'Parks and Recreation' - 'Woman of the Year' Recap
Is it me, or does it seem oddly fitting that Pawnee would name Ron Swanson Woman of the Year? Everybody was at their best in this week's episode: Leslie was rightly pissed that Ron was recognized for work she had done herself, Ron was rightly making fun of Leslie for caring too much about meaningless awards, and Tom was rightly trying to be Pawnee's version of P Diddy-- as he should be. Speaking of Tom, I have to say I was really surprised by where that storyline went, and didn't go. I thought for sure we were going to get to see his hot (ex) wife again, as he was going to try to figure out a way to get alimony from her to invest in the club, since she's a rich doctor and totally used him for citizenship and broke his heart. I also figured that the whole thing was a scam, and it looks like I was wrong on both counts.
The resolution of this storyline is the only thing about this episode that I didn't love. It started off strong, but kind of went nowhere. We learned that Tom has a douchey friend, but what kind of surprise is that? The end, with Donna refusing to give Tom $1000, but somehow having $30,000 lying around with which she buys three shares is just completely nonsensical. Did she invent Pawnee? Because, dude. You can literally buy a single-family home in Indianapolis, home of the famed Peyton Manning-led Indianapolis Colts, for $30,000. There's no way Donna makes more than that in an entire year, yet she just dropped it on shares of a random club? Come on.
But back to the main storyline. I was 100% behind Ron after it became clear he wasn't just messing with Leslie to be cruel. Did any of you get the feeling that when they were talking about the politics of awards and how arbitrary and stupid they often are, that maybe they were no longer solely discussing the Woman of the Year award? It seemed that perhaps somebody was a little upset about being overlooked at The Golden Globes and the SAGs.
Of course, at the end, they did acknowledge that no matter how stupid and political awards are, they're still awesome when you get them, as was evidenced by Leslie snatching the plaque out of the trash. So even though the group giving out the award needs to get back into the kitchen where they belong and let real feminists like Ron Swanson do the work, Leslie's still Leslie, and she's going to accept any praise that comes her way, no matter how misdirected.
The other big thing going on in this episode is more Andy and April action. As someone who's not exactly direct when it comes to matters of the heart, I love seeing April be so awkward around Andy and drop so many hints that he's practically buried in them. However, we need to move this along a little bit.
There was some forward movement when April dumped her boyfriends, but the fact that it's been this long and Andy still seemingly has no clue about how April feels just seems to be stretching it a little bit at this point. Yes, he's supposed to be sort of dim, but if you take it too far, then we start to forget why April even likes him in the first place. I do like this storyline, but Andy needs to start being a more active participant in it.
What do you think? Should April and Andy be together, or should this whole storyline just be dropped? More importantly, is Tom Haverford going to be Pawnee's P Diddy?

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