Debuting in 2009, Parks and Recreation introduced us to the fictional town of Pawnee,
Indiana, an odd town with an unconventional parks department.
They have some wild characters and interesting stories, culminating
in it being the hit show we all know today.
Detailing the day to day activities of the people who work in a small town parks
department, it has no shortage of funny moments and quotable characters.
Its popularity has soared in the age of online streaming and more people are watching it
than ever, this show is definitely more than just a spinoff of The Office and many would
say that Parks and Rec is better, but that’s a debate for another day.
Our concern is the characters, with many memorable and far out
characters, it can be hard to gauge their morality.
Who is the best that Pawnee has to offer?
Who is the worst?
That’s why we’re here,
I’mBrad with WickedBinge and this is Parks and Recreation: Good to Evil.
As usual we will start with the most noble character and working our way down.
These characters are The Good.
The gold medal of goodness has to go to Jerry Gergich.
Jerry is clumsy and accident-prone, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Jerry is kind and compassionate to everyone in the parks department and maintains a friendly
demeanor, even though he is everyone’s punching bag.
It seems that Jerry just can’t catch a break and everyone,
especially Tom and April bully him constantly, but he doesn’t retaliate and just looks
forward to retirement when he’s feeling sad about everyone harassing him.
Jerry may not be the most perfect worker, but he works
hard and always tries to do a good job.
Ontop of that, Jerry is a loving husband and father, being very involved at home and he
cares for his family and puts them above himself.
Overall, Jerry is a good man with a good heart and he’s the very best of Pawnee.
We had to give the silver medal of goodness to Parks and Rec’s main character, Leslie
Knope.
She’s the second in command in the parks department and throws herself into
her work and wants everyone to do a good job.
She is concerned for everyone in the parks department and wants to help Pawnee
in any way she can, mostly by opening her dream park, the Pawnee Commons.
Leslie is extremely upbeat to the where it annoys
many, mostly Ron, and she can be overzealous in her goals and will sometimes bypass
rules to do things herself, such as when she filled in the pit without the town’s
permission, resulting in Andy getting injured.
She loves the town of Pawnee, even if the feeling isn’t always mutual, like when they
recalled her when she after she tried endlessly to help them, but she shoes her
caring nonetheless, seeing she wants to keep the local businesses open and she wants to
help clean up the parks as well.
She is a caring person with a lot of pride in her town,
and her enthusiasm makes her hard to dislike.
Chris Traeger receives the bronze medal of goodness.
He is literally unshakeable in his kindness and willingness to help people.
After a rough childhood where he suffered from multiple health ailments, he beat the
odds and became a health nut and is rarely not exercising.
He can be very intense and like Leslie, is over-enthusiastic, but either
way, he exudes positivity.
But what puts him below Leslie and Jerry is that he super
oblivious to Ann’s needs and is romantically inept, being so overly polite to Ann during
a break-up to the point where she didn’t know
that they were no longer a couple.
He also has trouble admitting when his ideas don’t
work, like when he rearranged the office for maximum effectiveness and Ron had to set him
straight, but his intensity and positivity are good to have in a boss, he just wants
everyone to be as happy and have as good a time as he has.
Outside the top 3 is Leslie’s husband, Ben Wyatt.
Ben is a straight-forward and nerdy state auditor, who is known for his love of
calzones.
He was originally brought to Pawnee to help the town with their budget
issues.
He was extremely disliked for his blunt and often insensitive attitude towards
firing people and slashing budgets, yet after a few episodes, he becomes nicer and more
liked, like when he let Leslie put on the Pawnee children’s concert.
Eventually he and Leslie start secretly dating and he was
willing to put his job on the line for Leslie, even taking full responsibility of their
relationship so Leslie could keep her job.
He has always supported Leslie and is a caring and encouraging husband, helping her
through all the trials and tribulations of running for and being a councilwoman.
How sweet.
Up next is Ron’s 3rd wife, Diane Lewis.
Diane isn’t a major character, but she loves Ron
and her daughters unconditionally.
She has a good head on her shoulders and is aware
of Ron’s past, but still trusts him to resist Tammy 2, further exemplifying her trusting
and honest nature.
She also is fiercely protective of her daughters and let Ron know that
she would not date him unless he accepted her children as well.
She’s a great mother and a great wife and good at helping mellow
out Ron.
Ann Perkins, a Pawnee nurse, and Leslie’s best friend takes the next spot.
As a nurse, Ann is naturally caring and concerned for
everyone’s health.
