The great genius of Will Ferrell is his capacity for embodying pompous, privileged blowhards in movies that critique them and gives them opportunities to grow—his actorly portfolio is one in which almost no one is irredeemable. In the past, he’s done this with sexist news anchors in the 1970s and NASCAR drivers in our own day. And now he’s taking on some of the most cosseted, self-important people in America: our politicians. What looks great about The Campaign is how squarely it’s aimed at the practices of the modern election, rather than at voters or democracy itself:

It’s all there: the John Edwards-like obsession with looks, the conviction that the candidate must be at the center of attention even in the aftermath of his own gaffe (or, okay, baby-punching), the pablum of pander. To my knowledge, no existing American politician has declared that “Filipino Tilt-a-Whirl Operators are this nation’s backbone,” but I eagerly await the day when one does. The Campaign looks to be the inverse of Parks and Recreation—hopefully it’ll help us bide time until that noble pean to the best in American politics returns to the air.

In tonight’s finale of Parks & RecreationThis post contains spoilers through the season four finale of Parks and Recreation.

When I was 19, I ran to be Democratic Party co-chair of my ward in New Haven. In a lot of towns, that might have been an appointed post, but in New Haven it was a job you had to actually campaign for, and so for months, I made like Leslie Knope has for the past season of television, hitting up churches and senior centers and community meetings, and posing for some truly hilarious campaign literature. After shaking hands at the precinct for twelve straight hours on Election Day, I couldn’t bear to be in the room when the vote totals were read out, and so I waited outside in the cold. The sight of my running mate and campaign staff running screaming outside to tell me we’d won was one of the weirdest, most cinematic moments of my entire life. I was not nearly as good at politics as I trust that Leslie Knope will prove to be—there’s a reason I write—but I tell you this to explain that I feel a special kinship with this season, and with this character despite its flaws. I know how this feels, and this episode of Parks and Recreation captured this moment’s terrors and joys perfectly. And this season of Parks and Recreation pulled off an extremely tricky transition for this marvelous show beautifully.

The election itself is governed by Pawnee’s marvelously specific manifestation of the oddities that plague all local elections. “In the event of an exact tie, the seat is awarded to the male candidate and the female candidate is put in jail,” the registrar explains to the candidates and their campaign managers. “I don’t think it would hold up in court, but it is city law.” There are a lot of candidates for a relatively minor office—Leslie’s moment of despair that Brandi Maxxx might win was a perfect example of the possible spoiler, the thing every campaign can’t possibly predict or prepare for. And while the show didn’t spend time on the hilarities of checking off voter rolls (usually with all the campaigns monitoring ID checks and crossing off the names of voters who have made it alongside some doughty poll workers, it’s so fitting that Leslie’s epic contest against Bobby Newport came down to a recount. The only way it could have been more perfect is if Bobby’s support for Leslie—”Another awesome point by Leslie. It’s why I’m voting for you,” he tells a crew of reporters at a poll-opening press conference—made up for Jerry forgetting to vote in his enthusiasm to hand out Leslie’s flyers and ended up handing her the election.
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In tonight’s finale of Parks & Recreation, we’ll find out if Leslie Knope won or lost the City Council seat she’s been campaigning for all season, but it’s still not clear if we’ll return to Pawnee next season to see Leslie take her place alongside Councilman Hauser in victory or revitalize the Parks Department in defeat. The same is true for Greendale Community College and the TGS writers’ room at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The speculation is that 30 Rock will be back for a short season, and that if Parks & Rec and Community get pickups, they’ll be shorter orders as well. That might mean fewer episodes of shows we love. But creatively, it strikes me as a good thing.

I’m a long-time advocate of shorter seasons, and I think we’ve seen a lot of illustrations of the foibles of trying to fit 22-episode orders into a 40-week period this year. Revenge‘s long hiatus slowed the momentum of the ABC Hamptons-set thriller down to a crawl, and the show’s gotten baroque and full of moody shots in its attempt to fill up episode space since its return. Community‘s disappearance from NBC’s airwaves for an agonizing and indefinite period left fans waiting, and while NBC tossed out and then yanked sitcoms like Best Friends Forever and Bent in quick succession. Now I understand that shows fail, networks need to replace things that aren’t working at all, and fans don’t want to wait a long time for their favorite shows to come back. But I’d much rather see short, excellent seasons of shows that are suited to it, and to see them run continuously rather than spaced out in seemingly random ways.

