Andy

[author_by_night]

As in Andy Dwyer of Parks and Recreation.

A forum I go to had some discussion about Andy's characterization, and I wanted to reply but it wouldn't let me. So I decided to do it here; this LJ really is supposed to be for fan related stuff anyway, despite my not having used it for that purpose in... ages. And truth be told I kind of miss it, but that's another ramble. (Though you will be seeing more FAN SQUEE from me. I miss FAN SQUEE. I don't miss random ALL CAPS. So sorry about that.)

A lot of people have pointed out that Andy has gotten dumber, and I think that's partly true, though I think he's been pretty thick since the second season. But in the last season and in the most recent episode, he has seemed exceptionally, well, dumb.

I think some of this might be the retcon of certain characters between season one and season two, and this applies to everyone, really. But season one Andy is actually pretty cringeworthy - IMHO he's borderline abusive of Ann, given that he lied about his injury so she'd keep doing stuff for him. And even in season two he pretty much stalked her, although by then he was written as oblivious to how wrong that was. So in many ways I like this Andy better, and prefer to pretend he never did those things. On the other hand, there are times he's almost a bit too dumb to be real.

I do think that by having him give Leslie that speech, they're trying to make him a bit brighter. I also somehow wonder if he's not one of those people that acts less intelligent than he really is - partly on purpose, partly because that's his personality. We've seen him be clever before in his way, and I hope we see more of that. I do love his relationship with Leslie. It affirms my belief that the reason he, Ron and Ben all solved Leslie's Valentine puzzle is because all three of them are, in a sense, her "guys" - it's just that Ben's the romantic one. In any case, I do like that they're almost like brother and sister. With Ben and April in DC they'll probably need each other.

(That said though, I do hope we get more Leslie and Ann this season than we did in season four. I sort of missed them. Is it weird to have a platonic OTP of sorts?)