D.C. and BBQ

Parks and Recreation, S05E01

In the season premiere of this show Leslie visited Ben in Washington, D.C. with Andy.  She soon discovered that despite being a councilwoman, she couldn't hardly compare to the tall and "beautiful" women who worked around Capital Hill.  Ron took up the task of doing the employee appreciation barbecue that Leslie had always thrown.  However, his idea to just make it about the meat and no thrills (or vegetables) ended up blowing up in his face.

Leslie's story made a little sad to see her comparing herself to the successful ladies involved in national government.  Especially when one lady commented that her grandmother had the same position as Leslie and it was merely an excuse to "get her out of the house."  Thankfully, Leslie had Andy by her side, who isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but is smart enough to know that no one works as hard as Leslie and there was no reason for her to be putting herself down.  Just love that Andy.  Without him, Leslie might have gotten discouraged that her petition was just going into a pile and not have decided to start cleaning up the river herself.  This story could have gone in a much worse direction, but I was glad it didn't.  I would have hated to see Leslie start to question whether she was good enough to stay with Ben.  I mean, after all, it was pretty much Leslie who got Ben back on his feet and gave him the opportunity to show he could be a good enough to be a Washington-based campaign manager.  For now, we will still get to see Leslie delighting in checking out Ben's ass--haha!

Ron's story was great.  This is just how they needed to start things.  I loved that everyone laughed when Chris said that it was Ron who was leading the meeting in the conference room.  But it was funnier that Ron, who sort of has natural leadership qualities (or at least if he gives a command, you'd expect anyone to listen to him), is actually a horrible organizer.  His policy for absolutely no vegetables at his barbecue cracked me up.  The death stare he gave Jerry when he asked,

Can we at least have corn on the cob?

 made me laugh so hard.  Love that Ron is so dead-set against vegetables!  Later, when things were falling apart, it was amazing that he had really no intentions of doing anything but grilling up some meat (and possibly supplying some beers) when he didn't even supply them with plates!  What the hell...  It showed me a lot that Ron really needs to only be in charge of one single thing in an event and asking him to do more than that is overwhelming for him.  Case in point (during one of my favorite scenes), when the employees were all complaining to him about hunger and peeing and thirst, he just packed up his meat and drove off in a puff of smoke that was trailing from his grill that was still lit!  It's great to see Ron like this because he never had a need to be the answer guy when Leslie was around.  If this is an indication of sides of Ron we'll get to see now that he'll have to do his job, then it's gonna be a great season.

I didn't find Tom and Ann's charade to be that entertaining, but I did like Tom moaning like a child about being hungry.  What was even better than that was when Chris ran up to Tom and Ann, claiming that he had smuggled in some candy for them to enjoy while Ron was cooking the meat.  Tom's voice when he saw that they were just raisins ("nature's candy"--oh, Chris), was hilarious.  Anyway, Rob Lowe in that striped T-shirt sort of made me chuckle too.  He just looked like a goofy kid in that, which matches his character Chris pretty well, though.

This was a pretty good start to the show.  I'd like to see more of April next time, and I'd like to continue to see more of Ron's struggles to do things without Leslie there to help him.  I'm also sort of interested to see what Leslie is going to accomplish first as being a councilwoman.  I hope after her long journey to get there, she really gets to something really special for Pawnee.