She tries to get along with everyone, shown when she attempts to bond
with April and Ron by sharing gory ER stories that they would both enjoy.
What puts her lower is her desperation for a
relationship and how she abandons her personality to try to make dating easier and will
completely change for men, much to Leslie’s dismay.
She also can be overly concerned about Chris, as she finds his perfection intimidating
and even was paranoid that he was cheating, despite that he broke up with her.
Overall, Ann is a good person who is just trying to find love and we can’t blame her.
Now we reach Andy Dwyer . Andy is a very kind and lovable guy, but his
lack of intelligence makes him do some questionable things, but make no mistake, he
means well.
However, we have to knock him down a few spots for taking advantage of
Ann when they were dating after he broke his legs, ending their relationship.
He does grow and eventually marries April, who loves
him greatly but is a bad influence on him.
Andy is goofy and fun, but he does have a sensitive side, which is shown when he tries
to win back Ann and go out with April, but he’s romantically clueless as well, infamously
replying “awesome sauce” when April told him that she loved him.
Andy is a bit of a wild card, but he’s friendly and remember, he
wanted to be a cop, the reason being solely because he wanted to help people.
Long story short, Andy may not be the brightest, but
his heart is usually in the right place.
Finishing off the good characters is Craig Middlebrooks.
Craig cares very deeply about his job and the parks department in general
and when Eagleton was absorbed with Pawnee and the 2 parks departments merged,
he made friends with Tom and Donna quickly.
He had to carry the Eagleton department himself and was relieved that there
were other workers to help him in Pawnee.
What lands him this low is his volatile nature and penchant for shouting randomly.
He can be overly aggressive with clients and can
scream at them often until they do what he wants or agree to his prices, but he does
it for business and we won’t fault him for
it.
Now we have the characters who really aren’t that good, but who we can’t call
villains either.
These characters fall in The Grey Area.
Who better to start the grey area with, than Dr. Harris?
Dr. Harris is a competent doctor and skilled in the medical field, but while
he may be an ethical doctor, he has been shown to be rude and often mean to his patients.
Being very low energy and sarcastic, he makes it clear that he only wants to do
his job and doesn’t want to converse with his
patients, with Chris describing him as one of the meanest people he’s ever met.
He isn’t a bad doctor, he’s just a very inconsiderate
and blunt.
This list wouldn’t be complete without everyone’s favorite news anchor, Perd Hapley.
Perd is a strange man and as a result, very tough to place.
He’s a decent guy, but probably shouldn’t be reporting the news.
He’s horribly inept at what he does and often
spreads fake news inadvertently and often speaks in strange, redundant sentences on
air, such as “Issue number one is the first issue we’ll be talking about” and “Also,
joining us today, is a different person.
He means well, but often butchers interviews and causes
more problems than he solves, such as whenever he interviews Leslie, which causes
more people to dislike her.
At the end of the day, he’s a good guy, but he should not be
reporting any kind of news.
She doesn’t have the biggest part, but we’re placing Ethel Beavers next.
Ethel is the very definition of a true neutral, as she
isn’t phased by much.
Usually, a very monotone and somewhat apathetic person, she often doesn’t
take sides and is more content with judging and not interacting with others.
That being said, she does have her nice moments, such as agreeing to read Ben’s
confession of his relationship with Leslie aloud to her for Ben, so Leslie knew that
Ben cared, she also signed their marriage license at 10 at night, being the only person
in Pawnee who would do so.
Maybe she’s nice after all.
Up next is the sassy and quick-witted, Donna Meagle.
It goes without saying that she can be mysterious and often hard to gauge
in terms of morality.
She loves her car, a Mercedes, more than anything and can become
violent when someone causes damage to it, she can be a nice person and is usually
decent to most people, but her suspicious nature lands her lower, for example, she is
shown to have many male partners and frequents clubs where she is often flanked
by men.
She likes to live on the free and easy and while that’s not a bad thing, it
isn’t the most moral.
One of her worst deeds was ranting about Leslie on Twitter and calling
her insulting names as well, but she has a fair amount of kind things about Leslie
as well, so it balances out.
One of her stranger moments came from her interactions with her
ex, who she believes to be a boring person despite his honest and likeable nature,
though the two do get back together.
She’s a wild card, but she’s a funny one.
Sooner or later, we’d have to talk about Tom Haverford, this guy is a mess.
Tom’s main concern is being considered “cool” and
being up to date with the latest trends and could
care less about anything else.