NBC’s Thursday night comedies seem uniquely suited to shorter, smarter seasons. 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation‘s shortened seasons were their best for entirely different reasons. 30 Rock‘s second season was shortened by the writers’ strike, but it was a hilarious, joke-dense season. “SeinfeldVision” and “MILF Island” were fantastic riffs on the industry that preceded the “Queen of Jordan” running gag the show is using now. “Greenzo” featured two of the show’s best-ever cameos in David Schwimmer and Al Gore. And “Sandwich Day” turned Liz’s love of food into a sign of something other than middle-aged singleton schlubbiness. No one has ever made scarfing a sub look so poignant before or since.

Parks and Recreation‘s shortened third season had tons of great comedic beats as well, but it also illustrated how sitcoms can pull off strong serialization without dropping plotlines for a long stretch of episodes or producing episodes that don’t work as standalones. The stated major arc of the season was the question of whether Ben and Leslie would get together, a will-they-or-won’t-they that fit neatly into a wide variety of settings. And it turned out that Leslie’s victories in restoring the Harvest Festival, over her rivals in Eagleton, and in organizing Lil’ Sebastian’s funeral were actually setting up Leslie being asked to run for office. The show didn’t always hit the same beats, and in fact in episodes like “April and Andy’s Fancy Party” and “The Fight,” we got to see a number of the vulnerabilities that would plague Leslie in her campaign this season, namely her desire for control.

The 22-odd episode season may be an industry convention, but that doesn’t mean it’s a creative imperative. If the 2012-2013 season is going to be the last year we have 30 Rock, Parks & Recreation and Community, I’d rather have one of those shows on every night for 36 to 45 straight weeks (with exceptions for holidays), and to have those episodes be uniformly excellent, no filler. And if television’s really just about selling soap, I’ve got to believe it might sell better with new programming rather than reruns and schedule gaps.

This post contains spoilers for the May 3 episode of Parks & Recreation.

One of the things I’ve always liked about Pawnee is its slight crackedness, part English small town wacky, part All-American grievance factory. I like that one of Leslie’s stump speech promises can be “to expel the violent gangs of geese in Detwiler Square.” And I like that Pawnee contains a the Newports’ gloriously ludicrous mansion, which in keeping with Bobby’s status as an overgrown child contains both a rich-dude’s game room with a bowling alley, and an elegant crystal bowl fully of gummy bears.

It also contains its very particular villains, in this case, a van rental dude played by Glee’s Mike O’Malley who, having initially agreed to rent Leslie’s campaign his fleet for election day for $900, sells out to the Newports for $10,000. He proves immune to all sorts of inducements, including a promise of free publicity, and Tom’s offer to let him in on his latest business idea: alcoholic frozen Yogurt Platinum (which I would totally eat). He’s even resistant to Ron Swanson’s Code of Manliness. When Ron tells him “Where I come from, a man’s word is sacred,” Van Guy spits back “Okay, what’s your stance on pinky swears, George Washington?”

So it’s up to Donna and her beloved ride to save the day. I always appreciate when she and Jerry get a chance to be heroes, and while Jerry’s expression as he gets hit in the face with a pie for science and FBI Agent Bert Macklin is priceless, this time, it’s Donna’s turn. She’s been along for the ride more than anything else on the campaign, fascinated by Jerry’s love of menial campaign work, but with the same clear line she always has between work and the rest of her life. So it’s nice to see her commit all the way, even on the last day of the campaign, when it matters most. In a Towanda the Avenger move, she crushes Van Guy’s fender, has Tom and Ron act as her witnesses, and informs him “We can settle this right now. I will accept payment in van rentals.”

Even though Leslie’s attempts to apologize to Bobby after insulting his father only to learn that he’s died was ostensibly the A story tonight, I was actually most intrigued by something she said in the open. “If we win,” she said of the campaign bus, “hopefully it will be the home that Ben and I share forever.” Ben’s sacrifice of his job solved the problem of whether the two of them can stay together during her campaign. But now that we’re close to knowing whether Leslie will win or lose, it’ll be interesting to see if they can build a long-term relationship, especially when Ben has to find a job that doesn’t involved the advancement of Leslie’s life goals.

And I also want to know what’s going to happen to April Ludgate-Dwyer when she finds something she’s interested enough to stretch for beyond Andy. We’re still at a point in the show where seeing her be kind to someone is novel, even if being kind means saying things like: “First of all, dark places are awesome. Second, Ann is kind of lame so way to dodge a bullet. And Millicent is Jerry’s daughter. So two bullets. And you’re not alone. You’ve got lots of friends. Somewhere. I assume. You’re going to be just fine.” But at some point, that juxtaposition will cease to be striking. I can’t wait to see how April’s going to grow once she figures out what she’s going to grow into, and I do hope the show makes some strides towards helping her find that soon.

