers. I can’t even begin to imagine dating either of them. There were no secret trysts, no slow burn romance, despite what the movies and shows might want us to believe is inevitable. Love you dearly but platonically, boys!

Yet another thing I love about Parks and Rec is that it turns this trope on its head in the “Ron and Diane” episode of season five. Ron, officially dating Diane, brings her as his date to an awards ceremony for woodworkers. Leslie invites herself along as well. She’s Ron’s biggest champion, both for the rocking chair he’s made and in his relationship with Diane. When Megan Mullaley reappears (thank god) as Ron’s ex, Tammy 2, Leslie quite literally throws her body in front of the problem, doing everything in her power to keep Tammy away from Ron. She wants Ron to be happy and she’s willing to do anything to make it happen. It’s easy to write this off as classic Leslie behavior, but it actually is played as sweet here.

Diane, getting visibly uncomfortable, pulls Leslie aside after Tammy’s appearance, where she confesses that the real threat to her relationship isn’t Tammy, but Leslie herself. She’s intimidated by how close Leslie and Ron are, by their casual intimacy. Diane doesn’t think that Leslie and Ron are dating or harbor secret feelings for each other, but regardless, she doesn’t feel like there’s a place for Ron to grow close to someone else, knowing how private he is. It’s a fair assumption, by my vote.

I love this episode of Parks because of how it centers the Ron and Leslie friendship dynamic. Yes, it’s true — the two of them have developed a mutual, deep respect for one another in the five seasons we’ve been watching them. It’s a genuine friendship, despite how reluctantly Ron wants to admit it and much to Leslie’s utter delight. It’s something that has snuck up on Ron and viewers.

Fifteen years after this episode of Parks aired, Nick Offerman and Amy Poehler discussed Ron and Leslie’s friendship on Good Hang last week. They actually go into detail about the fact that Ron and Leslie remain platonic and how important this is. Amy says:

“It was a great example of the different kinds of love. I mean, we really lionize romantic love, and we’d make a lot of art about it, but there’s so many different ways to love. And love — platonic love and friendship and the idea of being there for each other and going through things with each other.”

Viewers know that Ron and Leslie would never in a million years explore anything romantically, but a different show may have taken a cheap shot at this dynamic they’ve worked so hard to build. Instead, Parks and Rec takes this moment to spotlight the strength of the dynamic Ron and Leslie DO have — and show that it doesn’t need to be romantic to be threatening to Diane. Platonic intimacy is still intimacy, especially if your boyfriend doesn’t trust a single other human being on the planet.

We don’t just see this dynamic play out with Ron and Leslie, either. The show loves to explore platonic friendship in all of its forms: with Ron and April’s silent and glowering understanding of each other; with Chris and Ben’s good-cop-bad-cop memorized routine; with Tom and Donna’s opulence and innate feeling that they’re cut out for bigger things; and with, of course, Leslie and Ann’s iconic best friendship.

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For all of these friendships, the show lifts them up to be just as pivotal as the romantic relationships in the characters’ lives. The show revolves around all of them, just as much as it revolves around the core pairings of Ben-Leslie and April-Andy.

In other words, Parks and Rec takes friendship seriously — and it encourages us to do so as well.

When I first started this project back in 2024, life looked different: I was barely a year into my job at Substack, I was living in my old apartment in SF, I wasn’t yet roommate to my gal Pepper. My goal with this thing really was prioritizing time to write every week. What did it feel like to really build a weekly habit around writing? It was more about making sure my writing wheels didn’t get rusty, so to speak. The Parks and Rec of it all was more of a vehicle, a way of exploring comedy and pop culture through the lens of a show I love dearly and know like the back of my hand.

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I’ve loved the past two years, even the times that I’ve stared at a blank screen for hours, trying to force myself to get through a couple hundred words. Even on the weeks that my Parks episode was totally uninspiring, Park It has always been my favorite challenge.

It has been so creatively fulfilling for me. Even though I’ve written about a 15-year-old sitcom for the better part of two years, it has kept me sharper on what’s going on in the comedy scene, forcing me to watch shows with a more critical eye to see what I think about them. I’ve been able to write about things like SNL’s “Grind Song” and Broad City and Pitch Perfect and Veep and Sex Lives of College Girls, in addition to just Parks and Rec. Back in college, I used to start my papers for English class weeks in advance. I’m the opposite of a procrastinator (more of a teacher’s pet than anything, let’s be real). I like to turn problems over and over in my head for days at a time, really chewing on them before I dive in. And when I start writing, I work out the rest of my thoughts in real time. It’s very rare for me to show up to a page with a fully fleshed-out idea. Flexing that atrophied muscle has been fun!

Park It also tends to start way more conversations for me than I’d expect. It turns out some people actually do read this thing! And every single time they mention it to me, I’m completely amazed. I’ve been able to talk to people like Jennifer Keishin Armstrong and Jim O’Heir about this little show I love.

At the same time, you may have noticed that I’ve been showing up here at Park It a little less the past few months. While I used to stick to a weekly cadence, rain or shine, this year I’ve been a bit more lax when it comes to self-imposed deadlines. There are a million reasons for this: I unexpectedly moved apartments back in January; I’ve been traveling SO much for work, spending time in LA, Austin, South Carolina, and NYC; Pepper broke her leg, which consumed quite a lot of my mental energy; I’ve been at friends’ weddings all over North America; I’ve gotten into reality TV (Summer House! Below Deck!), which I now find myself turning on for something mindless in the same way I used to turn on a sitcom. As a result of all of this, I just… haven’t had that much mental space for Parks and Rec.

I also forgot that the show starts to lag after Leslie gets elected in the season four finale. Don’t get me wrong: I still love it very dearly. I love the Ben and Leslie marriage, I love the way we watch Ron fall in love with Diane, I love Tom’s storylines. We get introduced to some truly stellar new characters (Jeremy Jamm, for one). The show really does wrap up nicely for everyone.

But we also lose the plot at times. There’s the whole Larry/Gary/Terry/Jerry bit that I loathe. I’m not a fan of the Pawnee-Eagleton merger, even though I do love a Kristen Bell guest star moment in the episode where Eagleton reveals their bankruptcy. The whole Ron and Leslie fight in season seven breaks me in half, as does Leslie’s recall from her City Council position.

So prioritizing writing about season five, in the midst of all of my normal life shit, has also been a bit trickier.

To be fair to Parks, this is always how I get with shows that stretch for many seasons. I’m a HUUUUUGE Friday Night Lights seasons 1—3 stan, but barely remember that Michael B. Jordan is a key part of the final two seasons. I stopped watching Grey’s Anatomy after Derek died. I only remember the ending of Veep because I can’t even fuckin’ BELIEVE she would do that to Gary.

Clocking in at seven seasons, Parks and Rec learned a few lessons from its predecessor, The Office, which ran for nine seasons, including two controversial final ones that went on after Steve Carell’s departure from the show. Amy has talked before about how Mike Schur called her the summer before they started filming season seven of Parks to tell her it would be the show’s last. He pitched the idea for a thirteen-episode run and a time skip, culminating in an absolute banger of a series finale. Amy immediately got on board, preferring to go out on their own terms versus stretching the show out longer. It was absolutely the right call. The show has said all it needs to say by season seven. It probably could have wrapped with five or six. But it takes a while to hit its stride, so part of me does think that if it wrapped any sooner we’d feel shortchanged.

Season five of Parks has made me reflect on how I feel about miniseries versus a network show’s traditional run. Streaming has obviously changed the game for all TV. The norm now is eight-to-ten-episode seasons with multiple years in between each one. Some shows drop all episodes at once, some come out weekly like network releases. Only a handful of modern sitcoms (Abbott Elementary being one of them) use the traditional model of 22-minute episodes released weekly on a network.

This has resulted in many fewer hours with our favorite shows, but I actually do think it’s prevented the fatigue that many network shows seemed to hit, right around the fourth or fifth season. The writers’ rooms know how the arc of an entire season will play out, even though they’re usually only guaranteed one season at a time. They only have to fit those plots into five to ten hours of TV. They don’t face the same pressure as the Parks writers, who were sometimes genuinely concerned their show would be cut mid-season. It results in tighter storylines, more cohesive narratives, a faster pace towards the grand finale.

Even though I’m writing a Substack about one of the most iconic network sitcoms of all time, this rewatch has made me wonder if I prefer the streaming model, more and more. I think I’d rather leave a show wanting more than get lost in the sauce and limp my way to the ending. Take Hacks, which is releasing its fifth and final season this week. I’m heartbroken for it to finish, but it’s undoubtedly the right call. There are only so many more ways we can see the Ava and Deborah dynamic play out. It’s better to leave them on a high than stretch the story beyond its boundaries or what’s realistic for each character. Do I wish I had more of it? Absolutely. But do I think that would make it a better show? Absolutely not.

The obvious exception here is shows that are canceled before their time. A League of Their Own with Abbi Jacobson was one of the hardest hitters (no pun intended). Only eight episodes of TV and a cult favorite, it was canceled after just one season. It was a perfect season, but still! That’s barely enough time for the characters to come into their own, much less evolve before our own eyes.

I think three to five seasons are a sweet spot. It’s enough time for us to get to know the characters, but not so much that we start to know them better than we know ourselves. This is how I feel with Parks sometimes. I can almost anticipate what Leslie or April will say before they say it. It’s comforting, to a certain extent; it’s like talking to old friends. But after a handful of seasons, they stop surprising you. With something like Hacks, I feel like I never know the characters’ next moves.

What’s next for Park It, you may be wondering? First of all, this is NOT to say that we’re stopping this thing! I looove this project and I love this show. The whole world of Pawnee is so comfortable to me, I miss it when I’m away for too long. And even though season five isn’t my fave of all time, there are some banger episodes. Leslie and Ben still have to get married. Tom has to start (and later sell) Rent-A-Swag. Leslie has to get recalled from her city council office. There’s so much more for us to discuss.

