Leslie Knope’s character on Parks and Recreation is an interesting one.  She is more likeable than any of the antiheros of Arrested Development, slightly more multidimensional than the characters of Girls, and less funny or original than anyone on 30 Rock.  The character is allowed to breathe and do uncharacteristic things, not entirely well defined.  Her notion of “caring,” working hard, and leadership, is a different one than I’m used to.  To bolster her leadership and cultivate solidarity in her team, she clings to Girl Power clichés like Hilary Clinton and the portraits of female leaders on her wall, women’s sleepover type celebrations (Galentine’s Day), girlish sugary food like candy necklaces, and one hit wonders like LEN.  Her trite tastes and uneasy mythology of female leadership like girl power and the love of sweets, her fallibility and mistakes in trying to lead her team, and other quirks make her ostensibly effective and hard working personality less intimidating and easier to relate to.  It is known that she works hard both because she cares about building up and making use of her team and buys into the patriotic mythology of her exhurban town of Pawnee.  The reasons for her effective leadership and work are those of care and service, but what she is serving is a variety of naïve clichés.  She directs her patriotism to a town with a clearly bloody and racist past depicted humorously in the murals and one that is a flyover that has little to offer but obesity.  The show focuses more on her fallibility and quirks displayed in how she navigates her friendships and romantic life.  To give us an idea of the challenges and daily tasks of a female leader, to show us just how hard she works would make the character less cute, less relatable, and less filled with the feminine skills of caring, negotiation, and compromise that make her seem not like a feminist bitch.  The show ironizes about her gauche, small town mythologies of female empowerment while demonstrating what an instrumental leadership role she takes.  Ordinarily, someone who relies on boring saccharine clichés of girl power would be too annoying for me to follow, but her character is allowed to breathe through her interactions with people, through her mistakes, and how she treats others.   It is a show with looser storylines and less comedic punch than 30 Rock, but with a more fluid and easier to follow dynamic between characters than Arrested Development.  

The town setting of Parks and Rec informs the belief system of the characters.  The low culture of a small city in an American flyover state combined with the threadbare rewards of bureaucratic office culture set the tone for the characters' values and actions.  The show satirizes the Midwestern town's stereotypical obesity problem,  bored teenagers, meth labs, mom n pop waffle diners (and trashing of salads), age old family emporiums vs. new conglomerates, cyclical town entertainment like festivals, and small time local entertainment radio and news of present day Pawnee.  (The townspeople are earnestly excited to debut Lil Sebastian, a small horse, at the festival.  Young boys toilet papering a statue becomes a big issue for Leslie and her team to deal with.)  Its murals also gain the best jokes gently satirizing a quintessentially American history of violent suppression and subjugation of minorities (Native Americans, women) for personal gain as well as Puritan-style mores.  Characters like Tom Haverford or Donna attempt to rise above a low culture inland surrounding and end up looking even more affected and bourgeois doing it.  Haverford looks outward toward some sort of urban PUA luxury of exclusivity.  It is a pale reflection of what actually goes on in Jay Z's NY.  Like Emma Bovary, he tries to rise above his milieu and looks more maudlin, affected, and bourgeois doing it.  Donna's love of luxury reflects itself in gaudy velour cheetah print monogrammed robes with fake fur pink trim and her love for the Benz.  A beautiful woman like Ann is a workaday nurse who wears LOFT style clothes to dates.  Ron Swanson is a humorous archetype of the American conservative states' rights man who is allowed to be awesome.  In moments of imperfection or compromise, his walrus-like old time masculinity becomes more loveable.

Leslie Knope disdains none of Pawnee's low culture traditions.  She celebrates the waffle diners as "salt of the earth" establishments and the dopes who attend the public forums as "good hearted small town people."  She joys in adding her own spin to Pawnee traditions like creating an all female scout troupe to rival Ron Swanson's.  She is also not afraid to embrace the more girlish aspects of girl power, unquestioningly idolizing women like Janet Reno and Nancy Pelosi with her overly earnest wall of powerful women frames.  Her saccharine ideas about girl power (Galentine's Day) reflect her love of childish sugar treats like candy necklaces and Sweetums bars.  The Parks and Rec department, must, in effect feel the most "town spirit" for the schmaltzy community based events they create.  Thus, Leslie as a proactive, service-oriented leader must be upset about a rich woman leveling a gazebo.

The characters also have "the spirit" for various planned work retreats, small corporate rewards, and the various town events they must plan and cheer for.  They seem like the type of people to be genuinely excited by the free frisbees handed out on a drive time radio show.  Free work sandwiches do taste better when you factor in the fact that you get time off work to consume them.  Donna may unironically put up a fireman calendar and Jerry or Andy may compliment a Kincaid, Tom may wear a pair of gaudy top siders or air force ones defunct on both coasts. 

Chris Traeger uses Ben Wyatt as the Jorkins in Spenlow and Jorkins.

Their value system and patriotism as citizens of a theoretically forgettable town in Indiana is a backdrop for moments of pathos in the comedy show.  Leslie is moving when she acts in sacrificial compromise out of earnest love for her underdog team or her underdog town.  Tom Haverford is for a moment palatable when he swallows his pride and reveals the human insecurity beneath the annoying bluster.  The characters' interplay as a team allows them to demonstrate their earnest cooperation, their vulnerability, and humanity.  The job description requires rooting for and beautifying the underdog, shabby even compared to the neighboring town of Eagleton. The characters move in gauche small town tastes and enjoyments and show how human they can be.