Ron And Leslie And All About That Breakup

Given how much the Parks & Recreation writing staff loves resetting its characters with sudden and often barely plausible career shifts, it does make sense that they'd get so bored of their setting that they'd just scrap it and jump ahead three years in order to reset everything, including the actual world. And while I'm not convinced that the relocation to 2017 has been a total success -- they can knock off the hack jokes (Kevin James taking over the Bourne franchise; Elton John buying Chick-Fil-A) any time -- the oblique references to "Morningstar" were intriguing not just because they didn't seem to refer to any kind of soft sci-fi...ness, but because they hinted at a cataclysm so horrible that it could make enemies of Ron and Leslie, for multiple years. Fortunately, the only motivation stronger for Leslie than to carry a grudge is her determination to win over an intractable foe.

After Ben and Terry have to make multiple trips to get Leslie and Ron to sign some city paperwork because they refuse to be in the same room, Ben and the rest of the cast conspire to lock Ron and Leslie in the Parks department suite overnight so that they're forced to work out their issues. While Ron focuses on how to get them out (and, failing that, whittles a key he uses to lock himself in his old office and away from Leslie), Leslie's response to Ron's shutting down is -- of course -- to start flailing in all directions to try to force him to engage with her. Minor forms of torture (shoving; dropping water from a straw onto his moustache; singing the wrong words along with "We Didn't Start The Fire") wear him down enough to agree to talk to her for three minutes, and when she walks him through "Morningstar" -- he quit the Parks department without telling her he was going to, and not long afterward started developing the Morningstar apartment complex, which was built on the site of Ann's former house -- he tells her that isn't the whole story, but won't elaborate. Her guesses as to his real motivation are all wrong, and when his desperate pull of the fire alarm has no effect but to make them both wet from the sprinklers, he finally decides that he's beaten and spills.

I used to think there was nothing worse than getting Twitter-spoiled for primetime TV by everyone on the east coast when I lived in Los Angeles. Guess what's worse? Living in a place where my network TV shows don't start until midnight ET! Granted, no one I follow was giving specifics on what happened in this episode; they were just tweeting about how extraordinary and special and tearjerking it was, which is not the ideal preparation for one to watch an episode of a sitcom: that's the kind of emotional impact that should surprise the viewer, not what she goes into it expecting to feel, you know? Given the hype, I was primed for a reveal that Ron and Diane had gotten divorced during Ron and Leslie's estrangement, or that he had suddenly changed careers because he was sick or something. So it's not the show's fault that "You missed your friends" didn't have the impact on me that it did on some of you. What did work on me wasn't any of these two characters' speeches, in fact: it was this montage of Ron and Leslie, having gotten past the explanations and apologies, just goofing around like friends to the sound of Willie Nelson's "Buddy," Ron's mix-CD song pick.

"Don't ever start feeling lonely" is basically Leslie's friendship mission statement, of course, and the reason she's so good at it is knowing how to meet each friend where he or she is and give him or her what he or she needs. That's why the episode in which Ron was dreading the birthday hoopla he assumed Leslie had planned for him was so great and sweet: she had to explain to him that she'd never give him an Ann party when she knew quite well that what he would want is to sit alone in a quiet room and eat a steak. And here, too, it feels like the heartfelt-apology part of their rapprochement doesn't last as long as their drunken busyness. Leslie knows Ron doesn't want to spend the last few hours of their time together talking when they could be doing this.

I always liked the friendship of Ann and Leslie, and the show is definitely different without it. But what makes "Ron And Leslie" memorable for me is how it repositions this titular friendship. So many of the earlier Ron/Leslie clashes of the series were, as with Jack and Liz on 30 Rock, instances where she reluctantly had to accept that his advantage of years conferred wisdom she didn't want to acknowledge. But here, we see Ron vulnerable as he confesses that his friendship with her has made him better, too.