But I might be writing here more so when I feel inspired about a particular episode versus showing up every single week for every single episode. Maybe we’ll hit the best episodes only. Maybe I’ll just riff on my thoughts about whatever I’m watching at the moment. Maybe we’ll have more conversations with authors I love. I don’t really know! I’m figuring this out as I go.

I also have a few other projects cooking that I’m excited about, separate from Park It — there’s one about summer camp that I’ve been working on for far too long. I’m a camp kid, if you didn’t know. I’ll talk about that project more soon when I come up for air, but I’m pretty stoked about it.

In the meantime, though, I’ll still be here, writing about Parks and Hannah Montana and my pets and SNL. Thanks for showing up and thanks for sticking around. Cheers to another year, Park It!

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I vividly remember where I was the first time Hannah Montana debuted on Disney Channel, twenty years ago. I had just turned eight. I was four feet tall at best. The bowl cut I sported through second grade had finally grown out into a cute, shoulder-length lob. I had recently been getting more into the whole Disney Channel and rom-com scene. I watched High School Musical, The Princess Diaries, A Cinderella Story, and The Lizzie McGuire Movie on repeat. But I was more of a book than a TV culture gal, staying up late to obsessively read all of the newest Harry Potter books. I wasn’t really a diehard fan girl for pop culture just yet.

Hannah Montana was my first experience as a true fangirl. From the very first episode, when she opens with “This Is The Life” and later rubs Corbin Bleu’s hands with ketchup, I was obsessed. I sat down religiously, every single week to watch the newest episodes. I knew all of the songs, beat for beat. I’d bossily correct my friends if they got any lyrics wrong. I’d scream sing “Best of Both Worlds” in the shower, much to my little brother’s annoyance.

I was a dedicated member of Miley World and soon founded my own local Hannah Montana fan club. There were a whopping three of us in it, including me. I was the self-elected president, secretary, and co-founder. We wrote out Ten Commandments for the club (I grew up religious, sue me) in a silver notebook emblazoned with “HANNAH MONTANA” in bedazzled letters on the front. The First Commandment was “you must worship Hannah Montana.” And worship Hannah Montana I did.

So many moments from the show are burned into my brain, even twenty years later: Cheese Jerky; “it’s a ficus!”; the zombie princess episode where she almost kisses Jake Ryan; the Bone Dance!!!!!; the moment she tells Jake she’s Hannah Montana and he responds that his real name is Leslie; Lilly skateboarding into her house in that first episode; the Jesse McCartney cameo; Brooke Shields as her mom; literally anything to do with Dolly Parton; “Daddy, if you write any more songs about me living a double life, you might as well tattoo ‘I’M REALLY MILEY STEWART’ across my forehead”; that time Robby Ray dates Lilly’s mom; the one where she meets Queen Elizabeth; Lofa Luftnangle and Mike Standley; Blue Jeans!!; and the episode where she tells the world her true identity while “I’ll Always Remember You” plays (never fails to make me sob).

The next year, my parents got me the best gift in the world for Christmas: tickets for me and my friends to see Hannah Montana in concert. It was for her “Hannah Montana 2” tour, which featured one CD with Hannah songs and one CD with Miley Cyrus classics, like “See You Again” and “East Northumberland High.” It would be my first-ever concert. My friends and I got matching shirts from Walmart and piled into my mom’s Suburban to make the two-hour trek to Greensboro, North Carolina. The Jonas Brothers, as the openers, descended on a platform from the ceiling, playing “Year 3000” on their electric guitars. The crowd went wild as they did Disney Knees on stage in their black-and-white checkered skinny jeans.

When Hannah Montana finally emerged from under the stage in a glittering, silver dress, opening the show with “Nobody’s Perfect,” I literally felt like I could explode with excitement. She was my idol. Halfway through the show, she disappeared, and re-emerged as Miley Cyrus to sing the second half of the album. I remember almost every moment of that night. The only concert that’s come close to making me feel the same way was the Eras Tour.

And now, twenty years later, Miley has given us the gift of a lifetime. Not only with the twentieth anniversary special, but with her general approach to honoring her time as Hannah. I watched the special on Tuesday night, staying up late after a few martinis with coworkers. I made it through the first thirty minutes alright, but by the time the opening notes of “This Is The Life” came on, I was a crying mess. When she closed with her new song “Younger You,” I was genuinely concerned my coworker in the next room over would hear me sobbing.

The special wasn’t perfect. It needed to have more of the original castmates involved. The Chappell Roan cameo wasn’t necessary, and I wanted Selena to hang out for three times as long. It was equal parts nostalgic and cringe seeing her lean back into the cheesy, gaudy punchline humor from the original series (I rolled my eyes when she made a “get the tea kettle” joke).

But it was fun and emotional. It felt very true to the original series. I loved all of the Tish content. The songs were outstanding and seeing her blonde, banged Hannah Montana hair was like seeing a ghost.

The ability to step back in time, to live so viscerally in my eight-year-old skin again, isn’t something I ever thought I’d have. Ten or so years ago, in the height of the Bangerz era, Miley wrote: “Even though HM is chopped up into little tiny pieces and buried in my backyard, she will always hold a very special place in my heart!”

Welp, I remember thinking that’s it for my childhood! She’s just going to shit all over it! I think a lot of us who were fans at the time made peace with the idea that we might never have such a pivotal moment in our lives honored in the way it deserved.

Miley and Taylor Swift are the two artists who have been with me the longest in my life. I remember my first experience listening to them vividly, twenty years ago. I’ve grown up with them and their music has evolved as they’ve grown too.

Taylor’s always been someone who honors those early albums, even though she’ll sometimes poke good-spirited fun at how young she was when writing “Teardrops On My Guitar” or “Fearless.” I had a similar experience of re-embracing my childhood self when she started her album re-record project in 2021. The Eras Tour was basically the ultimate celebration of embracing all of your various ages.

But in 2006, I didn’t love Taylor in the same way I loved Miley. My love for Taylor has been a constant, something that’s always humming in the background of those early memories, but it’s a thing that’s grown over the years, as we’ve both gotten more mature and our tastes have changed. Her eras haven’t been so wildly, thematically different, so much as they’ve been about her experimenting with various genres and positioning herself strategically in her career. She’s probably the artist that has meant the most to me in my adult years, and through the re-records and Eras Tour, I’ve discovered old albums and songs I missed the first time around, that make more sense to me at 28 than when I was 12, 16, or 18.

Miley, on the other hand, has been all over the place when it comes to her eras. Endless Summer Vacation is so different from Bangerz, which is so different from Breakout and Plastic Hearts. There’s truly no need to even discuss the Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz era. And yet I loved Miley so intensely in those early years, it was like she was a real person I knew in my life. I don’t find myself playing her music every single day of my life the way I’ll always turn on Taylor’s, but I still have this sense of unwavering loyalty to her — almost like you’d have those friends you made in elementary school and have lost touch with over the years.

And to have this Miley again, who’s so much older and wiser and embracing her Hannah days with so much love — it’s something I can’t believe we’re lucky enough to get right now. It feels a bit like a fever dream, but really it’s more like a time capsule. Every single time I hear those opening lines to “Best of Both Worlds” — whether it’s in the show’s very first episode or in the anniversary special — I’m a fangirl again for the very first time, learning to love pop culture and music the same way I loved books.

Millions of other girls of my generation are feeling the exact same way right now. You should see how basically every group chat I have is blowing up. Hannah has meant so much to us, and we finally have her back.

I’ve been thinking a lot about pets this week. In season five, episode seven of Parks, April and Leslie butt heads for the first time ever over a dog park. April wants to build a dog park on the spare lot behind Ann’s house. Leslie’s all for April getting more involved, but has always considered Lot 48 hers. It’s what initially brought Ann into her life and kickstarted this whole rigamarole, after all. Leslie — realizing it’s the first time April’s been passionate about anything — ultimately concedes the lot to her, after a lot of grappling with her own stubbornness and a reality check with Ron.

I really love the slowburn plot of April’s love for animals on Parks. Champion is the one who really opens this up for her, the dog park is step two, and ultimately she applies to — and is accepted by — a vet school in season six. She ultimately turns it down, but knowing that prickly, scary April Ludgate has a soft spot for animals really adds to her character development.

I’m also thinking a lot about pets this week because my little Miss Pep unfortunately just had leg surgery :/ She took a tumble, somehow fractured her leg, and is now on crate rest for EIGHT WEEKS. And she has to wear a cone. It’s criminal. I don’t know who’s more miserable, me or her. Here she is currently, sedated as hell:

I’ve always been a pet person. My family has had pets for as long as I can remember. My first dog was a black cocker spaniel named Alex, whom my mom adopted in her early 20s. I don’t remember her much, but there are photos of me as a baby, snuggled up into Alex’s side.

Then came a golden retriever named Tucker. My dad used to have this amazing baseball card collection and one day just gave the whole thing (this was pre-eBay!! I think this man could have been rich) to a kid on the Little League team he coached. As a thank you, the kid showed up to our house a week later with his parents. They opened the back door of their truck and a 10-week-old golden retriever puppy popped out!!! He was solid white and bouncing off the walls. Like literally, the best day of my little life.

My grandmother, Meme, lived about twenty minutes out into the country from my small town, in this dilapidated old farmhouse on a couple acres of woods and lawn. One of the best parts of the house was the cats. There were a handful of half-feral, half-domesticated cats running around the property. They’d have kittens a few times a year; my brother and I would always go searching for the newest litter. Once we found them, we wouldn’t move them or visit too often, careful not to make enemies with the mom cat in case she moved the little. We’d admire them from afar and wait until they were old enough to venture out on their own.