This post contains spoilers through the April 26 episode of Parks & Recreation.

One of my friends pinged me last night to say that he thought this episode of Parks & Recreation was my platonic ideal for a half-hour of the show. He’s basically right. Everything from the shot of Jerry watching the debate with the nuns like he’s one of the Three Stooges visiting home to Leslie’s closing statement was precisely my cup of tea. But mostly, I enjoy episodes of the show where all the characters are working on different elements of the same, sprawling project the way they were in “Harvest Festival” or “Lil’ Sebastian,” and tonight’s was one of those.

Episodes like this work because you can shift how much time you allocate between the A, B, and C story without worrying that one throughline will get short shrift. They’re all part of the same enterprise—in this case, making sure Leslie’s debate performance is solid, her spin room is working hard, and a room full of big donors is entertained. Those three setups give the characters room to work on separate issues, like the love triangle between Ann, Tom, and Chris, which has never seemed more plausible or well-executed than it was tonight, or April’s caring about things. But they’re all really part of the same goal, which is something the show does well both because the characters have great chemistry in a lot of different combinations, and because those kinds of big-project stories are both uniquely suited to and illustrate what’s interesting about a bureaucratic organization.

The debate was an interesting moment because it illustrated a problem that Leslie’s campaign—and the show about her—have shared all season: the candidate hasn’t been able to find her stride, even though she’s clearly the most qualified person in the mix. She should be able to nail the debate: “You could debate Newport in your sleep,” Ben tells her. “I have,” she chirps enthusiastically. “I know,” Ben reminds her. “I sleep in the same bed. It’s been hell.” And her opening swipe at Bobby Newport, that he wants to buy the town, is true, and something that will be proven even truer before the end of the evening. But it goes over like a lead balloon. What matters isn’t what’s accurate, or even significant. It’s that Leslie looks mean and negative, when we’ve had four years of television episodes proving that she’s anything but. Conversely, the substance of Bobby Newport’s insistence that “I want your vote because I want Pawnee, and my Dad, to see what I’m made of” is gross when you think about it closely, but it sounds endearing (Ditto on “I guess my thoughts on abortion are, let’s all just have a good time.”), so he gets credit he manifestly doesn’t deserve. Leslie’s closing statement is a party-at-the-lake-house worthy moment precisely because she finds a way to unify the substance of what she’s saying with the style and break through to the audience. It’s the first time she’s really been able to do that since “Born and Raised.”

I think it’s important to note that there’s a difference between this kind of clarity and the belief a lot of pop culture has about politics, which is that rhetorical brilliance breaks all impasses, cows all cynical manipulators of the system, binds up our wounds and leads us into the promised land. Instead, this whole season has been about the fact that while working in bureaucracy can be relatively smooth sailing if you know how everything works and have good systems set up, persuading the public and winning elections is a vastly harder thing to do, even for someone who is essentially smart and personable. People have agendas and senses of themselves that they have precisely no interest in surrendering. This is something that most pop culture fails to grasp. It just assumes that we share values and worldviews, and when we get out of kilter, the only thing that’s required to get us back on track is the rhetorical equivalent of a whack with a wrench. That’s not accurate, and for a storytelling and character-growth perspective, it’s not particularly interesting.

In addition to that wonderful centerpiece, this is a nice summing-up moment for a number of other characters on the show. April admits publicly, or at least to Tom, that there are things she’s invested in, even if she can’t make her arms work right to clean the house in preparation for the fundraiser, confessing “I care about Andy, and Champion, and I want Leslie to win.” In return, she got through to Tom what he’s been incapable of acknowledging before: that he has to act normal around Ann if he wants to be with her, and save pronouncements like “She’s smooth, like a blended whisky,” for Leslie’s spin room. Ron gets to put his manly and musical skills to work hacking into the cable network to save the fundraiser after opening it with the bluntest statement of purpose in political history: “Hello. You are here because you gave us money. Now, we will give you ribs. Also, you will watch the debate. If you like the debate, you’ll give us more money. That is all. Ron Swanson.”

And I just love the idea both that Andy’s tremendous, perpetually-refilled enthusiasm would lead him to step into the void of the cable outage with movie retellings, and that Pawnee’s richest non-Sweetums-beholden residents would be rapt by it. This is a good town, full of good people. They deserve a good City Councilwoman. Knope 2012.

