Recap – Parks & Recreation: “Citizen Knope”

I knew Leslie wouldn’t be able to relax during her suspension! This week sees Ben job hunting, Christmas present exchanges, and Leslie becoming an activist as a regular citizen.The episode begins when Leslie sneaks into a darkened P&R office during her forced exile to take work home. Chris catches her – of course he’s having a morning jog – and admonishes her attempt to continue working. He tries to take away the flash drive she wants to abscond with, but she grabs it at the last minute and sprints away.We come back to find Leslie and Ben eating in a diner where she invents a new spice to keep busy. She empties the entire salt shaker into the sugar receptacle and calls it ‘Salger’.

Ben: “What could that possibly be good on?”
Leslie: “Butterscotch Pudding.”
Ben: “Fair Enough.”

Since Leslie can’t do it in person, she gets Ann to hand out her Christmas gifts to the P&R team.

• A Mouse Rat “gold record” (over 100 sold in Pawnee) to Andy.
• For Donna, Leopard print silk robe, featuing pink fur trim and the sequined slogan “You Can Get It” applied to the back.
• She gifts Tom with a watch and a mini-throne (because he missed the Jay-Z / Kanye West “Watch the Throne tour”). She removed the ‘stupid clock’ from the watch, and replaced it with the words, “Baller Time”.
• April’s gift is a fantasy-style painting where she’s holding the severed heads of the Black Eyed Peas. I noticed a shirtless Andy behind her – wonder if she commissioned it from Jerry?
• Ron gets a keyfob that automatically shuts both of his office doors.
  Ron: “Every year I give Leslie the same present I give everyone, a crisp twenty dollar bill. And every year she gets me something thoughtful and personal. It makes me furious.”
• Aptly, she gives socks to Jerry.
  Jerry: “Socks. She gets me.”

Leslie meets with her advisors. They tell her to ‘take a beat’ and relax. Of course, this is something she simply cannot do. After that quick scene we go to Ben who is having a job interview to do in-house accounting for an accounting firm. A bit of trivia: the guy he meets with is the ‘Quick Books Pro’ teacher from the Season 2 Episode “Leslie’s House”.

Back at the office, the gang is brainstorming gifts for Leslie. April suggests Marshmallow Fluff – which Andy has stuck his hand into a la Winnie the Pooh. Tom rushes in with a sign he’s prepared to help make their decision. He says it will “drag the department into the 20th century”.

Jerry: “Tom, it’s the 21st Century.”
Tom: “I know. I’d settle for getting you into the 20th.”
He’s generated a word cloud based on Leslie’s emails and memos. Ron circles ‘cute’, ‘office’, and ‘work’ and proposes a miniature wooden model of the office. Ann stands up and circles ‘candy’, amends the proposal to a gingerbread version – to which Ron quietly protests. They all enthusiastically agree with Ann’s version and leave Ron wondering what happened.
Ben and Leslie are eating dinner where Ben declares, “I love me a Calzone.“ It’s a callback to the Season 3 episode: “Ron & Tammy Part 2”where Ben suggests they feed the Pawnee Police Force Calzones, to which Leslie replies, “Calzones are like pizzas but they’re harder to eat. They’re dumb, and so was that idea.” When he mentions he’ll get a job offer from the interview he went on, she urges him to take some time to find a job he’ll love. His suggestion to her frustration with having to refrain from working is to help Pawnee from the ‘outside’. She gets an idea to form an action committee and leaves in the middle of dinner. Ben tells Andy and April that he can hear them breathing and gives them permission to finish Leslie’s dinner. It was pretty funny to watch them burst out from behind the doors behind him.

Leslie calls her new committee the “Parks Committee of Pawnee”, or “PCP”.
Leslie: “Like the drug PCP, we are so fast acting and powerful we should be illegal.”

Back at the Parks Department, they’re putting together the gingerbread office. Andy made a rock and roll “candy Andy”. Ron says he didn’t do anything, but April took care of it. She made a marshmallow Ron – with crossed arms made of licorice “because he’s mad at all the other marshmallow workers for annoying him.”

Ben has another interview, this time with Dennis Feinstien – the scent maven of Pawnee. During the interview, Dennis tells Ben he’d fire his current CFO – who is attending the meeting. When he finds out ‘Eddie’ has kids and shouldn’t be fired, he turns down the job and leaves. I’m not sure what purpose this scene had, but it’s always amusing to see Dennis show up.