Campbell and I were the oldest cousins, so we always claimed first dibs on naming the cats. We had names like Fireball and Dorothy and Smokey and Lucky (sensible names). But one year, my younger cousin Andrew pitched a fit about wanting to name the cats, so we were forced to give him naming rights on one litter. He was going through a superhero phase, so he named them all things like Batkitty, Superkitty, Spiderkitty, Aquakitty, Wonderkitty, etc. He lost naming rights immediately and forever.

We also had cats at our house, easily four or five. I only remember a few of them, but I called one Stripes. He looked so much like Pepper. He became the only pet to make the move from our small town in southern Virginia to Richmond in ‘08. We once lost him in the woods for a month, where he turned feral and somehow contracted feline AIDS (the number one killer of domestic cats, according to my gal Debbie Downer). We found him, re-domesticated him, and brought him with us. He weighed at least twenty-five pounds and in the last year of his life, started to pee in my dad’s shoes.

Stripes was the last of our cats. Once he died, my parents decided we were firmly Dog People. In high school, we adopted Charlie, a bulldog-basset hound mix. If you’ve never seen a bulldog basset hound, they literally look like exactly what you’re picturing. She has long, droopy ears and wrinkly skin, but is short and squatty like a bulldog. She grunts constantly like a little pig. I love her dearly.

My parents and I went to pick her up as a birthday surprise for my brother. We weren’t even sure which dog we wanted going into it, but my dad and I beat my mom to the adoption center, and by the time she pulled up, we were holding this little wrinkly potato in our arms that we didn’t put down until we got home. She was soooooo wrinkly for a while. Now she’s a grumpy little munchkin who’s giving more and more curmudgeon energy by the day.

And then in college, my parents adopted Rhys, a St. Bernard who grew to be 180 pounds. He’s the size of a small horse. I can’t walk him because he’d actually just walk me. One time he tried to sit in my dad’s lap and accidentally broke three of his ribs. I love everything about him except for his slobber. It’s absolutely horrendous. But he’s the sweetest dog we’ve ever had. He’s a big, goofy gentle giant who’s dopey as hell.

In my early 20s, my roommate adopted a mini goldendoodle named Indy. To this day, she is one of the cutest dogs I’ve ever seen. She’s very wise, a little bit of a rascal, and has human eyes. She’s attended many a party we’ve thrown and is always the star of the show. I loved living with Indy and love her to this day, but I didn’t totally get what being an actual pet owner meant then. She wasn’t my responsibility in any sense. I had more fun-aunt responsibilities.

Despite all of this extensive pet experience, having Pepper is the first time I’ve ever had a pet that’s just my own. There’s always been someone else to share the load of feeding or keeping an eye out for the pet. I decided a few years ago that I wanted a cat — it sounded so fun to have a little buddy by my side.

And it has been so much fun. I knew I’d love her because I’ve loved all of our other pets, but I didn’t know I’d love her this much. I think about her all the time. I’ve become one of those people who shows their friends near-daily photos of my cat. I have to lint-roll my whole outfit before I leave the house and I don’t mind it one bit.

It has also been stressful! When she hurt her leg last week, I was 3,000 miles away at a wedding in South Carolina. It was absolutely horrible, knowing that this little baby nugget of mine was hurt and I couldn’t be there for her. My cousin is a saint and handled all of it, but it was really eye-opening about how much she means to me. How can twelve pounds of this snuggly little kitten occupy so much mental real estate??

Pets are amazing and they’re stressful. They’re these joyful little things that make your life so much better. Sometimes they’re seriously expensive and anxiety-inducing. Like, I can’t ever go on a trip again without wondering about who’s going to watch Pepper. Which can be a bit overwhelming, to not just be able to pick up and go anywhere for longer than two days.

But every single night she slips under the covers beside me, snuggles right up to my side, and starts purring away — and I totally forget about all of it.

As a result, I’ve also long loved depictions of therapy in TV and movies. Therapy’s obviously only become more mainstream and less stigmatized in recent years, so more dated movies and shows tend to play therapy as the butt of the joke. Think about the absolutely iconic “couples therapy” scene in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, when Kate Hudson asks her friend Kathryn Hahn to pose as a therapist for Kate and Matthew McConaughey. Like, I might need to be her for Halloween:

But in more recent years, therapy’s been handled more delicately in movies and shows, less for comedy and more as a genuine plot point in someone’s journey.

The best example is Shrinking, Apple TV’s dramedy starring Jason Segel. Centering on a group of LA-based therapists, Shrinking shows us the good, bad, and ugly of what it’s like when therapy is your whole world. Jason Segel’s character is in a deep hole after the death of his wife in a car accident and loses himself in partying, only to ultimately find his way back through his patients. It’s a great, seriously heartwarming show — even though sometimes it’s too earnest for even my little tender heart.

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Best of all, it takes therapy incredibly seriously. It shows us all different flavors and styles of therapists — from Harrison Ford’s rigid, psychosomatic approach, to Jessica Williams’ emotionally honest and action-oriented style, to Jason Segel’s “fuck it, let’s try” approach he ultimately lands on. The therapists are never caricatures. They’re as complex and imperfect as their patients. They actually go to therapy themselves. When the therapy is played for laughs, we feel like we’re in on the joke. There’s no finger-pointing, no sense that they’re punching down.

Looking at Shrinking in comparison to Sex and the City, it’s a world of difference. Carrie goes to therapy in an episode of SATC at the urging of Stanford, who talks about how he sees multiple therapists depending on what type of care he needs (“I have three. One for when I want to be coddled, one for when I want tough love, and one for when I just wanna look at a really beautiful man”).

Carrie, fresh off a breakup with Big, finds a therapist because her friends think it’ll fix her Big obsession. She goes to a session or two but spars with her therapist, who suggests that she continually chooses unavailable men and that’s why her relationships fail. Which like … Dr. G isn’t wrong, but I feeeeeeeel like she could’ve had a lighter touch?

Carrie’s losing steam with therapy but runs into a cute guy (played by Jon Bon Jovi) in the waiting room one day before her appointment. They start dating, hook up, and he immediately loses interest. She fully quits therapy to avoid running into him in the waiting room.

Therapy in Sex and the City is a fleeting plotline. It’s presented as something chic (“in Manhattan, a therapist was as ubiquitous as pirated cable”), an exclusive club with its own cast of characters, gatekeepers, and legends. And it’s ultimately just a plot device in service of her meeting her flavor of the week, one of those faceless men between Big and Aidan and Burger whom I instantly forget about. None of the characters in the show ever go to therapy again. Filmed nearly thirty years before Shrinking, the nineties may as well have been centuries before the 2020s when it comes to mental health. The therapy matches the times, but it’s honestly a little hard to watch nowadays!

Parks and Rec straddles the line between these two in how it handles therapy. It doesn’t quite play it entirely for laughs like How to Lose a Guy or SATC, but it doesn’t handle it with the total care we get from Shrinking — or even a Ted Lasso — either.

We really encounter therapy in Parks through Chris Traeger. Chris spends the “Ben’s Parents" episode of season five going through a series of spirals about his future. Despite being in the best shape of his life, he realizes that he stays active because he’s running from his own loneliness. Ann tries to enlist April and Andy to cheer him up, but nothing works. He’s heartbroken, in his 40s, thinking he has another century of life left, and freakin’ the hell out about facing it alone. In other words: he’s crashing out, big time.

In the prior episode where Ben and Leslie get engaged, Chris introduces his therapist, Dr. Richard Nygard. Dr. Richard Nygard becomes a crucial recurring character over the rest of the show, something like an urban legend lurking in the background of the plot. It’s actually so fitting that we never meet Dr. Nygard. I’ll never meet any of my friends’ therapists, but I know all of their first names, their therapy styles, and the crazy shit they said last week. It’s the same with Dr. Nygard; it makes him feel familiar.

He helps Chris through most of season five and six in managing his depression. Chris grows so attached to therapy as a whole that he starts seeing him five times a week. Which: happy for him, but it’s also kinda giving this guy from Freaky Friday:

Parks is a sillier sitcom than Shrinking, for sure, so Chris’s crash-out is still ultimately written as comedy. There are eye rolls from other characters about Chris’s heartbreak, jokes from April and Andy, a talking head or two from Ann. But it’s not played just for laughs. We’ve grown to know and love Chris enough as this bright, bubbly human that seeing him down hurts. We care about him and want to see him succeed — especially in therapy.

There’s this undercurrent of earnestness throughout his journey, as there is with anything in Parks. Dr. Richard Nygard becomes a recurring bit, but also someone who genuinely helps this beloved character get to a better place. If that’s not tender, I don’t know what is!

Anyone know if Dr. Nygard is taking referrals?

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Thank god, because it’s a biiiiiiig week over here on Park It: Leslie and Ben are engaged!

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Part of me wants to say it’s a long time coming, but I actually think their engagement happens … a little fast for TV? They’ve been in the flirt factory since way back in season three, but they broke up at the start of Leslie’s campaign and got back together in season four’s iconic “The Smallest Park.” We’re on season five, episode five this week, so that’s under a season to go from DTR to engaged. It’s no April and Andy timeline, but it’s accelerated.

But as the old romantics say, “when you know, you know!” Ben really knows. He gets a job offer from our old pal Jen Barkley to work on another campaign, this time out of Florida. Back in Pawnee, Leslie’s just put down a deposit on a house for her and Ben. She’s understandably disappointed when Ben breaks the news, but is supportive of his career, as always. Later, when Jen gives Ben the ominous advice to “think about his future” (meaning, she wants him to take the job), he interprets that differently. He hops on a plane from Florida back to Pawnee, intercepting Leslie right as she’s putting their house back on the market. She finds him on one knee, in a suit, biting back tears and holding the largest ring box I’ve ever seen in his hands. (The first time I saw this ep I thought it was a bracelet and we were getting punk’d).

