She's Leslie Knope

I’m beginning to think that there are two kinds of people in this world: people who love NBC’s Parks and Recreation and those who have never watched it. It’s hard to imagine anyone watching episodes like the one that aired last night and not experience even the tiniest of feelings. It’s that rare show that can turn you around from rolling on the floor with laughter one minute on the verge of tears the next. It’s rather skilled in that way.

But do you know one of the things I love the most about this show?

The handling of Leslie Knope.

During the short-lived first season, you couldn’t help but make comparisons to Steve Carell’s Michael Scott. The publicity for the show prior to the series premiere touted it as a successor to The Office, which is understandable given its pedigree behind the scenes. She was sillier, less competent at her work, and most of her co-workers seemed to show a mild annoyance for her and often placed her at the butt of jokes.

However, Leslie grew. And she grew a lot.

The Girls Who Deserved Better: Dissecting the Female Companions of RTD's Doctor Who

Change is a funny thing. Some people adapt to change quite well while others may be stubborn and refuse to accept any changes.

Doctor Who is a show where change is inevitable. It would have to be comfortable with making changes for a show that boasts nearly fifty years of history. Doctors change, companions come and leave, the TARDIS gets several makeovers, the production values change, and, yes, even head writers change.

Russell T. Davies can be credited with resurrecting Doctor Who in 2005 after being off the air since 1989 (not counting the 1996 television film that the BBC co-produced with US-based companies Universal and FOX, of course, but that mess is best left forgotten). For a new generation of fans, the Davies-produced years became their introduction to the series. This was the case for me when I began watching the show a year after its re-debut. During Davies’ run, we saw two Doctors, three full-time companions (and several one-off or part-time ones), the return of old villains and the creation of new ones, a time war, and a whole slew of problems.

Now, it’s easy to forget the shortcomings of Davies’ era when we’ve got a new head writer in the form of Steven Moffat to pin all of our frustrations on. It’s easy to re-imagine that period of the show’s history as a magical time where everything was perfect utopia. It’s like having that one roommate you would passive-aggressively whine about when they don’t pick up their mess and you spend their whole tenure wishing someone else could take their place, even though you got along with them at times. However, when they move out and you get another roommate who is okay too, but bothers you in different ways, you’re left with this idealization of how your previous roommate used to be.

It’s like that.