Maybe 'Ann And Chris' Should Have Been 'Ann And Leslie'

Did Rashida Jones and Rob Lowe leave Parks & Recreation midway through the show's sixth season because the two of them had so many other appealing career options, or to cut the budget enough to earn the show its recently promised seventh season? We may never know for sure/probably both of the above. And while the episode is titled "Ann And Chris" after its departing characters, I think we can all agree that it's really the story of Ann And Leslie. As such, it reminded me of the important purpose Ann has been serving in Pawnee all along.

As Ann's final episode reminds us, the meeting of Leslie and Ann is one of the catalyzing events of the whole series: Ann attends a public meeting to demand that something be done with the treacherous pit behind her house, and Leslie pledges to make it a park. Working together on the park project is what puts Ann and Leslie in one another's lives on a regular basis, their friendship blossoms from there, and the rest is sitcom history.

Other than an early misstep involving friction over Ann seeing someone (remember Mark?) that Leslie felt she still had a claim on after having slept with him one time many years earlier, Leslie and Ann's friendship has avoided the dumb clichés that pop-cultural female friendship tend to exhibit. Leslie and Ann don't compete with one another, over men or anything else. Leslie can compliment Ann extravagantly without there being any kind of sexual undertone intended for an external male gaze. And while Ann may not be as demonstrative as Leslie — it would never occur to Ann to create a whole calendar to mark the anniversaries of all their most important friendship milestones — in friendship just as in romantic relationships, opposites do attract.

Though Ann and Leslie have, over the past several years, enjoyed one of the most mutually respectful and supportive friendships in all of television, they have had one memorable clash — in "The Fight." My favourite thing about that episode — arguably one of the best of the series — is that what initially causes the dispute between them is that Leslie has arranged for Ann to interview for a job at City Hall that Leslie thinks would bring them even closer, and when she sees Ann out at a club the night before said interview, she gets upset that Ann isn't preparing carefully enough to ensure that she lands the position. In other words, it's a spat borne of Leslie's two guiding obsessions: her friendship with Ann, and her devotion to work. Sure, things spin off from there, with accusations flying in both direction about how each combatant is running her love life wrong: Leslie is worried that Ann is being reckless in her dating life, as she recovers from being dumped (by Chris) for the first time in her life, while Ann thinks it's silly that Leslie isn't pursuing Ben, out of excessive professional ethics. So, even as things get personal and kind of hostile, what underlies the argument is each woman's concern for her friend.

Some no-fun fact-checking killjoys might question how someone like Leslie — who is clearly the world's greatest, most thoughtful friend — didn't, before that first fateful public meeting, already have someone in her life on whom to lavish the kind of attention that Leslie came to lavish on Ann. But I can easily retcon that part of the Ann and Leslie love story: clearly, all of Leslie's intense friend energy was on a low simmer while she waited for her platonic soulmate to come along.

And now that Ann's gone...god help April.