Ben’s proposal to Leslie is perfect. It’s TV writing genius, an excellent celebration of their love story thus far. How fitting that I watched this episode right in time for Valentine’s Day! So this week on Park It, I want to celebrate some of my other favorite iconic proposals from movies and TV:

1. I’d be remiss to not mention THEEEEEEE Proposal. I recently rewatched the Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds classic, and every minute of it holds up. It’s kind of an elevated Hallmark movie when you think about it. Big city publishing exec with a chip on her shoulder takes a trip back home with a country boy who’s been gone too long, but has duties to take over his family business. One thing leads to another and dot dot dot. Whenever I think of the actual proposal scene from this movie, I think of two things: Sandra on two knees outside the immigration office proposing to Ryan, and Ryan at the end saying “marry me, Margaret. Because I’d like to date you” while the whole office looks on. So good. Also hello baby Malin Ackerman and rip Betty White.

   

2. The scene from Set It Up with the blonde roommate and her very generic-looking boyfriend. He proposes in her tiny apartment bedroom, claiming he has to “get a glass of water” so he can sneak out of the living room to … set it up (sorry). I think this is a semi-psychotic move. Imagine you’ve just gotten home, peeled your shoes off after a long day, and someone drops to a knee on your Wayfair rug. AFTER you just had the most romantic dinner ever. Bit of a crazy proposal, but I’m giving it props because it’s the catalyst for some major events of the rest of the movie. Namely, the rooftop engagement party scene where Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell have big sparks fly. And I really love this movie.

3. The Grey’s Anatomy elevator scene where Derek proposes to Meredith. Look, neither Meredith nor Derek are in my Mount Rushmore of favorite characters, but after my recent Grey’s rewatch, I was reminded of just how insane their chemistry is. I looooved Patrick Dempsey when he was prime McDreamy mode (to this day, my friend Lane and I still have each others’ phone contacts saved as “McDreamy” and “McSteamy”). The moment when the elevator doors ding open and Derek’s standing there, clean shaven, with all of his brain scans hanging around him from their surgical trial … and then he says, “I’m not gonna get down on one knee. I’m not gonna ask a question. I love you, Meredith Grey, and I wanna spend the rest of my life with you.” I MEAN this is iconic TV people!!!

   

4. Sweet Home Alabama. I love this movie so much! I love Patrick Dempsey as the other guy, I love their thick Southern accents, I love the town fair scene when Reese is wearing a really excellent joutfit (the modern rebrand of the Canadian Tuxedo). And I love the scene at the end when Reese chases Jake onto the beach in the middle of the thunderstorm to re-propose to him. They’re already married, it’s a long story, but it’s peak early 2000s rom-com energy.

5. Patrick’s mid-hike proposal to David in Schitt’s Creek. This moment’s actually a bit of a Ben and Leslie homage. David’s turned away, complaining about the hike, and when he turns back around Patrick’s down on one knee. We all know I’m a sucker for a sappy sweet sitcom moment, so Patrick’s speech about how he used to hike up there to make sense of his feelings for David got me real real good. And I can’t even think about Schitt’s Creek without thinking about Catherine O’Hara!!!

   

In honor of Gal/Valentine’s Days, I’ll just say it: I love watching love on the big and small screens! I love all of these stories and most are deeply imprinted into my brain — but I love Ben and Leslie the most. Let’s get these fools married.

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Season five, episode four of Parks revolves around sex. Specifically, Leslie and Ann trying to educate the senior citizens of Pawnee about sex education after an STD outbreak among local nursing homes. Ann has talked about sex before on the show in the episode where all of the men of city hall start asking her to check them for mumps, but Leslie’s been strictly PG for as long as we’ve known her.

Reading back on my thesis, I wouldn’t say I had much of an argument to the whole thing. This isn’t super shocking to anyone who knows me well. In college, I was always turning in papers that were more observational than argumentative. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s debating. You want to spar back and forth about whether or not we like Wuthering Heights? I’m not your gal. In the words of Bobby Newport, “I guess my thoughts are: let’s all just have a good time.”

My thesis didn’t really articulate a point so much as it presented a comprehensive history of the modern “femoir,” a term coined in 2012 by journalist Kaitlin Fontana when describing the celebrity memoir boom of the past thirty years. If we’re being honest, it was really just an excuse for me to spend the year reading memoirs by funny women and watching Bridesmaids so I could have a “perspective on women in comedy” (god I was good at bullshitting). That was all one hundred times more fun for me than spending the year reading Victorian lit, and I very much credit my current love for funny women to that year-long journey.

But I did have a few arguments in those seventy-six pages (look, I’ve got a lot to say!) and one of them was about how the women in question represent sex in their books. More accurately, how they don’t really talk about sex at all.

To be clear, it’s not like it’s required for Tina Fey to sit down and tell all about her sex life à la Call Her Daddy. But the history of the modern memoir is very much connected to the genre’s roots in confession. Simply put: many historical memoirs — if they weren’t recollections of famous battles or salvaged journals — were used as scandalous tell-alls about the author’s life, a place for them to come clean about all of their misdeeds or sordid past. A prime example here is the now-controversial A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. Alternatively, memoirs have been used to make sense of past trauma, stitching memories back together for the purpose of understanding. The Glass Castle is a great hallmark of this sub-genre.

Tina Fey certainly wasn’t the first comedian or public figure to release a memoir with her 2011 release of Bossypants. Chelsea Handler’s books had been on bestseller lists most of the early aughts, and earlier predecessors like Margaret Cho and Gilda Radnor saw commercial success as well. But Tina’s success was the most prolific. To this day, it’s one of the bestselling comedic memoirs of all time.

What I find most fascinating is that it’s a complete break from the traditional memoir genre. Rather than straying into scandal or deep confession, Tina doesn’t really say anything we didn’t already know.

Sure, she tells some tales of her honeymoon-gone-awry and reminisces on building her iconic Sarah Palin impression, but there’s no scandal, no salaciousness. Her life seems to be, as journalist Kaitlin Fontana put it, “painfully vertical.” Fontana writes, “her bowl cut was not at all tousled; her daddy issues are mainly that he was too awesome and she therefore loves male authority figures like Lorne Michaels. Instead of dumping her too-nice lover, she married him (they have two daughters; he does the music for 30 Rock).”

The closest Tina ever gets to dishing about romance is a chapter which details a disastrous trip up Old Rag Mountain in her time at UVA. Her love interest ended up bringing an unexpected friend along for what she thought was a date. They all got lost, her love interest fell off a large boulder, and it ended with him asking Tina for advice about how to ask out another girl.

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The memoir is PG, hilarious, and also my favorite book of all time. Tina uses painfully relatable stories of her awkward upbringing and hapless romances to bring herself closer to readers, but there’s also this dichotomy happening. She’s saying “look, I’m just like you, but I’m still going to hold you at arm’s length.”

I’ve talked here before about my favorite Tina / Amy quote, which Amy wrote in Yes Please: “Tina’s not the first girl to belly-flop into the pool at the pool party. She watches everybody else’s flops and then writes a play about it.” Similarly, I get the sense that Tina’s not totally the type to gab with her best friends about her hot date last night. She’s the type to listen to everyone else’s raunchy stories, make a self-deprecating joke, and take notes for her next movie.

Amy’s memoir, Yes Please, is different. Written in 2014 and published just before the last season of Parks and Rec aired, Amy’s memoir saw notable commercial success, but at a smaller scale than Tina’s. Loyal Park It readers have heard me wax poetic about my theories on the Tina / Amy dichotomy, and in no place is it more evident than their memoirs. Tina’s memoir is tiny, printed on cheap paper, a true airport paperback; Amy’s is a full production, laden with photos between each chapter and set on thick glossy paper. Tina keeps us at arm’s length in Bossypants, entertaining us but never letting us too close; in contrast, Amy’s memoir is like being wrapped in a big warm hug of her personal experience. To put it in Amy’s words, she’s in a war between her “jokey and protective brain and her squishy, tender heart.” Nowhere is that more evident than the book. It’s like reading sunshine on paper, in the same way she’s effectively sunshine personified.

The book is hilarious, but her squishy, tender heart wins out most of the time. It’s not quite as light of a read as Bossypants. It’s not as tightly edited. Not every line cuts with a barb. She gets quite real with us readers in the book, talking about her kids and recent divorce and writing love letters to Tina and her fellow Parks and Rec cast members.

She also treats sex differently than Tina. While Bossypants is strictly PG, Yes Please veers into raunchier territory with a chapter on Amy’s sex tips (“My World-Famous Sex Advice”). Even her opening line of the chapter — “I think sex is great. I love it and I am here to say I am good at it.” — makes it clear that she’s not keeping it totally PG. She’ll let us into her world enough to get a bit personal. This is a marked difference from Tina, who alludes to sex ONCE in Bossypants and calls it “car sports.”

Amy generally keeps her tips light, but they’re laced with authenticity. They range from “try not to fake it” to “don’t get undressed and start pointing out your flaws or apologizing for things you think are wrong with your body.” And after she addresses the women, she turns her attention to the men, writing things like “cool it on the porn and jerking off.” It’s not Amy on a soapbox — she undercuts almost every moment of earnestness with a whip-smart joke, like “act like a bossy lady ordering at a deli.”

But it’s still not much deeper than anything you’d hear on Good Hang. It touches on sex just enough to let you know that she’s a normal, single adult woman who has had previous relationships, but never strays too far into the juicy details.

Parks and Rec, while generally keeping things PG, does take opportunities it can get to make a few sex jokes. And yet I’d still classify Leslie is more of a Tina-type than an Amy-type when it comes to talking about sex. She gives more “car sports” than someone who’d say “try not to fake it” (that said, Leslie is a huge feminist, so she, without a doubt, supports the latter too).

We just know Leslie so deeply as a professional optimist that it makes it hard to imagine her getting deep with Ann over the intricacies of her sex life. She’s more the type to gush about a crush and regale us with stories of dates gone awry.

Maybe I’m wrong! Maybe Leslie is down to spill some raunchy tales over a glass of wine, or at least get tender and squishy in the same way Amy does. I’m fine with Leslie fitting into either mold. You already know I don’t want to debate it. Let’s all just have a good time!

