Parks and Recreation Recap: ‘Live Ammo’

Has it really been this long? After a five-week hiatus, “Live Ammo” brings us back to Pawnee, Indiana and Leslie Knope’s campaign for city council.

It’s getting to be a bruiser.

Leslie finds herself walking into a political trap, as her opponent’s cheerily ruthless campaign manager (Kathryn Hahn) exploits Leslie’s passion to protect the Parks Department from budget cuts to level a specious political attack. In her eagerness to please everyone, Leslie ends up filling Andy and April’s house with homeless pets, and inadvertently leaves a close friend in a bad place.

Meanwhile, Chris Traeger, who with each successive episode becomes less superhuman and more buffoonish, continues to court Ron Swanson for Ben’s old job as assistant city manager. This time, though, he takes Ron to a meditation center, only to discover something that more canny observers of the Swanson phenomenon already know: Ron is one zenned-out dude. He also impresses Chris with his willingness to try something unknown and uninteresting to him, which leaves him with the job…except maybe Chris’s position is nowhere near as stable as he thought.

Oh yeah, and Ron and Chris get wasted together. Yes, they do. And the Pawnee City Government may have a love triangle on its hands in the future. (Put the pieces together, folks, it isn’t hard).

Once again, we get an amusing-but-not-effervescent episode. That’s how the majority of this season has turned out. To be honest, this city council campaign storyline, while not a catastrophe of Entertainment 720 level, is beginning to look like a disappointment. Leslie was born to run for office, but something about the way her first campaign is playing out feels pedestrian, and it is hard to ignore the reality that the show it titled “Parks and Recreation,” yet the Pawnee Parks Department is playing less and less of an integral role in the series.

And Ron Swanson seriously needs something to do. In this week’s episode, when Ron stands motionless at the meditation center, staring at nothing, his mind completely blank, it could be a metaphor for this character this season. Besides his brief dalliance with Tammy One, very little has happened to Ron. Last time we saw him, in “Lucky,” he looked to be starting on a juicy relationship with a Women’s Studies professor. Ron needs to grow and progress. He needs to face his Tammy hang-ups and become a complete man, as we can tell he desperately wants. Everyone else on “Parks” gets to grow. Why not Ron?