7 Reasons Why Orin is the Best Parks and Rec Character [Guest Poster: Rebecca]

I know I’m way late on the Parks and Recreation train, but I’ve finally gotten around to watching and finishing what I consider one of the greatest, funniest, most feminist and diverse network television shows. One of the few shows that made me actually laugh out loud, Parks and Rec was a roller coaster of emotion as we watched the Pawnee Parks Department evolve and change throughout the years.

In a tear-jerker of a final episode, we were shown the fates of all of our favorite characters: Leslie and Ben take on Washington, April and Andy settle down and have a family, Jerry/Garry/Larry/Terry/Barry gets his dream job, Craig finds his happy ending, Donna and Tom go on to great success, etc.; however, I noticed a very important person was missing.

Orin.

April’s friend Orin, a brooding and mysterious enigma of a person, randomly appears when he’s least expected, which is what makes his character is so incredible. I always found Orin’s scenes to be the highlights of the episodes in which he popped up, so I feel that the producers cheated Orin by not fleshing out his future.

Objectively speaking, Orin is the best. He’s relatable, he’s honest, and he’s hilarious without trying to be. But Orin is also so much more than that: he’s inspirational and a revolutionary, someone who strives to expose injustices and subvert oppressive social norms.

Here are 7 reasons why Orin is the minor character none of us deserved:

1. He rejects authority. 

Orin proves that oppressive restrictions are meant to be challenged and broken. Whether it be violently removing Native Americans from their homes or rigging the socioeconomic system to force people of color into “ghetto” neighborhoods, the American government has always told certain groups of people what spaces they can and can’t inhabit. In this scene, Orin defiantly takes a stand against these rules and challenges authority by attempting to claim his own territory.

2. He forces us to confront our own mortality.

Death is scary. It’s permanent, painful, and worst of all, inevitable; we all will die someday. That can be difficult for many people to come to terms with, but Orin inspires us to incorporate death into everyday conversations to familiarize ourselves with the concept. By stripping away death’s mystique and the power of uncertainty it holds over us, we eliminate the fear, allowing us to live freely and uninhibited.

3. He disrupts and subverts our idea of “art.”

Unless art is mainstream and digestible by the masses, it often goes unappreciated. How often have you heard someone say “I could have done that!” when describing a minimalist art piece? We are so accustomed to thinking of art as Van Gogh or Picasso that we forget that art is limitless. There are infinite types of art that hold infinite meanings to both the artist and the viewer. Orin’s art exhibit reminds us that there is more than one type of art, and that different types of art appeal to different groups of people.

4. He revealed the hypocrisy that infiltrates the American job search process.

Entry level positions require 3-5 years of experience. Companies post openings to online job boards when they already have a candidate in mind. Some places won’t accept any applicants without a STEM degree, regardless of the position. The job searching process is infuriatingly frustrating and full of hypocrisies and favoritism. Orin helped expose this when he was instantly dismissed as an applicant for the animal control director position. Furthermore, he challenged the job search process by refusing to comply with the strict guidelines dictated by the traditional resume.

5. He reminded us introverts that it’s still possible to have a functioning social life.

It’s clear that Orin is an introvert — he often looks uncomfortable in social situations and is not one to make friends with everyone he meets; however, he proves that it’s still possible to make friends and have a social life. He gets invited to all kinds of parties and social events and has a solid friend base. He even overcomes this social anxiety to attend job interviews and create his own public art projects.

6. He rejects traditional gender roles.

From painting his nails to taking on the role of April’s mother, Orin shows viewers that gender norms are outdated and ridiculous. He proves that men can be feminine and that women can be masculine. Additionally, as illustrated in this scene, his relationship with Champion subverts traditional marriage roles; Orin takes on the more paternal and authoritative role, while Champion remains in the kitchen, preparing dinner.