But last week, I watched one of the best rom-coms I’ve seen in a while: Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation. I was giggling and kicking my little feet the whole time. It’s so unbelievably lighthearted. The stakes are low, there’s no broader moral lesson we’re learning, and there’s no weirdly serious tone it takes halfway through. It’s just fun, from start to finish.

Tom Blyth and Emily Bader are such stars. Their chemistry is insane. The minute I saw Poppy’s yellow dress at the rehearsal dinner, I was googling where to get it (it’s Michelle Mason and is unfortunately extremely out of my price range). The soundtrack was good too (except for “Higher Ground” as the opening and closing song … I’m a big Odesza gal, but really weird call).

I’ve already watched it a second time. I looooved it.

I’m not the only one who inhaled People We Meet on Vacation. Lucy Lawless loved it too, which I found out from stumbling across a Reel she posted raving about the movie. PWMOV, touching everyone!

In case you don’t know who Lucy Lawless is, she’s best known for her late 90s role as Xena, Warrior Princess. Xena was before my time and is not to be confused with Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century, which was much more my speed. My first encounter with Lucy Lawless was as Diane in season five of Parks and Rec.

Diane is one of the show’s more brilliant additions in the later seasons, even though she doesn’t get all that much screen time. First introduced in S5E3 as a love interest for Ron, Diane’s a citizen who’s been continually lodging complaints about a pothole in front of her house. Ron decides to take matters into his own hands, roping Andy into an excursion to Diane’s. He expects to be in and out as quickly as possible.

What he doesn’t expect is to find a hot single mom with two daughters, who not only gives him lemonade while he works but who asks him genuine questions about fixing potholes so that she can do it herself next time. Andy, playing princesses with her daughters, convinces Ron to have a little more fun so he can flirt with Diane. He lets the girls give him a makeover, but runs off when she laughs at his makeup. To be fair, he’s really more of a winter and they dressed him up like a summer:

Diane later shows up at City Hall to ask Ron out on a date, quipping, “I hope you’re not the kind of man who needs to ask the lady out.” And then she has one of the best lines I’ve heard recently: “It’ll be casual. No need to wear the makeup.”

Ok!! Diane has game!

She’s pretty quickly established as a strong match for Ron, a total breath of fresh air compared to both Tammies. The show’s been teasing Ron’s affinity for strong independent women for a few seasons, ever since he finally got rid of Tammy One. He briefly dated Andy’s Feminist Studies professor, swiping her from under Chris’s nose. The fact that he finally finds himself attracted to a “middle school Vice Principal who doesn’t screw around” just seems to fit. It feels like something we’ve been building toward.

But Ron’s whole vibe is being stuck in his ways, so his character development similarly hasn’t felt super substantial. Introducing a love interest for him is a genius move by the show’s writers and something I don’t think we expect to get, five seasons into the show’s run. Ron’s questionable past has always been played for laughs, but here’s someone who can pull his romantic plotline forward at the same time everyone else is taking the same steps. Sure, he’s stubborn and grouchy and eats a diet that would truly horrify most cardiologists — but there’s a lid for every pot.

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It’s a good reminder that the show is equally as invested in the “rom” side of “rom-com,” even though we often only think of it as a true comedy. We’ve already talked about how certain aspects of the show feel like a rom-com. I’m officially adding Ron and Diane to that list. They’re joining the ranks of the show’s iconic couples, which was a tall order! We’ve spent so much time with these characters at this point that introducing someone who threw off the vibe could have been detrimental.

But Lucy Lawless is perfect for the role. She’s confident and exudes competence. She’s a hard-working, salt-of-the-earth type. She’s a middle school Vice Principal with two daughters who’s gonna fix the pothole herself next time.

Episode two of season five, “Soda Tax,” shows us just how skewed the town’s perceptions of sugar intake are. In her first official acts as City Councilwoman, Leslie backs a soda tax, restricting the size of soft drink servings at restaurants. While meeting with reps from Sweetums, Leslie calls out the current serving sizes:

From left to right, there’s the “child size” (the photo’s caption says it all), the regular, and the small. Hiding next to the small is the next smallest size: the L’il Swallow, which customers can request if they don’t want the small. That bucket of sugar represents “the amount of sugar the average Pawnee citizen consumes each month.”

YEEEEEESH!

We’ve seen the town riot at the idea of Sweetums leaving Pawnee back in season four, when Jen Barkley threatens to pull jobs in a failed bid to win Bobby Newport the election. We’ve seen the citizens equally protest the idea of eating healthy. A notable example is when they hire children’s entertainer Freddy Spaghetti to play in Pawnee in the season two finale, mainly because he doesn’t “push vegetables.”

And then there’s Sue’s Salads. First emerging in the iconic “Harvest Festival” episode, Tanya — a local Pawnee business owner — pitches the idea of placing a stand for her salad shop at the Harvest Festival. She’s met with outright disgust from the Parks department. In Ron’s words, “you’ve given me the food that my food eats.” In “Soda Tax,” Leslie — with a gleeful little smile on her face — reveals that Sue’s Salads has been run out of town in the time since the Harvest Festival.

Leslie isn’t exactly a health queen either, despite her support of the soda tax in season five. We’ve already seen how much sugar she puts into her coffee:

Waffles are her favorite food. As she says: “We need to remember what’s important in life: friends, waffles, work. Or waffles, friends, work. Doesn’t matter, but work is third.” And that’s coming from Leslie Knope, TV’s favorite workaholic. Waffles are BEFORE work.

The citizens of Pawnee love their sugar and they love supporting their local sugar factory, Sweetums. Although Leslie ultimately votes in favor of the soda tax to try and force Pawnee’s citizens to be healthier, she’s just as guilty of succumbing to the city’s preference for a high-sugar diet.

Pawnee isn’t just Pawnee, though. It represents Everytown, USA. The “Soda Tax” episode satirizes real sugar consumption and obesity rates in America during the late aughts and early 2010s. Junk food culture in America needs no explanation. If you have EVER been to a Cook Out (my Southern friends will know what I’m talking about), you’ll get it. It’s the only place where you can get a foot long chili corndog AND a quesadilla AND a cheesecake milkshake AND a full plate of barbecue, all for under $15. It’s a fever dream of a place. Pawnee would have loved it.

Parks isn’t a show that tries to push its politics on everyone, but it does try to present a parody of bureaucracy and the workings of a small, Midwestern town. It would have been remiss to ignore growing discussions around spiking obesity rates throughout the Obama era. This public health crisis was constantly in the national news. In fact, real soda taxes were a big debate of the early 2010s, even though no federal law was ever passed. Then-NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to pass a soda ban in 2012, banning soft drinks over 16 ounces.

Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign was a core memory of mine from middle school. A task force designed to combat childhood obesity, “Let’s Move” focused on getting healthier lunches in public schools and encouraging kids to get more active. It staged a KILLER guerilla marketing campaign on Nickelodeon, so between watching iCarly, I was always hearing Michelle talk about the upcoming “Worldwide Day of Play.”

Pawnee’s soda tax doesn’t just satirize the public health crisis of obesity rates, but also speaks to broader Obama-era and ongoing debates about government control. Some Pawnee citizens are outraged that the City Council would try to control their sugar intake; the other half want the government to interfere. The Sweetums corporation tries to spin it into a consumer rights story, arguing that Leslie Knope represents Big Government trying to come in and restrict citizens from their individual freedoms. Does all of this sound familiar?

The recurring sugar bit in Parks is one of my absolute favorite of the show’s, but it’s also another indication of the show at its smartest. It sets up Pawnee as an Everytown so that the issues feel that much more real, but its problems are so hyperlocal and exaggerated that it’s an absurd parody of real life. I reallllllllly don’t think any fast food chain has a “child size” drink, but by seriously committing to this bit, it plays it for laughs and tackles a major issue of the Obama era.

And it also gives us a common enemy that’s not just the library: Sue’s Salads. Screw you, Tanya.

One of the books I devoured on my break was an advance copy of my friend ’s book, Parks and Rec. It’s SO good! The perfect homage to a show she and I both love dearly. If you forgot to get a gift for anyone in your life who also loves Parks, preorder a copy of it for them before the book comes out in April. It’s so much fun.

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Every feed I have is currently swirling with new year’s resolutions, reflections, in / out lists, vision boards … whatever we want to call them, most people I know have some sort of goal for next year. I have to imagine our beloved Pawneeans would be doing the same! So this week, let’s see what each of our favorite Parks characters is manifesting for the new year.

(Quick note: I’m not assuming it’s 2026 in Pawnee! These are just arbitrary resolutions as if it’s some random year. Couldn’t do too much trend forecasting!)

Leslie Knope

• World peace.

• Change the face of Pawnee for the better.

• Be elected President of the United States.

• Spend a day with Joe Biden (and perhaps a night too….).

• Marry Ben and have his babies.

• More waffles !!!!!

• Read all biographies ever written by ever former female member of the US and international governments.

• Get more sleep (3 hours / night at a minimum).

• Be the best City Councilwoman this town has ever seen.

• Tell Ann I love her at least once a day.

• Sign up for woodworking classes to surprise Ron.

Ron Swanson

• Eat more burgers.

• Talk to fewer people.

Tom Haverford

• Pitch Snake Juice to Jack Daniels. If they don’t want it, Jim Beam. If they don’t want it, Wild Turkey. If they don’t want it, Seagrams. We’re going global.

• Long weekend to LA during auditions for the next Fast and Furious movie. See if they’ll cast me as Vin Diesel’s identical twin. (Don’t forget bald cap.)

• Find designer for baby tuxedo clothing line.

• Call my guy at Apple to discuss contact lenses that display text messages.

Ann Perkins

• Meet a guy who’s cute and nice to me and hopefully fall in love :)

• Clean out closet.

• Take daily vitamins.

