After I watched “Win, Lose or Draw,” the season-four finale of Parks & Recreation that aired last Thursday night, I knew I’d end up watching it again on Hulu the following day. And that’s not just because I loved the episode – it’s because I knew there were at least five minutes of the episode that I hadn’t seen yet.

Of all the TV shows on the air, Parks & Recreation has most fully embraced the idea of the Hulu-friendly extended director’s cut. The “Win, Lose, or Draw” director’s cut, which adds over six minutes to the episode that originally aired on NBC, has plenty to recommend it to hardcore Parks & Recreation fans – but it also botches one of the episode’s most pivotal moments. Though director’s cuts have existed in film for decades, in versions as essential as Blade Runner’s “Final Cut” and as inessential as the Justin Bieber: Never Say Never Director’s Fan Cut, the TV director’s cut is a relatively recent phenomenon. (The only other example that jumps to my mind is the DVD-only extended Glee pilot, but feel free to correct me in the comments.)

Parks & Recreation has been releasing extended episodes as far back as season one, when the “Rock Show” finale got an “extended producer’s cut,” but the last weeks of season four took the trend to a new level: Of the 22 episodes in Parks & Recreation’s fourth season, four appeared on Hulu in a “director’s cut” or “producer’s cut” version, and three came at the tail end of the season. It’s become increasing clear that the real way to watch Parks & Recreation isn’t on Thursday nights; it’s on Friday mornings, when the director’s cut of the episode alongside the version that aired the night before. (It surprises me that Parks & Recreation, which needs every live viewer it gets, would go so far to incentivize waiting to watch on Hulu the next day – but that’s another blog post.)

But the director’s cut of “Win, Lose, or Draw” is particularly tricky because it’s both better and worse than the version that originally aired. In the original version of the episode, Leslie learns that Ben has been offered a job in Washington, D.C. immediately before she goes to vote for herself for City Council. When she starts crying in the voting booth, it’s both a reaction to the idea of losing Ben and a culmination of all the emotions that have built up over the course of her campaign – now that the election is officially out of her hands, she can finally take down her armor (and unsurprisingly, Amy Poehler knocks the scene out of the park – now if ever, this is her Emmy year).

But Michael Schur’s “Win, Lose, or Draw” director’s cut reinserts a quick scene at the start of the episode that undercuts all the power of Leslie’s voting booth scene. As Leslie addresses her friends/campaign workers at brunch, she begins to deliver a thank-you speech before breaking into tears. “Again?” says April, before Tom takes over, rolling his eyes and calls Leslie “an embarrassing disaster.” The scene was rightly cut – it adds almost nothing, and detracts from both the dramatic arc of Leslie’s story and the strength her character has shown all season.

What makes things even more complicated is that the “Win, Lose or Draw” director’s cut also adds a detail that makes a storyline significantly better. The director’s cut restores a scene in which Ron, who disapproves of the whiskey selection at Leslie’s election-day party, pulls out a bottle of Lagavulin scotch and says to the bartender, “nobody touches this but me.” Later in the episode, he cancels the obviously distraught Ben’s gin and tonic order in favor of a glass of Lagavulin scotch. Though the scene exists in both episodes, it’s only in the director’s cut that we fully understand the generosity of Ron’s gesture.

As TV audiences continue to migrate away from live viewing and toward streaming, directors and producers will have more room to reinsert scenes cut from the original broadcast. It’s an exciting opportunity, but it has to be used judiciously – “more” isn’t always better, and most cut scenes are cut for a reason.

This post contains spoilers through the January 12 episode of Parks and Recreation.

If there’s been a theme to this season of Parks and Recreation, it’s accepting who you are, and all the gifts and limitations that come with that state. It’s a theme that was fully on display tonight in a somewhat subdued return for the show, as Leslie tries to figure out how to run a campaign, Ben tries to figure out life after Pawnee government, and Local Hero Pistol Pete comes to terms with his Roman Catholic childhood as the son of a single father.

After the loss of her campaign team, Leslie’s trying to convince them — and herself — that her staff represents an ass-kicking All Star team, even though it consists of a man who lines his shoes with red carpet, a man who thinks he can drive trucks (rented, hilariously, from a firm called Sissman), a campaign manager who Googlesources her wardrobe, and Andy, who rushes into Leslie’s confrontation to tell her, “Leslie, I tried to make ramen in the coffeemaker and I broke…everything.” It turns out that may be what happens when you try to turn a local election into an extravaganza. Leslie’s planned relaunch ends with a too-short red carpet, a stage out of Ron’s workshop, and a group effort to get a three-legged dog across a vast expanse of ice that was supposed to be a basketball court. The moment when Leslie admits to the increasingly disconcerted crowd (pulled together by Jerry, getting a rare, and though mixed, welcome, win), “This is the worst political event ever in history” was the best part of the event. But whether she realizes that simply being Leslie Knope — someone whose accomplishments with the parks pulled Pistol Pete out of a self-imposed exile from pubic attention and the memories of a tough childhood — is enough remains an open question.