In a game of TV critic merry-go-round, Time’s James Poniewozik catches something interesting in an interview Huffington Post’s Maureen Ryan did with Parks & Recreation producer Mike Schur:

Another tidbit from the interview that struck me was Schur’s saying—prompted by a question from Ryan—that the show would love to be a kind of comedy version of The Wire. I don’t want to overplay that quote; he doesn’t seem to be inflating the show so much as saying that The Wire is a standard to aspire to, and maybe that Parks would like to create the same kind of broad civic world, within the context of a less realistic network comedy. And Parks, as Ryan says, has a much more optimistic outlook than The Wire.

But it’s interesting to see that in the light of our discussion yesterday of David Simon’s disappointment about The Wire’s reception since it’s gone off the air: that it seems to be remembered more as an entertainment than for its specific view of social institutions and the drug war. It’s pretty plain that The Wire did not change American drug and policing policy, but this is also a little reminder that there’s more than one way for a show to be influential. If a show like The Wire has made a little NBC sitcom slightly more thoughtful about how institutions and communities work—that’s not exactly changing the world, but it’s something to be happy about, anyway.

I agree that would be a legacy that’s both entertaining and constructive, especially if it means that more shows look for the realistic drama in existing institutions. Parks & Recreation is different from most shows in that it draws its comedy from lowering stakes rather than artificially jacking them up. The first major conflict the show dealt with was trying to fill in a hole. One of the biggest collective tragedies the characters have experienced was the death of a mini horse. The show doesn’t make fun of the characters for investing so much in relatively small things. Instead, it respects them, and the show’s signature mix of comedy and kindness comes from that framing. If part of Schur’s goal is to use the show to explore more of Pawnee’s bureaucracy and institutions, that’s also a good argument for Leslie winning the City Council race so we can see more of city government.

It’ll be an interesting question whether other shows start drawing the same realistic drama from existing institutional imperatives. That’s probably an easier thing for comedies to do than dramas, if only because the networks have conditioned us to expect such big stakes in the latter. If the President’s mistress isn’t knocked up a la Scandal, a small child isn’t in horrible danger, or the world isn’t at risk, shows seem to feel they’re not doing their duty. I’ll be curious to see what comes of the show that The Wire’s Ed Burns and Amber Tamblyn are supposed to be working on about a school: it’s not in the pilot cycle this year, so we’ll have to see what happens. But one of the consequences of The Wire having a lot of journalists and novelists writing episodes (in additional to the different perspective they brought) is that it’s not like the show spun off a huge number of TV writers who are now selling shows of their own. Its creative influence might be less clear to trace, but Schur can’t be the only one who’s looking to The Wire as an influence, and interpreting that influence in clever and surprising ways.

On Friday, I laid out in detail the data on how women of color are underrepresented—and underpaid—in every aspect of the television industry. Today, I want to do something a little different. We all know about Shonda Rhimes, the single most powerful woman of color in the television business. And in the post-Girls conversation about the women of color who should be given the kind of creative control and financial backing that creators like Lena Dunham and Louis C.K. have received from HBO and FX, respectively, Issa Rae, the creator and star of the marvelous web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, has come up repeatedly as a suggestion. Rae’s work is tremendous, and unfortunately, it seems like her conversations with television networks lead her to conclude it was better to retain creative control and stay on the web rather than surrender her vision in exchange for a budget and amplification, and that rigidity on the networks’ part is a loss for them, and her, and us.

But it’s also worth remembering the women of color writing for network television who are less immediately visible because they don’t also appear in front of the camera. I called up a couple of television writers whose work I enjoy and asked them to recommend their colleagues, and added a few of my own. These are just a few of the women of color whose work is worth watching, and supporting. Some of them have already run their own shows. And I’d love to see more of them get a chance to do so in the future. In no particular order:

1) Nahnatchka Khan: Khan came up as a writer and producer on comedies like Malcolm in the Middle and American Dad*. She created Don’t Trust the B—- in Apt. 23, starring Dreama Walker, Krysten Ritter, and James Van Der Beek, which premiered on ABC earlier this month.

2) Denise Thé: Thé got her staff writing start on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and has since gone on to serve as the story editor on Medium and to write for Cold Case and Person of Interest.