Jerry and Donna hold a meeting to determine which new games they should provide for the rec center. ‘[easyazon-link asin=”B00000DMF6″]Chutes and Ladders[/easyazon-link]’ is proposed (by guest star Robin Thorsen from “The Guild”). In true Pawnee community meeting fashion, she is met with a chant of “Her daughter is an idiot” from another attendee. Leslie then stands up and starts to present her ‘PCP’ agenda, which is a quick-fire reading of their demands.
Leslie: “The fact that [easyazon-link asin=”B00000IWH6″]Yahtzee[/easyazon-link] is not in the rec center is a tragedy on par with human trafficking.”

Ron is having trouble gluing the graham crackers together for Leslie’s Christmas gift. He is obviously out of his element when he’s not woodworking.

Ron: “Okay new plan. Everyone else makes this candy house, and I make myself useful elsewhere.”

Down the hall, Leslie bursts into Chris Traeger’s office to meet with him as a ‘concerned citizen’ and not a city employee. Just before she ends her angry tirade, she stops to give him a Christmas gift. It’s a stopwatch that records his jogging time and then sends it to his computer via bluetooth. It’s met with a gleeful peck on the cheek, after which Leslie switches gears to spit at him, “See you in hell.”Leslie’s advisors resign when they present the results of her popularity polls. She’s gone from 26% to 1%. Ann has lunch with Leslie to console her. This sequence was heartbreaking. We want to root for Leslie’s success in everything she does, and she’s utterly gutted when she realizes she’s a temporary failure in her job and in her bid to become a councilwoman.

Ben then runs into Jean-Ralphio who is on his way to a day spa for a Brazilian wax. Ben reveals that he’s decided to take the job from the accounting firm.
Jean-Ralphio: “You would be an accountant… for accountants.”
Ben: “Yeah.”
Jean-Ralphio: “So at this accounting firm, you would have the boring job.”

Jean-Ralphio tries to convince Ben to do something frivolous. by quoting the girl who waxes him.
Jean-Ralphio: “If you don’t love what you do, then why do it? Then she ripped the hair from my B-hole.”
Gross.

Leslie meets with Chris to talk about her failed campaign. They both apologise to each other.
Leslie: “I’m the one that needs to apologise. I got you involved with ‘PCP’. But I’m starting a new group, ‘LSD’. Leslie’s Sorry Division.”

He gives her a Christmas present. It’s the return of her badge. I’ve vacillated between liking and being irritated with Chris this season. I’m used to him being the ‘good guy’ and letting someone else give bad news. In some ways it’s refreshing to see him as the hard-ass, but I hate that it means he’s enforcing policies that don’t benefit anyone. When Ben meets her in the hallway as she leaves Chris’ office, he tells her he’s turned down the job and has no immediate plans. She tells him she’s proud of him and she looks happy that he’s finally happy with his decision. He inexplicably leaves her, and she goes into her office where they’re throwing a party to give her the gingerbread mini-office. Ron then confesses that he didn’t participate.
Ron: “Turns out I cannot make a gingerbread house. Which would bother me if I were an eight-year old girl.”
This is the prelude to show him presenting her with the gift he’s decided to make for her instead, a mini city council office (made of wood) – and reveals that they will be her campaign advisors. They’ve all come up with tasks they’ve decided to undertake:

• April Ludgate: Youth Outreach and Director of New Media
• Tom Haverford: Image Consultant and ‘Swagger Coach’ (hilarious)
• Ann Perkins: Office Manager and Volunteer Coordinator
• Andy Dwyer: Security, Sweets, Bodyman, Javelin if need be
• Donna Meagle: ‘Transpo’ – in other words, offering rides in her Benz
• In true Jerry fashion, he claims he didn’t know they had to come up with titles
• Ron Swanson: “any other damn thing you might need.”

I have to admit, this scene really choked me up. To see the normally buttoned-down Ron holding back tears… amazing acting from Nick Offerman. Leslie protests, and Ron insists.
Leslie: “It’s so much work. I can’t ask you to put your lives on hold.”
Ron: “Find one person here who you haven’t helped by putting your life on hold.”

After the last break, we get the tag. It shows Jean-Ralphio taking the accounting job he convinced Ben to turn down. He is fired immediately when he hits on one of the accountants and Mr. Quick-Books pro finds out his entire resume is fake.

I really enjoyed the easter egg callbacks to previous episodes, and they managed to work them in subtly. And seeing Ron out of his element was on the edge of cringe-worthiness. Overall, some brilliant acting and a touching script made this one of the best episodes of the season. It almost makes up for the fact that this is the episode that leads into their December hiatus.
NBC’s [easyazon-link asin=”B002DPPH6W”]Parks & Recreation[/easyazon-link] will return in January with “The Comeback Kid”.