7. He revealed truths that awoke our third eyes.

Power corrupts, and “money is the root of all evil,” but we forget those things in our materialistic, capitalistic society. We become swept up in what our media and government tells us that we unconsciously forget to critique them, the very people who write our narrative. We should always be suspicious of authority, unjust laws, and those who rise in the system in order to maintain oppressive social norms. Orin reminds us to challenge those who hold power and to keep our eyes — and ears — open as we navigate through society.

Orin is a complex and fascinating part of the Parks and Rec universe, one who brings to light many revelations about society and the human condition, but often goes ignored or unappreciated by fans and producers alike.

I, for one, am thankful for the raw honesty and insight that Orin brought to Parks and Rec, and I hope that one day we learn what happened to him in 2017 and beyond.

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The Rise of Female-Led Sitcoms: A Dialogue Between Jenn and Jaime

Jaime Poland and I have been friends for a long time. Because we've been friends for a long time, we often have in-depth conversations about our favorite television shows. Jaime was a Creative Writing major in college with a minor in film so I think that her opinion is always valid whenever criticisms or discussions of pop culture are on the table. She's smart and she has a lot of great opinions. And she's also one of my favorite people in the entire world. So when I asked if she would sit down with me via Google Hangout (which took both of us -- grown, adult women with college degrees -- an absurd amount of time to figure out) and discuss the rise of female-led sitcoms and female-led television series in the past few years, she was more than happy to oblige. (As if she had a choice in the matter, let's be honest.)

So below, we discuss some of the most recent television developments in terms of feminism and comedy. We talk about why, exactly, the female-led sitcom is on the rise and what makes these series so appealing and intriguing to the masses. We also discuss what can be gleaned from a female-led series that is missing from a male-driven show. Enjoy!

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Pawnee: First In Friendship (A Goodbye to 'Parks and Recreation')

I started watching Parks and Recreation because I watched Community. Every week, I would work on my reviews as the show would be airing and every week I thought: "Maybe I should take the time to marathon this entire show." When I finally did decide to marathon the NBC series, I was so enamored with it -- with the comedy and the heart and the spirit of the show. The thing about Parks and Rec was that it has always been a series founded on the idea of optimism and true friendship. I like New Girl a lot. I enjoy The Mindy Project. Community is pretty great and The Office was fantastic and iconic. But none of those comedies perfectly exemplifies the idea of optimism like Parks and Rec does. This is a show that chooses to focus on characters who genuinely and truly love each other, who are good at their jobs, who are passionate and driven (even if their goals are seemingly insignificant like turning a hole into a park). The reason that this show has been successful for so long and the reason it's beloved by critics and fans alike is because it represents the best of humanity. And with everything happening in this world and on television that can be so heavy and so dark and so violent and upsetting, it's always nice to know that you can return to Pawnee, Indiana and feel something hopeful swell in your chest as you watch Leslie Knope and Ron Swanson share a conversation over a plate of breakfast food.

Goodbyes aren't easy, especially in the realm of television. As I was contemplating why it's difficult to say goodbye to Parks and Rec, I realized an apt metaphor: It's like when you're a child and your parents take you to a park to play outside or a community pool to swim. I always loved those days during the summer when you could play pretend and run around or swim laps until your hair turned green and stiff from the chlorine. When the sun began to dip below the horizon and your parents started packing up the chairs and towels, all you wanted was just a few more moments to stay in the world of pretend. I once read on Tumblr that the feeling of finishing a show was sad "because... you just want to stay inside that world for a little bit longer, but you can't."

If we could all stay in Pawnee for another season or two or three, I think we would. And I think the cast would, too. The beauty though of Parks and Rec was that it never ran out of stories to tell, even at the end of its run. Often times, when shows approach their conclusions, plots become thinner (or recycled from previous seasons) and the show you once knew and loved is a shadow of its former self. Not so with this lovely NBC series, though. Arguably the final season of Parks has been stronger than some of its earlier years because it remained true to its characters, focused on relationships and emotional stories, and reminded everyone why they fell in love with Pawnee in the first place.

