"Boys Club"

The episode begins with a poop fight.

I’d hazard a guess that, when you launch your sitcom’s fourth episode with your main character wading into a dog poo fight armed only with a garbage can lid, you’re not gunning for the classical music crowd.

But maybe you should be. This episode, against long odds, actually triggers a bit of thought.

The premise is this: Leslie, in an effort to breach a governmental beer-drinking "boys club," cracks open a gift basket full of Great Lakes wine and passes the bottle around to her testosterone-endowed brethren. The next morning, she wakes up feeling awful—not from a wine-induced hangover, but from thinking about the fact that the gift basket, by law, should’ve been sent back: Pawnee government employees can’t accept gifts worth more than $25.

Leslie is appalled by herself and immediately begins apologizing (into the mockumentary camera popularized by The Office) to every female government official in the country. Personally. And alphabetically. She reveals herself not to be a cold, calculating politician, but an earnest public servant that went out of vogue sometime between VJ Day and the Hula-Hoop. "Leslie has never broken a rule in her life, to the point where it’s annoying," her boss, Ron, fumes during Leslie’s hearing in front of a disciplinary committee.

Perhaps it says something about our cynical culture that such a character—a politically innocent ideologue—is also the show’s primary punch line.

Still, Amy Poehler’s Leslie triggers our sympathy more than Steve Carell’s Michael from The Office. We root for Leslie because we know that while she may be nerdy and clueless and overzealous at times, she means well. And let’s face it: Our political system might be in better shape if more politicians wrung their hands over $26 gift baskets.

That said, whatever merits the episode has are quickly undermined. Foul language includes misuses of God’s name and a reference to "b‑‑ch." And we see one character hobble down a residential street altogether naked. (His rear is pixelated when the camera’s behind him, his groin is covered with a black circle when it’s in front.) Bikini-clad women pop up on a computer screen, and there’s talk of getting "gently laid tonight." We learn that an underage intern has posted a video of herself drinking the illicit wine on the Internet.

"We’re doing a little experiment tonight to see what will get me drunker," she tells her online audience as she swigs. "Drinking wine or not drinking wine. Right now drinking wine is winning. But stay tuned."

Or maybe not.