Parks and Recreation: The Pawnee-Eagleton Tip Off Classic (6x03)

Yay! Eagleton! As much as Leslie Knope hates Eagleton, I love to watch her hating it. I think what makes the whole Eagleton thing so interesting to me is that it's Leslie's one exception. She's normally so wonderful and considerate to everyone, but when it comes to Eagleton, she has a blind hatred that's always amusing to watch.

So, Ben and Chris (cute bromance in this episode, by the way) go to help Eagleton out with their recent financial troubles. Leslie decides to tag along. They realize that Eagleton is in really bad shape because of all of their extravagant spending, such as paying for the whole town to have HBO and filling the local pool up with bottled water. Leslie is delighted about this, but she does offer to help Eagleton out with loaning some money from Pawnee. The Eagletonians have had enough of her cocky attitude, and they don't accept her offer.

However, in the end, Leslie decides to do the right thing. Eagleton is going to be dissolved and reworked into Pawnee. This has ramifications for Leslie, since the recall stuff is going badly, and now she's responsible for allowing Pawnee's enemies into their community. This plot line was really good. It showed us Ben and Chris' friendship, and Ben's unfailing support of Leslie - but not at the expense of logic, since he still tries to help Eagleton out even when Leslie doesn't want to. It should be funny to watch how this pans out in the future!

Meanwhile, Ron is horrified to receive a piece of mail with his name on it at Diane's house, because he feels that it is an invasion of his privacy. Donna and Tom attempt to help him get off the grid, which ends up being pretty hard to do, given that Tom and Donna live for the grid. In the end, there's a compromise: Diane says he can get off of the grid, but he has to stay on the family's grid. There were a lot of great jokes here, particularly involving Donna and Tom's ridiculous dependence on technology.

And finally, Ann and April go on a road trip to the vet school that April was considering, but she decides it's not for her. At first, Ann thinks that April is just brushing off a great opportunity, but April explains that she's following a gut feeling that says she doesn't want to go to the school. This leads April to a realization - she's having a gut feeling, too, about moving with Chris to somewhere else to raise their baby.

At the end of the day, I actually enjoyed all three of these plot lines quite a bit. Ron is always funny, Leslie's antics and jokes about Eagleton were great, and I am particularly interested in the Ann and April relationship, given how tumultuous it's been over the years.

9/10