He’s vain and shallow and just wants to have nice things
so that people would look up to him, he doesn’t care about his job and continues to
undermine Leslie just so he doesn’t have to work as hard, and he is one of the people
who regularly abuse Jerry for no reason.
While these may seem like the qualities of someone who should be in the bad category,
he actually has a very nice side to him.
For starters he married his best friend from college, just so she could stay in the United
States and cared enough to cover it up for her.
Tom eventually started his own restaurant and while it struggled at first,
he eventually succeeded and became an entrepreneur, where he became less cocky and
was a genuine friend to the others in the Parks department.
He’s a nice guy, he just needs to apply himself.
At the bottom of the grey area is one of Pawnee’s biggest celebrities, the eccentric and
drama loving, Joan Callamezzo.
Joan hosts Pawnee today, the most popular show in
Pawnee and loves to either expose or create drama.
Leslie says that Jian pretty much runs the town due to her popularity and she
knows it, seeing as she attempted to find scandals in Leslie’s harvest festival just
for a good story.
We place her below Perd Hapley because she practices “gotcha journalism”
whereas Perd is just a moron.
But deep down, Joan isn’t too bad and has many
personal demons from her childhood which drive her to drink and party.
Above all she’s just another celebrity who is in love
with herself.
With that, we now get to the most morally questionable and downright corrupt
characters.
These characters are The Bad and The Evil.
Kicking off the bad section is April Ludgate.
April is a sarcastic and morbid intern in the
parks department who later becomes Ron’s assistant.
She has no qualifications to work in city government and was only chosen by
Ron to scare away people who come with complaints, she is apathetic and has a morbid
sense of humor which also scares away her coworkers.
She is one of the employees who belittles Jerry the most and attempts
to harass and insult him as much as possible, being frustrated when she can no longer
make fun of him after he broke his arm.
April is also a negative influence on her husband Andy, who she often makes follow her
destructive tendencies.
Despite all of that, she has also shown that she can be a
nice person, as she genuinely loves Andy and mocks people who don’t like him.
She also begrudgingly cares about Leslie and will
help her with certain projects, since she knows that Leslie cares about her.
April is a strange person with a strange sense of humor,
but she does care deep down.
Dr. Saperstein takes the next spot.
Let’s start with the fact that he enables his horrid
offspring, Mona-Lisa and Jean-Ralphio, who take advantage of his love of them to get
away with everything.
He may be a minor character, but he has done some damage,
like driving Tom’s Rent-A-Swag store out of business just because Mona-Lisa and
Jean-Ralphio lied to him that Tom scammed and fired them.
He gloats about ruining Tom’s business and stops at nothing to ruin
Tom’s future endeavors as well.
However, what keeps him from being ranked lower is
that he was able to patch things up withTom, apologizing to him and offering to invest
in his business, Tom refused, but the gesture was nice enough.
A character from the early seasons is next, Mark Brendanawicz .
Mark is an all around scumbag and a creepy womanizer.
As the former city planner, he abused his power to sleep with women and even
starting a relationship with Leslie but broke up with her after a hookup.
He then targets her friend Ann, but in doing so, he did
make an actual effort to change, as he becomes more faithful and less self-absorbed.
However, things fell through, which greatly angered him and as a result, he abandoned
the parks department to work in the private sector, but he admitted that he has a deep
respect for Leslie, which isn’t reciprocated, with Leslie calling him “Mark Brendana-quits”
after he leaves.
We had to get to him sooner or later, but up next is the fan favorite, Ron Swanson.
While many may be confused that he is ranked this low, one must remember that he
isn’t exactly a good person.
For starters, he only works as the head of the parks
department to slow down the city government and bring progress to a halt, being anti
government and a staunch libertarian.
Ron’s ultimate dream is to ascend further up the
political ranks and bring the government crashing down.
He employs inept people like Tom, April, Donna, and Jerry to ensure that
no progress is made, and it is revealed that he attempted to have Leslie fired numerous
times because she cares about the parks department, though he could never bring himself
to do so.
Ron also is extremely disinterested in the lives of his coworkers,
often belittling them, or pretending to forget their names just so they leave him alone,
he even starts fights amongst the parks department employees when he feels that they
get too “chummy” and enjoys their struggles.
Ron is extremely opinionated as well and forces his beliefs on others,
whether it’s harassing store clerks who try to sell vegan bacon or taping nasty notes
to businesses that he dislikes.
