The Legacy of Mark Brendanawicz
If you’re chuckling at the title of this newsletter, that’s pretty much the point — while Parks and Recreation has many beloved characters, Mark Brendanawicz isn’t really one of them, and if he has a legacy at all, it’s the nickname Leslie leaves him with when his character quits his job working for the government (and exits the series), “Mark Brendanaquits.” Otherwise, despite being pushed as a central character in the series’ first season, Mark is never ever mentioned again after leaving the series at the end of its second, even in moments where he should be, moments where his exclusion is awkward (Such as when Ann sells the items she bought for every one of her ex-boyfriends except for Mark, or when Leslie spends an entire episode in Season 6 trying to procure plans for her new park despite the fact that Mark’s final act as a character was gifting Leslie plans for said new park).
It’s tempting to devote this newsletter to the truly spicy take that Parks and Rec was worse off for losing Mark, but I’d just be doing it to piss people off; it’s not something I actually believe or could get behind. But I do see a fair amount of people acting as if Mark was a terrible, awful character (when he was simply bland at worst), or as if the series only got good when Mark left. That latter take is one that’s preposterous to me. Season 2 is my second favorite season of the entire series (after 3)*. It takes a few episodes to figure out its new rhythm, sure, but the premiere is a huge jump in quality after the abysmal Season 1, and by its sixth episode it finds a high level of quality that it manages to maintain throughout the rest of the season. April’s arc across the season alone is some masterful storytelling, as she falls in love and manages to learn to appreciate sincerity without losing the cynicism and bite that made her interesting to begin with. Mark didn’t make Season 2 bad, nor did the arrival of Ben and Chris suddenly made Season 3 great. There’s a lot more to it than that.
*If I had to rank the seasons, I’d go 3>2>4>7>6>5>>>>1. 5 has many good points, especially early on, but too much Jeremy Jamm really drags it down.
After a frustrating first season, the Parks and Recreation writers did a lot to turn around their cast of characters. Leslie herself didn’t really change, but having other characters within the show start to recognize her work ethic and competence did a lot to sell her to fans. The writers found the soul behind April’s distance, found the doofy, dumb, himbo-esque likable side of Andy to round out the long list of flaws he solely consisted of in Season 1, and revealed the insecurity behind Tom’s swagger, and they were all better off for it.
The character they kind of fumbled throughout this process, though, was Mark. In Season 1 Mark was meant to be a bit of a playboy, someone to tempt Leslie and make her uncomfortable; perhaps they even had some long-term romantic stuff in mind with them, I dunno. But neither the writing nor Paul Schneider’s low-key performance sold that dynamic, and any romantic friction between he and Leslie just ended up being uncomfortable rather than compelling. The attempt to turn Mark around in Season 2 mostly consisted of making the character more boring. His “arc” was trying to be a more normal boyfriend to Ann, and most of the jokes surrounding the character just pointed out how boring he was. Some of these jokes were legitimately hilarious — I love when April’s gay boyfriend comes to a Halloween party dressed “as a straight guy” wearing the same exact clothes as Mark, or when Mark’s big weekend plans consist of watching Frontline at Arby’s — but when a character’s biggest, plainly stated attribute is that they’re boring, that doesn’t do much to sell them to an audience. It’s the same problem they ran into with Mark and Ann’s romance — it was perfectly fine, but lacked spark, and that was the point, that’s what led to Ann breaking up with him, but defining the character in that way does not make him more entertaining or make him more desirable for the audience to watch.
Then, Ben and Chris come in and, together, are everything Mark was meant to be, only ten times better. Ben filled that romantic partner/foil for Leslie in a much more compelling and believable way, and also bore the normal person/straight man mantle Mark originally wore while also having far greater range and dimension to his interests and personality, and Chris filled Mark’s outsider/authority figure position in the city government while, again, having a much more unique and better defined personality. While these characters weren’t without their own problems (Chris fell into a rut by the time Season 5 rolled around that he never really clawed his way out of, and there was almost relief among a contingent of fans when he left the series mid-way through Season 6), but they did immediately make Mark feel redundant. Almost everything he did for the series, Ben and Chris did better.
But, again, I don’t think that makes him a bad character, or a bad person within the show’s universe — it just makes him less interesting than the rest of the cast. There’s a lot of little touches I like about Mark. He did very much work in that straight-man role, and after April and Ben, had some of the best “disbelieving stares at the camera” in the series. And once the writers stopped hinting at any romance between the two, I really liked Mark’s friendship with Leslie. There’s a sense of history and low-key acceptance to it that even Leslie and Ann don’t have. Throughout most of the series Leslie’s circle of friends is “the Parks Department, plus Ann,” so giving her this other friend outside of the Parks Department did a lot to make Leslie feel just a little bit more real. And Leslie took Mark’s advice and learned from him in a way I don’t think she did with many other characters. She learns from Ben and Ann, but they really had to push; Mark didn’t necessarily humor her, but he didn’t push her either, and him just saying his peace and giving Leslie room to think often led to her figuring things out on her own (most notably, choosing her department’s hideous-but-fun “camel” mural over the boring, sure-thing winner).