Chris Traeger

• 20 miles per day (up from 10).

• Cut out all sugar entirely.

• Find a therapist so I don’t lit’rally spiral into a pit of despair.

Ben Wyatt

• Organize filing cabinets in my home office.

• Finish re-read of “The Lord of the Rings.” Finish writing fanfiction about LOTR.

• Perfect my calzone recipe.

April Ludgate

• Nothing, resolutions are stupid.

Andy Dwyer

• Make April happy !!!

• Train Champion to go grocery shopping so I don’t have to!

• Mouse Rat world tour!

Donna Meagle

• Finally pull the trigger on the Rolls Royce.

• Have my man buy me a Birkin.

• Month-long trip to the Amalfi Coast (call Lorenzo about using his private villa).

  

Jerry Gergich

• A weekend trip to Muncie with my beautiful wife and daughters.

Catch you next week! Before I go, I need you all to see this sweatshirt I dug out of the clearance bin at my local surf shop. I’m calling it “Leslie Knope chic.”

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There’s a lot of discourse circulating online right now about “hyperlocal” shows, aka shows that feature an incredibly specific locale or city so heavily it becomes its own character. Rachel Sennott’s I Love LA is a perfect example — the show oozes references to the east side of LA.

Parks and Rec is a hyperlocal show as well, up until the season four finale. Sixty-odd episodes in and we know this town. We know what it means for the characters to go to the library, to JJ’s Diner, to City Hall. It’s deeply familiar because we’ve spent time here — and only here.

Prior to season five, the furthest our characters have journeyed is Indianapolis. Pawnee is Leslie’s whole world. The entire narrative arc has been rooted in Pawnee, specifically Leslie’s ambition and ultimate success in climbing the ranks of her local government. She obviously has political ambitions that will take her out into the world, but there’s never really any desire for her to graduate out of Pawnee in these first four seasons.

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It’s what makes those four seasons so great. We dive into every small-town problem possible. Rabid possum running loose on the golf course? Check. The passing of a beloved mini-horse sparks desire for elaborate memorial concert? Big check.

Showrunner Mike Schur put as much thought into Leslie’s problems as he did building the world of Pawnee. He never belittles the challenges she faces. He actually does the opposite. Leslie makes such a mountain of every molehill that we laugh about it — but never in a way that suggests she recognizes the absurdity of her problems. Her problems are as hyperlocal as the show itself.

That all changes in the season five premiere. For the first time ever, we kick off the season not in Pawnee. Ben’s taken a campaign job in DC, courtesy of Jen Barkley, and taken April with him. Leslie and Andy head out for a visit, both missing their partners. Leslie tours 20+ national monuments in one day and repeatedly calls DC a “stupid swamp town” (preach, sister). Andy inspects the monuments for gold, inspired by National Treasure. On brand for both of them.

But Leslie’s not just in town to visit Ben. She’s also here to submit a grant to the federal government, requesting funds to clean up the Pawnee River. When she shows up for what she assumes is a big meeting, she learns that she’s just one application out of hundreds, and the Secretary of the Interior isn’t available to meet with her in person. Even worse: when submitting the name of her city to the receptionist, she learns that there are a dozen other cities named “Pawnee” around the country. She is, quite literally, a needle in a haystack. It’s a big blow.

The real friction comes when Leslie starts to rub elbows with other politicians at a happy hour, organized by Ben. There are some notable cameos from former Senators, and all of them sweetly patronize her when she mentions she works in local government. None of them have heard of her Pawnee and suddenly, it seems as if her town’s problems are a total drop in the bucket compared to what these Senators grapple with daily. It’s an identity crisis unlike Leslie’s felt before that leaves her wondering whether she actually has a future in this stupid swamp town.

Thankfully, Leslie’s trademark resolve has rematerialized by the end of the episode. Maybe her problems are a drop in the bucket, but it doesn’t mean they don’t matter. She’s not going to sit around and wait for a government grant to come through so she can clean up the Pawnee river. She’ll roll up her sleeves and do it herself. Screw whatever Big Government thinks about silly old Pawnee.

Of course, we know that this identity crisis is temporary — a future Leslie ultimately will make it to the highest levels of the DC social scene. But by grounding us back in the show’s original spirit by the end of the episode, we’re reminded of how Leslie’s supposed to represent something markedly different from the rest of the DC suits. She’s a new era of can-do optimism. Her provincial belief that cleaning up a river can make a difference is symbolic of this.

At the same time, we also see that Leslie’s got a long way to go before she can make it to DC. This queen could NOT hang at those parties. She spent half of the party hyperventilating in a coat closet, before being interrupted by the late John McCain. She let her ego get the best of her and she has a lot of growing to do before her current life catches up to her political aspirations.

We’ll have two and a half more seasons to find out what that growth looks like. For now, all we know is that Leslie’s going to cherish her time in Pawnee while she can. She’ll fix the hyperlocal problems that she faces until she can’t anymore.

Screw that swamp town.

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I always get excited when there’s a host who’s down to get musical or — on the flip side — a musical guest who’s down to lend some vocals to a silly little song. The stakes were high for Sabrina because she’s built a brand as not just a pop icon, but a funny pop icon. She crushed 2024’s favorite (and overdone) sketch “Domingo” when she was just a musical guest. Thinking of her potential as host really got the internet riled up.

But she absolutely delivered. My highlight of the night wasn’t the “Domingo” rendition, but another musical parody, reminiscent of SNL’s glory days: “Middle School Lovin’” aka “Grind Song”.

Recently, I’ve been missing YRGRLS, SNL’s now-sunset girl group that ran from the mid-2010s till 2019. Starring Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Cecily Strong, Vanessa Bayer, Leslie Jones, and some combo of the show’s other women, YRGRLS performed half a dozen songs over as many years on air. I often think of YRGRLS as a direct response to The Lonely Island, Andy Samberg’s all-male musical parody group that dominated SNL in the 2000s. Their style was stupid, indulgent, and so blatantly boyish. Hits like “Dick in a Box” stole the show, and soon enough, the women wanted to get musical too.

YRGRLS made their debut with “Do It On My Twin Bed,” but really gained SNL notoriety with “Back Home Ballers,” featuring host Cameron Diaz. They crooned their last little ditty in 2019 with the dark but accurate “Welcome to Hell” (I always love the Saoirse Ronan feature in this one), and we haven’t heard from them since. SNL’s tested out various musical sketches in the intervening years; some personal favorites are “Crucible Cast Party,” “Come Back Barack,” and “Three Sad Virgins” (hey Taylor!). But none of those really hit “Back Home Ballers” levels of fame.

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They’re all hilarious and deeply specific, but I think that all of these later hits were a bit too esoteric, sacrificing relatability as a result. Take “Crucible Cast Party” as an example. Featuring Lin-Manuel Miranda, CCP is about the afterparty of a high school production of The Crucible, spoofing the same theater kids that Ben Platt and Molly Gordon later would in Theater Camp. It’s hilarious and visceral, but as someone who wasn’t a theater kid, it hits a limit on how funny it is for me.

“Back Home Ballers,” on the other hand, went viral because it’s so ubiquitous. It’s all the more relevant considering most of the country just made the trek back to their childhood homes for Thanksgiving. My mom puts out bowls like a goddamn professional. So many adults can relate to that feeling of busting up to your front door for your first Thanksgiving break home from college and feeling like you fucking rule this place. It just captured something that I hadn’t seen on TV before — this deep specificity in a song. It was absolutely brilliant.

I felt the same way when I watched “Middle School Lovin’”. Starring Sabrina Carpenter and Bowen Yang, this sketch was like seeing YRGRLS incarnate. The beat is immediately reminiscent of “Do It On My Twin Bed.” It’s almost giving Troy Bolton in High School Musical 3 singing “the night of nights, the night of nights tonight.” The opening shot of Sabrina’s braces and her peace-sign Instagram post. Jeremy Culhane in an American Eagle striped polo. The pure chaos of a middle school dance. And there’s no feeling like watching someone capture your exact experience on TV.

I’m not saying YRGRLS are back — there’s no actual girl group forming at SNL right now. It’s more that the spirit of them may be back, the idea of a musical spoof that’s equal parts outrageous and so specific that it’s deeply relatable. The current cast is clearly taking more shots on goal; Saturday night’s Melissa McCarthy—hosted episode featured “Cousin Planet,” an early-’90s, MTV-music-video-style spoof about where cousins go after the holidays. It didn’t quite do it for me the way “Middle School Lovin’” did, though I admire Veronika Slowikowska and Jane Wickline’s attempt to channel their forebears.

I’m hopeful we haven’t left the vibe of YRGRLS behind as juggernaut names like Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant have said goodbye to 8H. “Middle School Lovin’” gave me a little glimmer of hope.

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And while I wouldn’t at all call Dorothy “funny,” she’s made some shockingly massive contributions to the comedy genre. We owe her Amy Poehler.

First though, my own homage: The Wizard of Oz was the first movie I ever saw. I was absolutely obsessed. For my fifth birthday, I had a Wizard of Oz themed party. My parents set up a Yellow Brick Road that led from the parking lot into our local arcade. I wore ruby red slippers and a little checkered dress. My hair wouldn’t go into pigtails because I was rocking a very tough bowl cut at the time. I told (lied to) all of my friends beforehand that there would be actual Flying Monkeys there. I lost some playground clout when I couldn’t deliver.

As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one enchanted by The Wizard of Oz. Amy loved it too, which she mentions briefly in the recent Ariana Grande episode of Good Hang. Dorothy was her improv awakening. In a chapter in her book titled “How I Fell In Love With Improv,” Amy details how she played Dorothy in a fourth-grade production of The Wizard of Oz, which was “the dream role of every ten-year-old.”

While running around during the tornado scene in her first performance, she shouted the iconic “Toto, Toto! Where are you?” while still carrying the dog. The audience laughed, and as Amy says, “Lightning struck — and I discovered three important things. I liked getting a laugh. I wanted to get one again. But I wanted to get it in a different way and be in charge of how I got it.”