Ron also doesn’t care about most people, as he takes the
side of corrupt companies like Sweetums and Gryzzl just because he thinks that if
people are dumb enough to fall for those companies’ schemes it’s their own fault.
While he mellows out in later seasons after meeting
Dianne, Ron does not belong in the good category or grey area and his beliefs and
actions reflect that.
To accurately understand him as a boss and person, this quote sums
him up, “I like saying no, it lowers their enthusiasm”.
He’s a funny character, but a person who would be better to avoid.
Now we get to Bobby Newport, Leslie’s opponent when she ran for councilwoman.
He’s the heir to the morally questionable Sweetums company owned by his father and
he uses his influence to get try to get elected, with his campaign being funded by his
father’s company directly.
Bobby has lived a life of privilege and is spoiled and childlike,
with his charm, he is able to appear likeable and make Leslie seem like a bully in a
debate.
He’s blatantly corrupt and he has no clue what he’s doing, even staying away
from unscripted media appearances where he may be exposed.
What all that is pretty terrible, he doesn’t want the position and only ran because he
wanted his father to be proud of him, after Bobby’s father died,
he openly endorsed Leslie, allowing her to win.
Just outside of the top 3 most evil, we have April’s creepy friend Orin.
Orin is a weird and scary individual; he exudes negativity
and is morbidly interested in death.
He enjoys staring at people until they become uncomfortable
at Andy and April’s party and even attempted to scare Ben by talking about how
he thought Ben was going to die, later even trying to go through Ben’s things when
he wasn’t looking.
He is so dark and gloomy that he was repulsed by Chris’ positivity,
quickly stating that he had to go.
Not someone you’d want to be around
We have reached the top 3 most evil and the silver medal of evil goes to Councilman
Jeremy Jamm.
Jamm is an obnoxious and rude orthodontist who served alongside
Leslie on the Pawnee city council.
He immediately dislikes her and always goes out of
his way to shoot down Leslie’s proposals out of spite and will gladly torment her when
given the chance, even trying to force her to give him her office in exchange for keeping
the community pool open.
Jamm is also extremely petty, like when Leslie was going to
host a black tie gala and he arranged for an emergency response review instead so her
gala would be ruined, and he could sell lot 48 to Paunch Burger.
His worst feat was when he crashed Ben and Leslie’s wedding
and threw down 2 stink bombs in an attempt to ruin her night, but karma came
when Ron punched him in the face, breaking one of his teeth.
Truly satisfying.
He did manage to bury the hatchet with Leslie after
she and Ron helped him escape Tammy 2’s control, so at least they are on somewhat
decent terms.
We are going to split the silver medal of evil between 2 characters, Tammy 1 and
Tammy 2, Ron’s ex-wives.
The Tammys are manipulative women who seek to control
Ron for their own purposes, unlike Diane, who helps him and is supportive, the Tammys
see him as a tool and try to bend him to their will.
Tammy 1seeks revenge on Ron for divorcing her and uses her status as an IRS
agent to audit him and he legally had to obey her, or he could be sent to jail.
She uses this to control Ron and take his gold, only
to be tricked with fool’s gold instead.
Tammy 2 uses intercourse to control Ron and she
changes him to make him wild and crazy like her.
She is obsessed with him and is willing to try anything to get him back and
she succeeded for a while until Ron dumped her after she assaulted Tom.
Both Tammys are horrible people, it’s no wonder why Ron
avoids them.
The gold medal of evil is also split between 2 characters, Mona-Lisa and Jean-Ralphio Saperstein.
They are undoubtedly the most annoying, corrupt, and
downright selfish characters on the show.
Their cocky and immature personalities match their friend Tom, who they take advantage
of constantly and they always try to pressure him into doing things he doesn’t want to
for the sake of being cool.
They bothemotionally manipulate their father into giving them whatever they want, and they
usually scam people and steal from them to fuel their never-ending desire for money.
Mona-Lisa got fired from Tom’s store after he had enough of her, and she convinced her
father to run him out of business and Jean Ralphio constantly takes advantage of Tom
by using his money to start poorly conceived business ventures.
At the end of the show, it’s revealed that they faked their deaths
for insurance money and fled the US.
They truly deserve the gold medal of evil.
But what do you think?
Which Parks and Rec characters are the most good and evil?
Let us know in the comments below.
Make sure to hit that notification bell and binge our
Good to Evil playlist.
Where we break down the morality of the characters in your
favorite cartoons, shows and movies.
But most importantly, stay wicked!