Tammy 2 Is Still First In Our Hearts

Much has been written, including by me, about how unlikely it is that Parks & Recreation manages to be a great and funny show even while it insists upon keeping its characters pretty real and pretty decent -- a mandate that would have sunk the likes of Seinfeld or even Happy Endings before their pilot scripts had even gone through a first draft. As it started its "farewell season," in fact, Parks seemed like maybe it was going to give a redemption arc even to the characters who came closest to villainy. But while Councilman Jamm turned himself into such a pathetic creature that even 2017 foes Ron and Leslie -- what did happen with this "Morningstar" we keep hearing about, anyway?! -- had to put aside their personal differences in order to try to restore him to his former self, there could be no change of heart for the woman who had brought him so low in the first place. Tammy 2 continues to reign in Hell.

I feel like most people know that Nick "Ron" Offerman and Megan "Tammy 2" Mullally are repping for married love better, harder, and more effectively than nearly anyone in our culture; they're like the Obamas of comedy. Listen to their WTF episode and tell me I'm wrong about this.

Not to put too much pressure on them but if Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman ever break up, love is dead everywhere forever.

— Tara Ariano (@TaraAriano) March 9, 2012

But even if you didn't know the performers' real-life backstory, the constantly-simmering, occasionally explosive, hate-sex-seasoned cauldron that is Ron and Tammy 2's relationship has been one of the show's funnest. Given how crazy Offerman and Mullally seem to be for each other in actuality, it's easy to buy that it would only take a few cranks of temperament for their characters to be...actually crazy about each other -- like, get-married-in-the-dead-of-night, get-Caribbean-braids, end-up-in-jail-in-a-kimono-and-just-the-sides-of-your-moustache crazy.

And while nearly every other Pawnee antagonist has been imbued with some degree of likability -- not just Jamm, in the second of last night's two episodes, but also Dr. Saperstein and even, to a degree, Joan Callamezzo -- it's hard to imagine a character as evil as Tammy 2 getting an image makeover before the show wraps up for good. Jamm is only the latest guy that we know of that she's taken up with in an attempt to get back at Ron (see also: Tom). Even Ron has figured out, after multiple horrendous and probably STD-ridden setbacks that Tammy 2 is too much for even his constitution to take, and this is a man who doesn't only survive on scotch and steak but probably hasn't eaten a vegetable in this millennium.

Tammy 2 is so terrible, in fact, that preparing Jamm to extract himself from her clutches (and by "clutches," I don't even mean "crotch," since her sexual magnetism is so intense that it works even on men she hasn't actually boned yet) requires Ron to deploy the particular set of skills he's developed from his own trials and errors, with Leslie as his lovely/terrifying assistant.

(However long Amy Poehler's been working on that pitch-perfect Tammy 2 impression? 100% worth it. If Megan Mullally ever loses her voice the night before an ADR session, Poehler could step in and no one would know the difference.)

As refreshing as it can be for Parks viewers to see the show's humour arise from the characters' love for one another -- as when a fight between Tom and Ben, over the former's bad introduction of the latter, is settled by the reading of a sentimental speech and subsequent helpless sobbing all around -- occasionally, the show also needs its edge, and not from someone whose vulnerability we just haven't yet had a chance to find out about. So even as Jamm evolves from private-bathroom-befouler to pathetic pre-sex-slave, it's reassuring to learn that Tammy 2 is still a monster through and through.

And through.