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In other words—everything is copy. Nora Ephron explains it best: “When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh. So you become the hero rather than the victim of the joke.”

Amy decided that night that she wanted to take control of her own destiny when it came to getting a laugh.

So the next night, she made some changes:

“I paused, put the blinking dog down on the stage, and walked a few feet away from it. ‘Toto, Toto! Where are you?’ I said, pretending to look for my lost dog in the fearsome storm. The dog froze and played it perfectly. I got laughter and some light applause for my efforts. I had improved and it had worked….I have been chasing that high ever since.”

Dorothy was her first on-stage role, which led her to audition for her high school production of Once Upon a Mattress. That, in turn, led to a field trip to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where she toured Studio 8H. And the rest is history.

Dorothy’s the reason we have Amy Poehler. Dorothy’s not even a funny character, but having Dorothy as such a blank slate gave Amy room to be herself and make something funny out of nothing. Having that blank slate gave a little girl in Boston the confidence to pursue a career in comedy. Dull, quiet, straight-man little Dorothy Gale!!!

So I guess what I’m saying is … we owe Dorothy our lives.

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And to kick off our palette cleansing, we have a collab with none other than my good pal Jennifer Keishin Armstrong! I accidentally set this in motion back in October’s Jen Barkley post:

So here it is. The long-awaited thinkpiece about Taylor Swift x Leslie Knope. Here we go!

Jen hi! Fancy seeing you here. Thanks for joining me to talk about something very fun: Leslie Knope and Taylor Swift.

To kick us off, I’d love to know, what’s your relationship with Taylor? Are you a Swiftie?

I am! On the one hand, I know there are some more dedicated than I. On the other hand, I stayed up til midnight for the new album release, and, in fact, I am on the media team for Swifties for Hope! So I guess that’s pretty Swiftie.

Ok amazing. For me personally, I’ve been a Swiftie my whole life. I remember so vividly listening to “Teardrops on My Guitar” on the school bus on my iPod Nano and “You Belong With Me” was my first ringtone. I’m embarrassed to admit that I fell off the Taylor train a bit during her Rep era (I fell victim to the “Taylor Swift is cringe” of it all). I owe my whole life to the “Miss Americana” doc — it brought me back and she has firmly been my number one since 2020.

I love that! I actually went to the Rep tour, which once again outs me as a pretty dedicated Swiftie. I was rebelling against the rebellion! I’ve been with her really since Speak Now. I’m a lyrics person, so I’m just astounded by her talent and her output. This is a person who had a major hit with the line “Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism like some kind of congressman?” I mean, just staggering.

What’s your favorite album?

This is such a hard question. Evermore and Folklore are astounding pieces of work, but I feel like everyone agrees on that so it’s not a very personal answer. Midnights, for me, just hit, and I know not everyone agrees on that one. But you know how sometimes you’ll listen to an album and you’re like, “Wait, is she in my brain?” That’s how that one always feels to me. I never get sick of it. I swear she was spying on me during my younger, messy dating days in New York City and wrote this album about it. “Maroon” absolutely slays me.

Oh, I’m a huge Midnights stan. I agree with that 100%.

My all-time fave album is Red, even though it has a lot of skips for me depending on my mood. But it’s just something about the nostalgia of it all. The OG Red came out when I was a freshman in high school and then Red TV came out while I was living in one of my first ever adult apartments. They’ve both just been such formative life moments — and Red’s been there through it all!

This record is so so good. I remember the first time I heard “I Knew You Were Trouble” (on MTV, when that still was a thing sometimes!). I was like OH. Also the song “Red” is one of my faves.

Ok, now let’s talk about Leslie Knope. Do we think she’s a Swiftie?

100%. I said what I said in the comments because they are so alike at a fundamental level. They are great at something they are passionate about, and they cannot stop working at it. The Eras Tour is Taylor Swift’s Harvest Festival. They are overachievers who sometimes come across as too much, but there’s no doubt that they get the job done. And I think Leslie would recognize that. She loves to admire great women, and I can so see her at the Eras Tour with Ann.

Oh definitely. I totally agree with that. It’s like that line in “Life of a Showgirl” - “I’m married to the hustle.” Leslie’s the epitome of married to the hustle.

I sort of think Leslie would be a defender of Showgirl. I think she’d like the fun poppiness and that Taylor is in love.

It’s also eternally crazy to me, in the context of Parks, that the Harvest Festival is — in my opinion — the greatest thing Leslie ever does. It’s her magnum opus and I feel like you may agree with me on that. It’s obviously the catalyst that propels the rest of her political career forwards, but it’s just wild that it comes in season 3!

Absolutely! Does that mean Taylor is only in season 3 of her career, having just finished Eras? :) Then again, it does kind-of match up, since soon afterward Leslie starts getting serious with Ben and then they get married.

I’m so curious what Leslie’s favorite album would be.

Ooh, this is an interesting one. I actually think she’d tend toward the earlier albums because they reflect more of that small town/suburban life that would be very much like Pawnee. Plus Leslie is a romantic, and those are Taylor’s most swooningly optimistic albums. I’m thinking maybe Fearless? “Love Story,” “White Horse,” “You Belong With Me.” Or maybe Lover, another of my favorites: She would love “The Man,” and also the more romantic tracks like “Lover” and “Paper Rings.”

What do you think?

Completely agree with all of that. Leslie’s totally a romantic about actual love, but also about small town life. I’ve never thought about Leslie being nostalgic before, but I feel like she kind of is? Which makes me agree that she’d love Debut and really anything that romanticizes things that can only happen in small towns.

Yeah I bet she was an early Swiftie. I can see her singing along with “Tim McGraw,” and definitely “Our Song,” which is another early favorite of mine.

I also think she’s a 1989 girlie. I can so imagine her and Ann rocking out to something like “Shake It Off.” I honestly can’t really imagine her listening to anything too sad of Taylor’s — like the thought of her listening to TTPD just doesn’t make sense in my brain. Unless we’re thinking back to that slew of times she’s been dumped, pre-Parks and Rec (I’m thinking about that montage when she and Ann drive back from Indianapolis and Ann’s just gotten dumped) — then I could maybe see her having a goooooood old fashioned “All Too Well” cry.

Oh god she would hate TTPD (except “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” which she’d appreciate as a workaholic). But publicly defend Taylor’s right to make it. But I do think she’d like “All Too Well,” which is just so universal even though it’s also so specific.

Leslie’s also obviously this champion of young girls being able to be whoever they want, which we see in the Pawnee goddesses episode. So I have to imagine that she’d really love all of the discourse surrounding girlhood and Taylor Swift.

Absolutely. Those goddesses all grew up to be Swifties, I would bet.

Here’s a question to wrap us up! Let’s imagine a world in which Taylor endorses Leslie Knope for president (which feels likely to me) and Leslie gets permission to use a TS song for her presidential campaign. What do we think that song is?

Oh god I love this fantasy. I kind-of like the idea of “The Man.” Definitely a better walk-on song than “Get on Your Feet,” though hopefully by the time she’s running for president, she’ll have a more competent campaign team who won’t book her in an ice rink.

Jen, thanks so much for joining us, as always. I think I speak for you, me, and Leslie when I tell everyone: go bump some Taylor today. It’s what Leslie Knope would want.

Every once in a while, Parks and Rec makes me cry. It’s a comedy, but showrunner Mike Schur loves to tug at the heartstrings. He’s also the inventor of the Mike Schur Moment: an earnest and vulnerable scene from otherwise silly, goofy characters. It’s a moment that dares to take itself seriously in an otherwise completely unserious show.

“Win, Lose, or Draw,” the perfect fourth season’s equally perfect finale, is an episode when Schur goes all in on sincerity — and you feel that from the very first scene. It’s the culmination of Leslie’s city council campaign, the day she “fulfills a lifelong dream” of hers. Despite some last-minute attempted rigging by the Newport campaign, all our candidates can do is vote and wait. The waiting lasts most of the episode before they’re ready to make a call: it’s a win in favor of Bobby Newport by 21 votes. But Ben demands a recount and another period of tense waiting ensues before Ann ultimately delivers the news. Leslie’s won the seat to be the next City Councilor of Pawnee.

It’s so rare in a modern sitcom that a showrunner dares to make an entire episode sweeter than it is funny, but that’s what we get here. Most of you probably know by now that Parks and Rec was at constant risk of being canceled by NBC throughout their seven-season run. Season four was no exception. Schur wrote this season finale as a series finale just in case they didn’t get renewed for season five — an open question that very much hung in the air when “Win, Lose, or Draw” aired. On the off chance NBC wasn’t down to re-invest in the world of Pawnee, Schur wanted to make sure we knew Leslie Knope had a bright future in public service ahead.

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It makes sense, then, why Mike brought me to legitimate tears so many times over the course of this episode. The first tears started when Leslie voted for herself in the voting booth, getting emotional as she fulfills her lifelong dream. Then, when she gave Ben the Washington Monument in a little wooden box, a callback to the first episode of this season with her “Knope 2012” button in a similar box.

And of course the tears hit hardest during the iconic scene when Ann burst into the room to tell Leslie that she has won the recount. The camera stays trained on Leslie the whole time Ann’s speaking off camera, so we see the disbelief and tears start to well in her eyes. It’s the most emotional moment the show has had so far. It’s also the most emotional moment I’ve had watching so far in my rewatch — the waterworks were hardcore flowing by the end of this episode.

It’s part of what makes the show and Mike so brilliant. Not to sound too cliché, but it just has some real fuckin heart.

