Parks & Recreation wasn’t a series with a lot of foreshadowing, but it did have a small tease regarding Leslie and Ron’s feud in season 7 all the way back in season 2. Created by Michael Schur and Greg Daniels, Parks & Recreation made its debut on NBC in 2009 and came to an end in 2015 after seven seasons. The series was originally planned as a spinoff of The Office, and struggled a bit to find its own tone and style, hence why season 1 isn’t exactly the best. Luckily, season 2 was a major improvement, as were all subsequent seasons.
Parks & Recreation followed the daily lives of perky bureaucrat Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and her friends and coworkers from the Parks Department in the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana. Over the course of seven seasons, viewers got to know the main characters quite well, and one that became a fan-favorite was Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman). The extremely deadpan and stereotypical masculine Ron was known for his love for meat, whiskey, woodworking, having two very problematic ex-wives, and for being the complete opposite to Leslie: while she loved working for the government and making a positive change, Ron couldn’t care less, and even believed that the Parks Department shouldn’t exist.
Still, Leslie and Ron worked very well together and became close friends, often helping each other not only at work but also in their personal lives from time to time. However, their friendship was broken in season 7, when a misunderstanding between the two resulted in them not talking to each other anymore. As it turns out, this was fight was teased in season 2.
Parks & Recreation: How Season 2 Foreshadowed Leslie And Ron’s Fight
Parks & Recreation had a tendency of going back to little details and things said and shown in previous seasons that viewers would hardly catch when watching for the first time. Such is the case with season 2’s episode “Summer Catalog” and its tease of Leslie and Ron’s future feud. After organizing a reunion between past directors of the Parks Department and seeing they didn’t get along at all, Leslie asked Ron if he thought they’ll ever hate each other, to which Ron replied “I don’t think so” – then proceeded to eat breakfast food.
Times change and relationships are complicated, and the writers of Parks & Recreation knew that quite well when coming up with Leslie and Ron’s feud in season 7. The episode “Leslie & Ron” revealed they had been fighting over the “Morningstar” incident, in which Ron’s building company championed and built a luxury apartment complex adjacent to the Pawnee Commons, all without letting Leslie know about the plans and with the project requiring to remove many of the surrounding houses, including Ann’s. The real core of the fight, however, turned out to be that Leslie stood Ron up for lunch when he was going to ask her for a job at the National Parks Service, as all their former coworkers were now gone.
Leslie and Ron ended up working out their differences and were friends again, and by the end of the series, Leslie made Ron the superintendent of the Pawnee National Park, which ended up being his ideal job as he had to spend most of his time walking around the park alone and paddling around in a canoe. The tease in season 2 is one of the many small details picked up later by Parks & Recreation that elevate the series when revisiting it.
Next: How Parks & Rec Foreshadowed Leslie’s Fate In Season 2
