Cruel to Be Kind

 

Image Credit: NBC
Image Credit: NBC

Sonia Tsuruoka’s excellent piece in Slate about the deadpan awesomeness of Parks and Recreation’s April Ludgate needs to be read by all because this character is something we almost never see on television: a scowling young, pretty woman who doesn’t give a shit but is also frequently, surprisingly quite sweet. I’m an embarrassingly recent convert to Parks and Recreation, so I could go on and on about the fantastic cast of female comediennes or the show’s brilliant troubling of masculine types (e.g., Ron Swanson vs. Tom Haverford vs. Chis Traeger); however, I’m sure the internet or at least Jezebel already covered this about three years ago.

What makes April so wonderful, so refreshing, and so worth discussing is not just her sullenness and bitchiness but her moments of genuine sweetness. This week’s episode with the “puuupies” was a particularly fine example. Her character could SO easily have simply been a throwaway bitchy, slacker Leslie foil. Although she is kind of the anti-Leslie, she shares Leslie and the rest of the casts’ genuine decency (except toward Jerry, poor Jerry). She is the best assistant Ron Swanson could have both because of their shared apathy and also because they are both able to at once despise humanity but also really care about their friends. Their father/daughter chemistry never stops making every forced nineties sitcom depiction of the caring dad seem so lame by comparison. Continue reading “Cruel to Be Kind”