So below, I decided to say goodbye to the show the only way I know how: through writing thank-you notes to the actors/characters and reminding everyone of what we have learned throughout the last seven years in Pawnee, Indiana.

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Report Cards Are In! (Grading This Season of My Favorite Shows)

I never worried about report card days in school. I knew, usually without fail, that I would see all A’s and B’s. I had never even gotten a C on a progress report or a report card until college (darn you, Microeconomics course!). I was always an overachiever and a perfectionist and, to be honest, I am still the exact same way today. Since kids all across the country are wrapping up their classes and getting ready for summer, receiving their report cards and taking their finals, I thought it only appropriate that I would present my TV report card for this season!

So below the cut, get ready to get graded: I scored the most recent seasons of some of my television shows, noted the best episodes of their season, and explained why these shows got the grades that they did. Cross your fingers and close your eyes, then open them and see this year’s TV report card.

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Will-They-Won't-They: A Study in the Success & Dangers Of This Trope

My darling friend Julieta tweeted something recently that really made me think. She wrote: “I don’t understand why TV writers in general are so scared of having their characters fall in love and then be in long-term, committed relationships.” Rather than, as Julieta noted, have characters fall in love and be in committed relationships, most comedies fall into the largest pothole in the world (reminiscent of this one): the hole of the “will-they-won’t-they” relationship.

Now, these relationships have both merits and drawbacks. A good television series won’t drag out the “will-they-won’t-they” for seasons upon seasons without any seeming conclusion, be it good or bad. A good television series will recognize the fact that this relationship is a tool and a powerful one at that: it provides the show with an added layer of tension that lures audience members in and promises them romance and intrigue. A good television show will use this relationship to its advantage by having it GO somewhere. A good television show will realize that there is a precise and delicately balanced window of time in which their characters need to act on their romantic tension, lest the audience feel deceived at best and downright infuriated at worst at a lack of development. A good television show cannot draw out a “will-they-won’t-they” forever, because if they do, they won’t be a good television show anymore.

Relationships are the hinge on which all of humanity swings, so it makes sense that it is the hinge on which television sitcoms seem to swing as well. There are friendships and families and romantic relationships on television just as there are in real life. The problem, however, is that television writers often find it so difficult to mimic real-life relationships. Why is this? Because writers are afraid that their audiences are restless and fickle and if they commit to one thing for too long – one character or one romantic pairing or one plot – that their fans will lose interest. “Will-they-won’t-they” relationships are the obvious (quick) remedy to this fear of audience boredom and subsequent abandonment if, and only if, they are executed correctly.

What I thought I might do is take a look at some of the “will-they-won’t-they” relationships that have piqued my interest over the years and discuss the merits and drawbacks of each as they affect the television comedy series as a whole.

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It's A Man's, Man's, Man's World (But It Would Be Nothing Without A Woman)

I feel like the majority of the stories that I post here begin with "I was talking to my friend Kim." But I was talking to my friend Kim recently about Community and some qualms we have been having with the writing. I told her that what the show truly needs is to return to a balanced writing staff a la season one with an equal number of both males and females. That led me down an interesting rabbit hole in attempting to discover exactly HOW many episodes per season of Community were written or co-written by female writers. After I made a rather startling discovery, I decided to apply this investigative work to more of my favorite network television comedies and made some more pretty starling discoveries, as well as developed a hypothesis based on my raw data. (Look at me sounding all science-y and stuff! You'd hardly know this was a writing blog.)

So, before I break down each show and its seasons, let me explain what you'll be reading and how I recovered the data/what it means:

The shows: I studied Community, New Girl, Parks and Recreation, The Office, and (to a lesser extent) The Mindy Project.

How I came up with the data: I researched the episodes in each season that have aired. (*Now updated since the seasons are over, to reflect the final percentages!) If a single episode was written solely by a woman or by a pair of women, I counted it as 1 point. My reasoning, of course, is that I am mostly focusing on the number of episodes penned by women. It doesn't matter if one or two or a hundred women write an episode: it counts as one episode. If a single episode was written by a writing team consisting of a male and female, I counted it as 1/2 of a point. I gave women like Annie Mebane and Amy Poehler credit if they wrote with a partner because, duh, they still wrote something!

What it all means: This data is obviously a baseline, not an end-all-be-all set of numbers. A variety of factors played into the percentages -- the number of episodes per season is, of course, a major factor. The larger number of episodes in a season, the less likely that there is a large percentage of episodes written by females (as sad as that is to type). Additionally, the size of the writing staff and the diversity among the staff plays a factor in the number of episodes written by women. Shows with a high turnover rate among the writing staff will also factor into this number. Again: it's not a conclusive set of data, but it's definitely interesting to watch the trend among certain shows rise and fall.

And now, without further adieu, let's take a look at some of the shows on my list!

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Top 10 Reasons I'll Miss Chris Traeger (As Told Through GIFs)

What makes Chris Traeger such a delightful character? Is it his optimism in the face of just about every obstacle you can imagine? Is it his tendency to occasionally become self-deprecating? Is it his relationship with Ben Wyatt? Is it his use of the word “literally”? Is it his love for his colleagues and endless care for them? Is it his obsession with healthy food and leafy greens? His devotion to exercise? Or is it the way that he simply exists, bouncing from person to person and job to job, interacting and somehow making Parks and Recreation a wittier, more entertaining series?

(Spoiler alert: It’s all of these things and more.) 

I’m going to miss Rob Lowe as the handsome, energetic, happy Chris Traeger and thought I’d count down ten of the reasons I’ll miss him most of all. So grab a healthy smoothie and maybe do some crunches while you read, because we’re counting them down… now!

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Top 10 Reasons I'll Miss Ann Perkins (As Told Through GIFs)

I’m still not entirely convinced that my beautiful tropical fish, Ann Perkins, is leaving Parks and Recreation this Thursday. But since it’s actually happening (*cries*), I thought I would put together a little going-away package for our favorite Pawnee nurse/expectant mother. I love Parks and Rec and I have always loved Ann as a character. She’s sweet and naïve sometimes, but she’s also witty and snarky. She’s Leslie Knope’s better half (she shares the title with Ben) and has always been there for her best friend, though she hasn’t always done the right thing. Out of all of the characters on the series, I’ve related to Ann the most. She’s had a crazy love life, has been unsure of what she’s doing, but has always had a best friend beside her to pull her through the insanity. She’s been a shoulder to lean on, to cry on, and a ray of sunshine in Pawnee.

As she and Chris depart, let’s relive some of the reasons I’ll miss them most, as expressed through GIFs! (You can find Chris’ post here.) So long, farewell, my cunning, pliable, chestnut-haired sunfish. I will always love you.

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Jenn's Pick: Top 10 Episodes of "Parks and Recreation"

Sometimes, peer pressure is a good thing. It is because of peer pressure – because of everyone talking about and flailing over and quoting the series – that I started marathoning Parks and Recreation. I had seen some episodes, of course, because the show is on directly after Community, but I usually only half-watched at best. I decided that until I could give my full attention to the show, I would hold off on a marathon. So when I began the series, I already anticipated enjoying it. I didn’t expect that I would love it as much as I do, nor that I would find it to be one of the most positive, cohesive, astounding little comedies ever.

Parks and Recreation recently celebrated their 100th episode, which is an amazing feat in and of itself. In honor of their 100th episode, I decided that I would count down ten of my absolute favorite Parks episodes of all time. As I compiled my list, I found it to be quite difficult. Reading through the episode names and descriptions, I was constantly struck with “oh but I LOVED this episode” or “but this one had THAT scene in it,” making my narrowing to ten a troublesome feat. After much inward debate (and a smidge of cheating on my part), I managed to compile my list.

So grab your waffles and your Li’l Sebastian plushy, because we’re about to count down my favorite Parks and Recreation episodes!

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Character Appreciation Post: Ben Wyatt ("Parks and Recreation")

There are a few television shows that I’ve been convinced to watch solely because of the influence that my Twitter followers have had on me. One of these shows is Suits; the other is Parks and Recreation. As many of you who follow me know, I’m currently four and a half seasons deep into my marathon of the series, and loving every single moment of it.

“But Jenn,” you gasp, “I can’t believe you’ve never watched Parks and Rec before!”

I, in fact, HAVE watched many Parks and Rec episodes… just not consistently. When 8 PM rolls around on Thursday nights, my attention is focused solely on one thing – Community. And by the time 8:30 draws near, I’m busied with finding a download of the episode so that I can start on my notes for the following morning’s blog-review. I found myself half-watching episodes of Parks and Rec, while scouring for links on the Internet for Community. I knew enough about the series when I started my marathon – I knew Ben and Leslie would eventually be together; I knew who each of the characters were; I knew about Jerry’s tendency to ruin… well, everything. 

But I didn’t truly know each of these characters until I watched the series from the beginning. And then I fell in love with each of these characters, including one we will discuss and praise today: Ben Wyatt.

Jaime (@elspunko) is my faithful best friend and also my companion in compiling these Character Appreciation Posts. As I said our introductory post a while ago, these entries aren’t necessarily meant to highlight characters that are disregarded by viewers. Rather, they are meant to celebrate characters for their individual quirks, hang-ups, and arcs. Our Character Appreciation Posts strive to fill you up with feels, but also illuminate the qualities that make each of these characters worthy of our time. 

And Ben Wyatt is definitely worthy of our time.

In an ensemble series like Parks and Rec, it’s easy for certain characters to get overlooked or forgotten. But one thing I truly admire about this series (and one thing that is on my wish-list for season five of Community) is its constant shuffling of pairings – one episode may see a Chris/Ann, Ben/Leslie, and Ron/Donna/Tom storyline; the next episode may feature a Leslie/Ron/, Chris/Jerry, and Ben/April/Andy plot. And what’s beautiful and wonderful about this series – something that I have mentioned to Jaime as I’ve been marathoning – is that each of these pairings WORKS. Everyone on the show has chemistry with everyone else, which makes it genuinely difficult to choose a favorite friendship or favorite platonic pairing. It’s something really rare and magical to see on a series… especially considering the fact that Ben and Chris weren’t introduced until the very end of the second season, and yet both characters melded seamlessly into the fabric of the show.

But back to Ben Wyatt – I was warned that Adam Scott would ruin my life and yet, here I sit, still completely ruined by his perfect portrayal of a lovable, nerdy, sweet accountant. And I think that I’ve settled on the reason why I love Ben Wyatt (and why I love Nick Miller and why I love Jim Halpert): he’s real. Each character on the series is written with flaws, because flaws make us human. Each character on Parks and Rec and on New Girl and on Community and The Office and nearly every other show on television is written so that we love them, but also sometimes disagree with them. What makes Ben so swoon-worthy is the fact that he’s realistic – he’s imperfect, but he cares. He’s flawed, but he loves. He’s weird and dorky but he’s also compassionate and fun. That’s what makes a good romantic lead, in my opinion – not this intricate construction of sappy lines and lingering looks, but the realistic portrayal of someone who is flawed but who loves deeply. And without a doubt, Ben truly loves Leslie and it shows in the way that he cares for and supports her throughout the series.

So now, Jaime and I will talk about Ben Wyatt’s wonderful stories and qualities. Her insights will be italicized throughout the post! So are you ready? Swing by the Low Cal Calzone Zone and join as we celebrate Ben Wyatt!

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