Parks and Recreation Recap (Season 4, Episode 12): “Campaign Ad”

Leslie and Ben make a campaign ad and meet their opponent in NBC’s Parks and Recreation

“Campaign Ad” was the first episode of Parks and Recreation to make me wonder… are some of these characters too dumb now? Andy was always dumb and that is why April and him made a nice couple: she was smart but would go along with Andy’s dumb plans just for the sake of it. Now it seems like she’s just as dumb as he is.

And now there’s Bobby Newport, played by Paul Rudd. Bobby is Leslie’s chief competitor for city council and everyone in Pawnee loves him. The problem is… he’s an idiot. He wants city council just to have it. This would be fine if Bobby was just a one-time character but it sounds like he’s going to be the main “antagonist” for the whole campaign storyline. How believe is it really going to be for someone this dumb to be running for city council? (No George Bush jokes, please).

Aside from those two minor problems, “Campaign Ad” was as enjoyable an episode as ever. Leslie and Ben need to make a campaign ad to compete with Bobby Newport but are torn on its direction: Leslie wants a positive ad but Ben wants to make an attack ad on Bobby. The two split up to make their own ads and see which is better. As we saw in the previous episode, Ben is a master of making videos, which means his ad is better (or should we say more competent?). Leslie’s morality gets to the better of her and she stops the ad from going out and together they make a new one, complete with 10-year-old Leslie explaining why she wants to run for city council. Bobby thinks there’s some kind of time travel involved. I told you he was an idiot.

While all of this is going on, Andy and April decide to go to every doctor in Pawnee after Andy sneezes and smacks his head on the wall, which was an amazing moment. Chris decides to take Ron out to lunch and Ron presumes Chris is lonely and wants a new friend but it turns out Chris is interested in Ron becoming the new assistant city manager. This could be dangerous but amazing.

So yeah, “Campaign Ad” was pretty good. It does annoy me that Andy and April seem to be getting dumber with every episode but they are still funny… most of the time. But at what point does being that dumb stop being funny and start being “holy shit, they are that dumb?” Now I think I’ve used the word dumb too many times in this recap. It doesn’t even look like a word anymore.

Bobby Newport!