Of course, while that’s something I like about Mark, it’s also yet another one of the problems with the character: he was only useful as a support to other characters, and not compelling on his own. This is the same problem Ann and Chris ran into late in their run on the series and at least some of what led to their early departure; Ann was a fantastic supporting character to Leslie, and Chris was an interesting friendly-yet-often-oppositional force to much of the cast, but both floundered when leading their own storylines, and their solo storylines often hit the same beats over and over. Perhaps it was smart of Schneider to figure this out about his character early and leave before things became worse. The writers have said that Mark was based off a person they knew in real life who wandered in and out of government work throughout his life and that it was always their plan for Mark to quit his job at the end of Season 2, but to remain within the circle of characters and perhaps even come and go from government work throughout the series, but I can’t imagine taking a character who already felt like he existed on the fringes of the cast and moving him even further into the fringes would’ve worked out all that well. His departure was the right move.
I do think there’s a way Mark could have worked and added something unique to the series. Season 2 Episode 18, “The Possum,” finds Ron trying to get Mark, as city planner, to approve an addition to his private workshop despite many, many city code violations. In an interesting subversion to Ron’s usually superhuman abilities, Mark does not budge or concede to him. Now the various Tammys, and even Chris, have been able to best Ron before, but their power over him is cartoonish, almost supernatural — at one point Chris essentially teleports Ron to lunch after Ron refuses to attend. Leslie too often manages to get to Ron, but she’s usually able to do so by helping him see he was wrong about something and reach a compromise. But Mark is pretty much the only character to fully stand up to Ron, say “you’re wrong,” and never budge an inch. He eventually helps Ron bring his office up to code, but not as a compromise or as an admission of guilt; he’s simply helping a friend. Mark doesn’t back down, and at the end of the plot, when Ron tries to act as if he did nothing wrong, Mark ends up telling him, several times, to “shut up!” That kind of audacity around Ron is rare, and I think Mark’s ability to stand up to him would’ve been an interesting and unique addition to the series if properly explored.
Of course, Ron not caring that his workshop is unsafe does seem a bit out of character, at least when you think of the Ron of later in the series, driven by the code of a job well done; Ron doesn’t care about city codes, but he does care about doing a job properly and having pride in his surroundings, and that Ron would probably be horrified by his Season 2 workshop. I think that’s indicative of a general shift in the series’ tone, as it moved from something a little more grounded in politics to a show that was, at times, a bit of a live action cartoon. The former is a slightly more flawed Ron where the humor came from his Libertarian insistence in freedom above safety or common sense, while the latter is the Ron who is almost a caricature of the ultimate manly man. Mark’s ability to pierce through absurd behavior would have become more and more valuable as the series progressed in more surreal directions, but it also would have made him — the plain, “boring” character — stand out even more as being out of place. Even with this untapped potential, it’s still probably for the best that Mark vanished from Pawnee.
I suppose that’s, ultimately, my conclusion here. I don’t think Mark Brendanawicz is a bad character, per say, just one the writers never fully got the hang of, and one who wasn’t able to evolve along with the rest of the series. When I watch a Mark episode I’m not mad at the character, I find it interesting to see how he works or doesn’t work in any given episode. His legacy shouldn’t be “Brendanaquits,” or being completely forgotten — even if he never fully worked as a character, the writers’ mistakes and failures with Mark helped them figure out what they wanted out of their cast of characters. Ben and Chris surely would never have existed without Mark first helping the writers to see what they did and didn’t want out of those kind of characters. Maybe it’s a small victory, but it’s still a legacy worth celebrating in its own way.
R.I.P.
Pour one out, friends. Today is the last day that Parks and Recreation will be available to stream on Netflix or Hulu, as on October 1st it will be moving to its new home on NBC’s “Peacock” streaming platform. Will I be signing up for premium Peacock just to still have unlimited access to Parks and Rec? It’s as tempting as it is maddening, but I think I’d be better off just buying the DVD box set. Regardless, it’s a downright shame that the constant grab for more and more money by networks, leading to more and more streaming platforms, is making streaming unaffordable. Enough is enough. Just let me watch my comfort show in peace, NBC.
ABOUT
“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and he can be found on Twitter at @ThatSpenceGuy. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!