And yet, Parks and Rec never lets you blubber for too long. It’s smart enough to cut some of those emotional moments with a whip-smart one-liner, pulling us right back into the comedy. There’s this great moment when Ben has a heart-to-heart with Ron about whether or not he should take a job on a campaign in Washington DC. They wish each other a very sincere “good luck” and cheers with their respective glasses of Lagavulin. But when Ben takes a big swig, he gags:

I also love when Ron finds Leslie in the City Council chamber, taking a breather amidst all the chaos:

Leslie: “Ron, for the last six months, my friends have worked so hard. Every five-minute coffee break at work, every night, every weekend, every spare moment of their lives, they gave to me. If I lose, I’ll never forgive myself. You deserve to win.”

Ron: “We didn’t volunteer to help you because we wanted to wrap ourselves in personal glory. We did it because we care. About you. You had a dream and we wanted to support your dream. That’s what you do when you care about someone. You support ‘em: win, lose, or draw. Let’s go back to the party. You drive, I’ve had eleven whiskeys.”

First of all, what a tank. Second of all, I love this balance of sweetness and comedy. There’s this moment when Leslie smiles before Ron says “let’s go back to the party,” when Schur lets the sentiment hang in the air just for a second before he cuts it with a great Parks and Rec one-liner. Of course, Ron can’t be genuine for too long. And of course he’s not trying to be funny by saying he’s had eleven whiskeys; he literally has. The comedy in these smaller moments earns our attention and trust so that Schur can ladder up into the bigger moments, when it’s not funny at all. It’s just pure sweet.

The trust he’s earned also allows us to not only be patient with him, but to cry real tears when Leslie gives her victory speech:

This isn’t just a victory speech. It’s the show’s whole thesis, articulated for us to see. It’s basically the summary of everything I’ve been writing for the past year and a half here on Park It. This silly little show about hope and positivity. It’s definitely a risk, laying the thesis out so clearly in a 22-minute sitcom on prime time network television. But it’s one that pays off because of all of the work he’s done over the four seasons prior — both in balancing sweetness with comedy and in truly earnest moments that really build up the heart of characters.

It feels very much like the ending of the first chapter of Parks — and of Leslie’s life — and the beginning of something so much bigger for her. We’re emotional because we’ve been with her every step of this journey and we’re along for the ride, whatever comes next. That certainly deserves a few tears.

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Over in Pawnee, it’s also the eve of an election — this time, the City Council race Leslie’s been fighting for since the start of Season 4. She’s sacrificed just about everything for it: her relationship, her beloved Parks Department job, and more than a few nights of sleep. In the final stretch, she’s polling just two points behind Bobby Newport. Ben’s last-ditch strategy has her driving around Pawnee in a “Leslie Knope” bus, giving a perfectly timed 10-minute, 40-second stump speech at every stop and rallying crowds around her vision for the town.

But this is Parks and Rec, so of course, not everything goes smoothly. At one rally, a reporter asks Leslie to comment on Nick Newport Sr., Bobby’s father. She calls him a “real jerk” and launches into a rant about his impact on Pawnee, only to learn, mid-speech, that he died earlier that day.

Jen Barkley insists Leslie pause campaigning out of respect, but Ben knows that stopping would kill their momentum. Leslie ends up visiting Bobby to apologize in person, which leads to a surprisingly sweet moment between the two and a public thank-you from him later on.

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At its core, Parks and Rec isn’t really about local government. It’s about democracy — real, messy, idealistic democracy. Even though longtime fans know how the election turns out, this episode captures that perfect mix of tension and hope that defines a campaign’s final days. Leslie’s come back from early losses, but she’s still two points down, and every rally matters. You can feel how precarious it all is, how easily it could fall apart.

Rewatching it on the eve of Election Day feels fitting. It’s a reminder that we never really know how these things will go. We’re always standing at a crossroads, one decision away from two entirely different futures. It’s thrilling and stressful and completely human — whether it’s a Pawnee City Council race or a governor’s race in Virginia.

Of course, Leslie’s the protagonist of a sitcom about democracy, so we can guess how her story ends. But what I love most about this season is how it honors the grind of campaigning: the long hours, the heartbreak, the sheer amount of work that goes into it. Leslie’s spent an entire season (and a big chunk of her life) chasing this dream, and even then, it comes down to the wire.

The show definitely romanticizes public service, but it’s also honest about the cost. Leslie’s campaign takes almost everything from her, even if most of those losses aren’t permanent. It’s very Obama-era in its message: the only real way to win, especially as the underdog, is to show up. Knock doors. Talk to people. Share your vision and hope it connects.

Whichever way tomorrow’s races go, I’m reminded why election season — real or fictional — is so addictive. It’s messy, dramatic, exhausting, and completely exhilarating. Democracy makes for great TV.

Part of that is thanks to Good Hang. Every Tuesday, I hit play on Good Hang almost before my eyes open, propping my phone behind the bathroom sink to watch her gab while I get ready for work. It’s one of the highlights of my week.

Before Good Hang, I’d seen Amy mostly in character, whether that was in sketches like “Bronx Beat” or — of course — as Leslie Knope. Rarely did I ever glimpse Amy just being Amy, not running a bit or making a quick cameo on SNL or hosting the Golden Globes. Just a human talking to her famous friends about their lives and what they find funny. In other words, outside of her book, I’d never really met Amy herself.

Tina, on the other hand, has historically played a thinly veiled version of herself, with Liz Lemon from 30 Rock being the obvious example.

I have this broad-strokes theory that comedians fall into two camps: writer-comedians and performer-comedians. Writer-types are much more cerebral in their comedy. They’re quick on the uptake, less inclined to do egregious bits and instead favor nailing the perfect word in a zinger. They churn out sketches and movies and TV shows. They’re front-of-the-class, straight-A students.

The performer types, on the other hand, are all about physicality. They do celebrity impressions and dramatic falls and make silly little faces on camera. They don’t need the perfect word for a joke — if falling through a screen door gets a laugh, that’s a win. In other words, they’re class clowns.

For example: Heidi Gardner? Performer. Colin Jost? Writer. Rachel Dratch? Performer. Paula Pell? Writer. Maya Rudolph? Performer. Kristin Wiig? Performer. Mindy Kaling? Writer.

Tina Fey? Writer. Amy Poehler? Performer.

I love and respect both of their comedic styles and how different they are, but Tina’s the textbook model of a comic writer. As a writer myself, I’ve always found her a bit more relatable. Between that relatability and the fact that I feel like I’ve always known her a bit better through her characters, she’s been my main gal.

She’s one of the funniest writers of all time. From Bossypants to iconic SNL sketches like “Mom Jeans” to the multiple iterations of Mean Girls, her writing is tight, polished, and takes no prisoners. There’s something deeply satisfying and — quite frankly — deeply aspirational about the way she writes with surgical precision.

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I’ve always been a big Amy gal too, don’t get me wrong. I love her dearly. I write Park It for a reason — Amy’s stint as Leslie Knope is nothing short of genius. But, gun to my head, it’s always come down to Tina.

In the spirit of honesty, I think it’s only fair to ‘fess up: I’m leaning more and more Amy these days!

As much as this is thanks to Good Hang, it’s also thanks to Park It. Take this week’s episode, “The Debate,” as an example. Before writing Park It, I passively consumed this episode. I thought it was one of the show’s best (still think that). I laughed at Bobby Newport’s “can’t we all just have a good time?” line when asked about his stance on abortion. It wasn’t much deeper than a good chuckle here and there.

I didn’t previously have reason to know that Amy wrote and directed this episode herself. It completely changed the way I saw it. It morphed from just a standout episode to a cornerstone of my ever-evolving Amy sentiment. It’s a whole new experience realizing that the person delivering the jokes on your screen also wrote them — and won an Emmy for it.

I’ve always had a massive amount of respect for Amy. She was one of the most iconic SNL cast members of all time. She founded the improv school that now trains the best in the industry: UCB. Her production company, Paper Kite, is the reason Broad City exists. And she helmed one of the best sitcoms in history, Parks and Rec. But something just kinda clicked when I realized she wrote this episode. It’s like the Tina-Amy dichotomy that’s lived in my head for so long started to crumble a bit.

She’s also a ray of fucking sunshine. Seriously. Every episode of Good Hang leaves me with this warm, fuzzy feeling, mainly because it feels like light seeps out of Amy at every moment. I’ve listened to interviews, read stories, talked to people who have worked with her — and it’s always the same glowing review: she’s an absolute beast and the most positive force in any room.

She very much deserves flowers, whether she’s a cerebral type or a performer type. This recent New Yorker piece says it all: “Amy Poehler may be the most liked woman in Hollywood.”

Tina will always be one of my main girls, and together they’re one insanely unstoppable duo. But while before, gun to my head, I might have picked Tina if it came down to the two of them, now I really have no idea who I might say I prefer. I’ve spent years with these women — on screens and in books and in my head. It’s incredible (and honestly so fun) that the way I see them keeps evolving, seventy-six thesis pages and a year and a half of this Substack later. And that’s character development, people.

I’d be remiss to not mention some of the episode’s best moments — it’s a REALLY good one people:

• Adult Film star Brandi Maxxx emerging as a competitor in the debate, dressing exactly like Leslie, and comparing herself to Leslie every step of the way

• When asked about his views on abortion rights, Bobby Newport whips out his iconic “why can’t we all just have fun?”

• The fourth competitor in the debate is none other than Buddy Garrity! No idea this guy’s real name – I’ll only ever see him as his Friday Night Lights character. He has such a chokehold on the stereotype of Southern conservative man wearing a 10-gallon cowboy hat and bolo tie

• Amy and Andy host a watch party for campaign donors, but have forgotten to pay their cable bill. When the TV won’t work, Ron heads out to hijack power from the cable company, which involves him literally scaling a telephone pole and hardwiring a power line. While he’s doing that, Andy kills time for the donors by acting out his favorite movies, scene by scene

• Leslie delivers this incredible speech at the debate to close it out, talking about how hard she’s willing to fight for Pawnee. Bobby Newport stares at her, dumbstruck, before saying “holy shit Leslie, that was awesome!”

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