The two people who did have come-to-Jesus moments about themselves in this episode, Ben and Anne, ended up switching jobs. Leslie roped Anne into running her campaign with a typical dose of hyperbole, telling her “Anne, you beautiful tropical fish. you’re smart as a whip and you’re cool under pressure. You’ve resuscitated a human heart in your bare hands…You haven’t? You will. You’re that good of a nurse.” And if anything, this episode proved that Anne’s a really good nurse. She listens to Pistol Pete, and figures out why he’s reluctant to take on his mantle of glory. “Right now he’s curled up in the back seat of my car,” she explains to Leslie. “Who sounds like a piece of work. But I think maybe he did the best he could as a single father. I don’t know. I might be too close to the situation.”

Then there’s Ben, who’s trying to fill post-political life with plans to revolutionize Italian cuisine with “The Low Cal Calzone Zone” and claymation projects. When he sees the latter, he’s shattered. “In my head I compared it to Avatar, Chris!” he wails. “And how could it not be longer?” I think it’s a little cheap to have Leslie keep resolving the issues with Ben and her campaign by saying things like, “I don’t care if you’re poison to my campaign. This team has a lot of heart and zero knowhow.” But if she’s going to win this thing on evidence of her hypercompetence, she’s sure setting up a lot of things that she can tell voters don’t matter because she’s so good at her job.

By Ryan McGee

If you believe the economic realities on display in several of ABC’s recent comedic programming, then you think that current vocational trends predominately favor women. In terms of television, however, this “mancession” simply doesn’t exist, especially when it comes to developing strong three-dimensional women that can support a program’s narrative. Characters like Leslie Knope from Parks and Recreation and Alicia Florrick on The Good Wife are exceptions that prove the rule, to an extent. But even their arcs are based within an ensemble structure, a structure which has strengthened the shows even while decentralizing their female protagonists.

Should shows be built around a single character pillar, regardless of gender? That’s a perfectly good question to ask. Breaking Bad didn’t really gain power until Walter White stopped overshadowing his onscreen compatriots. And Parks started to flourish only after simultaneously toning Leslie down while expanding the world around her. But it’s infinitely more likely to launch a show based around a chemistry teacher gone to seed than an overly optimistic female government worker seeking to improve her community. We’re somehow more OK with the former than the latter, at least in our entertainments.

The problem isn’t just that there are so few females in the anti-hero position. It’s that the anti-hero position is such a default in television following The Shield that it’s limited the way in which stories can be told on the small screen. Leslie Knope’s optimism is downright revolutionary in comparison to her narcissistic, self-loathing, yet self-justifying counterparts in primetime. It’s not enough to simply be an ordinary person that strives to do good only to face obstacle after obstacle in achieving that goal. We have to watch shows give us walking talking figures that are grotesque, funhouse mirror versions of our own worst impulses in order to either work through our own issues or take heart in knowing our vices pale in comparison to the Tony Sopranos, Vic Mackeys, and Jax Tellers of the world.

When females do end up in this “anti-hero” slot, the shows don’t often know what do with them. A long string of semi-recent Showtime programs have dealt with complicated women, but often in uncomplicated ways. Other than The United States of Tara, which spent three seasons coming to grips with its own conceit, the network’s signature female-led shows demonstrate women behaving badly without true context for their actions. As such, their supposedly outlandish behavior exists in a curious vacuum in which Jackie Peyton, Cathy Jamison, and Nancy Botwin pantomime grief, rage, and illicit behavior in a relatively sterilized environment. They don’t get into the true moral muck of their male counterparts, often because the shows shy away from making these women into the monsters men are so often allowed to become.

All of which makes me wonder why we’ve decided that horrible people need to be at the center of shows, when simply having flawed ones will do. Enter Cordelia Chase, someone not high on the list of even Joss Whedon acolytes as the poster child for basing an ideal television lead upon. I’m not here to start a flame war over whether or not Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel was the overall better show. But I am here to say that I tend to prefer Angel by a slim margin, and Cordelia Chase helps tip the balance in that show’s scale. That may make many of you reach for your replica Mr. Stabbys and seek to stake me. But hear me out.

Cordelia Chase appeared in the very first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on March 10, 1997, and made her finale appearance on Angel in its 100th episode nearly seven years later. Like many characters on Buffy, she was initially written as a stereotype only to reveal hidden layers along the way. Big deal, you say: so did everyone else on that show. Which is fair, but what’s intriguing about Cordelia is that her story, like that of Xander’s, was initially one in which she was an ordinary person caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Buffy was the Slayer, Willow eventually turned into the world’s most powerful witch, and Giles was both a Watcher and an excellent performer of Who covers.

