Parks & Recreation follows the daily lives of the Parks Department crew in the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana, led by eternal optimist Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler). Over the course of seven seasons, viewers got to know her coworkers, friends, and family quite well, but there’s one character that was very close to Leslie’s heart, and thus viewers followed her arc quite closely: Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones). Leslie and Ann met in the first episode of Parks & Recreation when Ann attended a public forum to ask for help with the huge pit next to her house, as her boyfriend Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt) fell into it and broke both legs.
That incident brought Ann and Leslie together and they soon became best friends, a friendship that lasted until the end of Parks & Recreation (and beyond, as seen in the flashforwards), and Ann was a main character until her departure in season 6. Sadly, her arc wasn’t defined by her achievements as was Leslie’s and even April’s (Aubrey Plaza), who went from an intern at the Parks Department to getting a job at the American Service Foundation, and instead Ann’s run in Parks & Recreation was defined by her relationships to men from the very beginning.
As mentioned above, at the beginning of Parks & Recreation, Ann was dating Andy, who was incredibly lazy, and after that, she started dating Mark Brendanawicz (Paul Schneider), and became jealous when Andy started dating April. Ann’s personality was molded by the men she dated, something that Leslie pointed out during their unforgettable first fight in season 3’s episode appropriately titled “The Fight”. After that, Ann made an effort to work on herself and not depend on men anymore, but her story was still defined by who she dated, and in this case, it was Chris Traeger (Rob Lowe), though she also briefly dated Tom (Aziz Ansari), which was one of the worst pairs in the series. Surely, Parks & Recreation also covered Ann’s professional life but not as in-depth as it did with Leslie and even April, and her dating life was always at the front and center of her arc.
Because of this, fans of Parks & Recreation have pointed out that Ann Perkins was the series’ biggest missed opportunity, especially as she was the one who pretty much started the series when she approached the Parks Department so they would fix the pit. Perhaps the writers decided to focus on other characters they considered more important or they forgot to give Ann’s character some proper development, but she surely had the potential to be a lot more than what she ended up being.