Turkey Chili

S3 E11: Jerry’s Painting

Parks and Recreation, 2009.

There are, in any life, a few rare moments when the tangled absurdities of bureaucracy, art, and chili con turkey coalesce into a single crystallized point of light. “Jerry’s Painting” is one such moment.

Let us begin with Jerry Gergich, a man so perpetually ridiculed he cannot mention salad dressing without derision. And yet—here, Jerry ascends. He unveils a painting at Pawnee’s community art show so striking, so unapologetically mythic, that it causes the town to spontaneously combust in moral outrage. A centaur goddess—nude, powerful, heroic—slays a stag with grace and gravitas. It is, unmistakably, Leslie Knope’s face upon this horse-bodied deity, and she knows it. She loves it. She is flattered and invigorated, as one is when one is both immortalized in oil and given hooves.

The painting also contains a cherubic, terrified baby with Tom Haverford’s likeness—a detail less empowering and more career-ending, in Tom’s opinion. The piece becomes a battleground. Conservative activist Marcia Langman deems it bestiality-adjacent. Perd Hapley, voice of ambiguity, hosts a segment titled “Is This Art or Is This Porn?” and invites adult film star Brandi Maxxxx to weigh in, because of course he does. The Public Art Commission, made up entirely of bureaucrats too afraid of nipples to function, decides the painting must burn. Leslie, goddess-in-question, absconds with it like a centaur outlaw.

Meanwhile, in a subplot equally important to the future of civilization, Ben Wyatt moves in with newlyweds April and Andy. Their home—if such a word may be used for a structure with no cutlery, no plates, and, one presumes, no laws—is an apocalyptic collage of domestic anarchy. It is revealed, with neither shame nor irony, that they are consuming turkey chili from a set of frisbees. Frisbees. For breakfast. When Ben questions this, they look confused. As though the idea of a spoon, or adulthood, or any system beyond blind whim is foreign to them. They have, at this point, replaced meals with chaos and grown-up responsibility with slapstick novelty.

Ben, brave and deluded, attempts to teach them the ways of mortgage-holders and spreadsheet-users. They resist. April fears that plates might spell the end of fun. Andy is less sure. In the end, they compromise: shower curtains and forks and a marshmallow gun. It is a glorious evolution. A domestic détente. A marshmallow-armed treaty with adulthood.

Leslie triumphs, too. The painting is salvaged—secretly duplicated with Tom’s centaur face to satisfy the town’s prudes—and her belief in righteous mischief endures. The episode ends not with fire, but with small growths: a fork in Andy’s hand, a spark between Leslie and Ben, a painting intact.

And this, perhaps, is the point. Sometimes a painting is more than paint. Sometimes a frisbee is more than a toy. And sometimes, when two young adults buy a cutting board and a marshmallow shooter, you realize civilization may just survive.

Make it! Simple Turkey Chili from AllRecipes.