A&E
Women to Watch: Powerful Females Characters on TV
By Ally D’Antonio ’20
September 29, 2016
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TV Show: Parks and Recreation (2007-10)
Network: NBC
Seasons: 1-7
Actress: Aubrey Plaza
Background Info:
Parks and Recreation, or Parks and Rec, is one of the best comedies to come out of the last decade, in part because of the amazing characters that it created. The women on this show are fantastic, mainly because they are perfectly imperfect. For example, Donna Meagle, a loud and proud woman doesn’t care what people think of her because the only opinion that matters is her own. Then there is Ann Perkins, a nurse who does not know how to remain herself outside of a relationship, but who comes to learn who she is and what she wants from life over the course of the show. And the main character, Leslie Knope, is a passionate, career-driven woman who does everything in her power to care for her friends, even when it causes her to self-destruct. However, one of the biggest stars of the show is April Ludgate, a dark, terrifying and brutally honest young woman who slowly becomes one of the most recognizable characters. April Ludgate shows that you can be dark and twisted and still be full of love and kindness.
Why You Should Watch:
Add together darkness, spice and very rarely something nice, and you get something close to April Ludgate’s character. She is obsessed with everything dark and gory, and lives for horrific experiences, but that is not all. Her job in local government, that she originally views to be soul-sucking, causes her to develop in unpredictable ways. Overall, when the show wraps up, the lives of the people in Pawnee, Indiana are a little bit better, and crazier, thanks to April Ludgate. Everything about April is unexpected but certainly not unwelcome. At the start of the show she is smart, brutally honest and has no idea of what she wants out of life except for getting out of her mind-numbing internship in the Parks and Recreation department. However, as the show progresses, April comes into her own. She figures out her place in life, who her real friends are, who she loves and what she wants to do for the rest of her life. She becomes a fully developed character, with habits and feelings and motivations that no one, not even the infallible Leslie Knope or the genius Ron Swanson, can understand. Parks and Rec is filled to the brim with amazing characters, and April Ludgate is absolutely no exception.