3) Mara Brock Akil: She created Girlfriends and that show’s spinoff The Game. She’s a consulting producer on Cougar Town. And she wrote Sparkle, the Motown period piece that will be Whitney Houston’s last movie, and Gabrielle Union star vehicle Being Mary Jane, both of which are due out this year.

4) Silvia Olivas: Olivas co-produced Moesha and The Brothers Garcia, part of an initiative to make shows with Latino characters that would appeal to diverse audiences (these days, we just get Rob!). Recently, she’s been writing for children’s shows like Martha Speaks and Special Agent Oso.

5) Maurissa Tancharoen: Part of the Whedonverse by marriage (Tancharoen is married to Jed Whedon), Tancharoen wrote for Dollhouse, and currently is writing and producing in the Spartacus franchise for Starz.

6) Aisha Muharrar: Muharrar writes what I think are consistently some of the warmest episodes on Parks and Recreation, including “Kaboom,” involving prank volunteerism, and this season’s “Born and Raised,” the show’s rebuke to birtherism.

7) Stacy Littlejohn: She created MTV’s Single Ladies, wrote for both Wanda Sykes and Cedric the Entertainer, and has produced Life With Bonnie and All of Us.

8) Cherry Chevapravatdumrong: Another veteran of Seth MacFarlane shows, Chevapravatdumrong is a long time Family Guy writer and story editor, including credits on the series’ movies.

9) Natalie Chaidez : She’s produced In Plain Sight, V, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Heroes, Judging Amy, Cracker: Mind Over Murder, and New York Undercover and written for all those shows as well as Kojak, Skin, and Past Life. Need I say more?

10) Elaine Ko: Another veteran of the Family Guy writers’ room, Ko is presently a writer and executive story editor on Modern Family, one of the most successful comedies on television.

*I was totally surprised by this, but it’s notable how many women on this list are veterans of Seth MacFarlane shows.

This post contains spoilers through the April 19 episode of Parks and Recreation.

I thought this was not the strongest episode of Parks and Recreation, which laid out good themes this season but has been somewhat stagnant about pursuing them. But it is does feature perhaps the single best instance of synchronicity between television programming and the political process in the animal shelter A story, while also advancing an important issue Leslie will have to deal with if she is elected to City Council.

Leslie, forgetting that she’s running to represent all of Pawnee, goes into the budgeting process determined to fight for her department. She wins, bullying a tired Bradley Whitford into saving her from an 8 percent cut. The problem is, the money comes out of the animal shelter where Champion lived before Andy and April adopted him. And that subsequent cut gives Jennifer a chance to beat both the charges that Mitt Romney abused his dog by crating it for a long drive, and that Barack Obama committed the sin of eating dog in Indonesia as a six-year-old, by going on local television and declaring that “I’m not saying that Leslie Knope is a dog-murderer, per se. But it does raise some questions. Like is she a dog-murderer?”

When she tries to solve that problem, Leslie ends up getting Ann’s job cut (though since she’s still dating Tom Haverford, that is the least of her problems). And the shelter gives April, last seen cutting off attendees at a meeting Leslie was supposed to be running with a sour “All respect, Mr. Hamster Penis,” a chance to pursue something she turns out to care a lot about: finding homes for abandoned animals. She enlists Donna to write up resumes for them—”A lot of these dogs have rescued people from burning buildings,” Donna explains. “This one helped Ray Charles around.” It doesn’t entirely work, but watching April chase down a woman who tries to abandon her cats with the adoption drive is worth it.

The C plot, in which Chris insists that Ron spend a day with him doing yoga and meditating to make sure they’d be compatible if Ron is promoted to deputy city manager, is totally slight—”There’s a hot, spinning cone of meat in the Greek restaurant next door. I don’t know what it is, but I’d like to eat the whole thing,” is wonderful, but old territory. But it illustrates something important. It would be good for this show if Leslie won the race in part to shake everyone out of their own roles. Ann’s new job in City Hall has mostly served to bring her into closer proximity to the rest of the cast, not give her new things to do. Tom’s move away from the Parks Department was a failure both for him personally and creatively for the show. Donna and Jerry could use more to do other than be joke-generators. And April and Andy are clearly growing up and should be given roles to grow into. Parks and Recreation doesn’t need a reboot, but it could use new material for basic plots. And I want to finally get to know Councilman Hauser.

The bridge is yours.

-M.I.A. apparently wrote the theme song for a talk show Julian Assange is doing. Our world is silly.

-These comics sound great.

-Really sorry HBO isn’t doing this.

-The origins of Ron Swanson.

-This looks like a lot of fun: