Leslie Knope is my Hero

(Spoilers for the latest episode of Parks and Recreation)

A friend and I recently had a discussion (ok, a fight) about what Thursday Night TV show is best, Community or Parks and Recreation. He said Community was the best because it was bold, interesting, and doing things that no other show on television does. He's totally right. But I love Parks because it doesn't reinvent the wheel. It's pretty much just the Mary Tyler Moore show (down to a curmudgeon boss... Lou Grant and Ron Swanson would be great drinking buddies) but with more surrealism in the comedy. I grew up watching Marty Tyler Moore on Nick and Nite and it still remains one of my favorite shows of all time. The fact that Parks and Rec is just an evolved version of it is no insult on my part.

Just as a generation of women were inspired by watching Mary Richards as she made it on her own as a working woman in TV News (Oprah talks lovingly of the series and how it inspired her to be a journalist), I know that many young women look up to Lesley Knope.

Leslie is also shown as being capable and smart. What other tv character is shown that way? Not since Murphy Brown has a comedy allowed its female lead to be something other than goofily bumbling through life. Ally McBeal and the shows that followed it had flawed female characters who seemed to barely be making it through the day. Carrie on Sex in the City couldn't manage money, had an affair with a married man, and seemed to always be in one crisis after another. These characters were an interesting response to the Amazonian Superwomen of 80s television series like The Golden Girls and Designing Women. The message was that even if you didn't have everything figured out you were still a good person.

That's a great message, and one that is currently being shown on HBO's Girls, but when the entire teleision landscape for women became flightly girl-women who represented them it crowded out representations of the strong women who they could one day become. For the longest time the strongest feminist character on television was 8 year old Lisa Simpson. At least until Leslie came along.

Let's be clear, Leslie isn't perfect. She's pretty, but she admits that best friend Ann is the beautiful one. Leslie is a borderline hoarder, she eats a diet mostly made up of waffles, and she is terminally uncool. Her office is decorated with pictures of her heroes like Hillary Clinton and not her boyfriend or some pop culture icon. The first season got a lot of traction out of Leslie's tendency to talk about historical political issues with people the way most would discuss American Idol. Even the most recent show made a joke over the fact that Leslie has about 20 replicas of the Washington Memorial in her office. What is different is that in the early seasons the jokes seemed to be directed at her. Now, we laugh because that is just something Leslie would do. It's the way you chuckle when you're friend who is into gadgets says he has to new iPad on order. Yes, of course he does. It's part of the reason you love him.

Leslie's dedication to her town, her love of her city, and her desire to be in politics to help others aren't funny anymore. They are things that we respect about Leslie. They are things we admire about her and, hopefully, traits that we want in our own lives. Watching Leslie winning her election gave me such a thrill. My interest isn't in political office (oh, god, no... I am pretty much unelectable) but I do want to work in the law or government in a way that helps people. And it's nice seeing that sentiment being shown on television.

The fact is that Leslie is my hero. I also hope that she's a hero for other women out there who will feel free to talk about politics without being embarrassed or having to play dumb in the process. It's going to be interesting to see who will end up taking her place in the Parks Department (April? Tom? Damnit, not Jerry!) but I'll be tuning in to see more of Leslie Knope being herself without any apologies.