But Cordy? She didn’t have anything going for her except the nagging feeling that she should be doing more with her life. Her original status as the Mean Girl stemmed from economic and social superiority, but like many pop culture figures in that position, it was a façade more than a reality, a role that she played because she saw no other way. It’s interesting that what inspires her trip to Los Angeles (and, by extension, over to Angel) after graduation from Sunnydale isn’t anything demonic, but rather mundane: tax fraud. Stripped bare of both economic comfort and psychological comfort post-graduation, she moves to LA to become an actress. Of course, what she finally finds is purpose.
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Commenter Greg Packnett, himself a legislative aide in the Wisconsin state Assembly, thinks so:

Leslie Knope is no saint. While she’s well-motivated, she’s still pretty corrupt. She regularly uses city resources to campaign, even going so far as to have the Parks & Rec Dept. give her an assistant in her official capacity so she can spend more time campaigning. I’m not conversant in Indiana law, but I’d be very surprised if that were legal.

Leslie Knope is a good representation of what corruption in public office looks like. Public officials using their official powers and resources to maintain office with the full knowledge and tacit approval and assistance of everyone around them because 1. everyone does it and 2. they believe in the causes and abilities of the officials in question.

That’s interesting, because Parks and Recreation has actually handled issues of public corruption before, and handled them with a certain amount of aplomb: when Tom goes overboard promoting Snake Juice, Chris makes him sell his shares in the Snakehole Lounge so he won’t be enriched by the event. Chris is very clear that Tom’s actions count as public corruption, and Tom, however reluctantly goes along, though he eventually chooses the private sector. And the show’s also presented Tom’s cozy relationship with the business community as ultimately kind of sketchy, even if it benefits the Parks Department on occasion.

I don’t really think that Leslie using her record in public service to run for office counts as public corruption. And the decision to hire Leslie an assistant was Ron’s, not Leslie’s — she didn’t even suggest it, the idea was entirely his. The question, I think, will be how she balances her continuing duties as an employee of the Parks Department and her campaign. And that’s a rich source of drama and comedy. Boss will pull out Hatch Act references in the next episode. Parks and Recreation could effectively satirize the tissue-thin walls politicians build between themselves and ethics violations — and it would be really useful to send up that hypocrisy and strive to do better instead of just wallowing in a perception that all politicians and public servants are hopelessly corrupt.

If Leslie Knope slips over into corruption, it would be a genuine tragedy. In her, pop culture’s created a genuinely unique character: a public servant and now a politician who really cares about the rules, for whom they aren’t just an impediment to the revolving door but a safeguard to a system she really loves.

Maybe? Because it sounds like we’re about to get a whole bunch of government-centered shows. It’s not clear whether it’s the run-up to the election, or the entertainment industry’s obsession with Scandanavia, but non-law enforcement government-themed shows suddenly seem to be a thing!

First, there’s CBS’s show about a one-term president who goes home to work at a law firm that will let him take only legal cases that resonate deeply with him. Sounds like some network has an idea for what a certain law-professor-turned-senator-turned-recession-cursed president should do with himself in January 2013! In all seriousness, though, ex-presidents are the one set of public figures that pop culture has never really figured out. There’s My Fellow Americans, which essentially says that it’s probably a good thing more former Commanders in Chief don’t go the George W. Bush brush-clearing-memoir-writing route because otherwise things can only end in wacky road-trip hijinks. Also, tears. Folks like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have given us the sense that presidents who leave office fairly young should do worthy things, but it’s hard to structure a relatable show about peace negotiations or running the Clinton Foundation, and brush-clearing, is, let’s face it, relatively dull to watch on-screen (though accidentally shooting your hunting partner in the face has comedic potential in an era where we like to consume other people’s pain). So apparently, running a law office it is. I really hope said president at some point joins forces with Leslie Knope, decides to put her in the path of his former campaign manager, and the rest is history.

Second, NBC, which really should have pursued the former show so that crossover can actually happen, is adapting Denmark’s Government, the trailer of which sounds exactly like one of the voiceovers in the German television shows Liz Lemon was supposed to watch and summarize for Jack on 30 Rock:

In between this and HBO’s Veep, we’ve got a nice little crop of female-politician shows. My one concern is that rather than serving the valuable purpose of showing us smart, competent women holding extremely important government positions, these shows will have dippy women who in vastly over their well-coiffed little heads and mine a lot of comedy from that proposition. Which I am…not so excited about. In all likelihood, Leslie Knope will just remain the Best At Everything.