If you are a fan of sitcoms, you know the name Michael Schur. Even if you think you don’t, you do. Michael Shur has produced, created and written some of TV’s most beloved TV comedies in the past decade including The Office, Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and The Good Place. These cult sitcom shows are cherished by their loyal fanbases and the general public alike, long after their final episodes have aired. Thanks to streaming services, they have gained new fans, and audiences who had watched it while it was originally on air have re-watched these series multiple times, too. While some shows fade over time after their original airing has ended, Michael Schur’s comedies seem to have only gotten stronger and more popular.
The four shows have widely different premises: The Office is set in an office, Parks and Recreation is set in a government building, Brooklyn Nine-Nine takes place in a police precinct, and The Good Place is set in the afterlife. They all are connected by their focus on the characters. Shur knows that what keeps viewers coming back for more isn’t necessarily the plot, but the characters and their relationships with one another. While the shows certainly have amazing examples of what friendships can be, this article is focusing on what Michael Schur’s sitcoms teach us about love. Please note that there are spoilers ahead for all four shows.
Ben and Leslie: Partners Support Each Other
Leslie’s over-the-top enthusiasm, ambition, and dedication to her job is what makes Ben fall in love with her. Part of what draws Leslie to Ben is that he shares her goals of rising in the ranks of state and federal government. While it may seem at first that Leslie and Ben’s similar careers may be cause for conflict, throughout the series they make sacrifices to support each other’s goals. In season 4 when their relationship threatens Leslie’s job, Ben quits so she can continue. When a new position would take him from Pawnee, Ben turns it down so they can stay together. In season 7, they are both contenders to run for governor of Indiana. Yet, Ben lets Leslie accept the candidacy because she cares about the impact she’s making on the world. The support and sacrifice are mutual. At the end of season 4, Ben gets an opportunity of a lifetime to run a congressional campaign in D.C. He wants to turn it down because they just got back together, but Leslie makes him take the job because she knows Ben would do the same and wants to see him succeed. One of the final scenes of the series is a flashforward to the Secret Service serving Leslie and Ben. Their goals are so complementary in their personal goals that it was not clear which one of them was the president. Shur specifically left it ambiguous but viewers were okay with that. This is because audiences have seen Ben and Leslie making sacrifices and supporting each other for seven seasons. Regardless of who sits in the oval office, the other will be right beside them. While Ben and Leslie have similar career goals, they both still have their own unique interests that complement instead of conflict. Leslie loves things like strong female politicians, scrapbooking, waffles, Joe Biden, and surprising her friends with elaborate gifts; Ben is all about ’90s alternative music, calzones, crunching break-even spreadsheets, showing off his Game of Thrones knowledge and treating himself to Batman memorabilia. Neither Ben nor Leslie find anything weird about what their S.O. likes and what gets ’em going. They may gently poke fun, but it’s all meant lovingly. A successful, romantic partnership requires making someone else’s happiness a priority, and Ben and Leslie do just that.
Jim and Pam: Relationships Require Work
Jim and Pam’s relationship reworks the office romance into a modern light. People love their relationship because it is realistic. As The Take by ScreenPrism puts it, their office romance in pop culture previously painted a picture that office romance is, “a semi-antagonistic forbidden but irresistible heat born out of a fast-paced, high stakes job.” Jim and Pam’s romance is the antithesis of that picture. Their romance is a sweet, shy, slow-burning love grounded in a boring, normal workplace. The magic of Jim and Pam’s love story is that while their relationship seemed normal on the surface, the little gestures and actions turned it into a great inspirational love story. Whether it be planning pranks or making each other laugh, their main goal is to enjoy each other’s presence. Their big romantic gestures to each other are subtle, modest, and understated. Another way Jim and Pam portray a realistic romance is that they are not a perfect couple. Their non-confrontational nature, which held them back from initially getting together, creates communication issues in the later seasons. For example, Jim takes a job in Philadelphia and buys a house without telling Pam. While season nine may be difficult for Jim and Pam as they struggle to make their relationship work, the season brings up an important lesson. All strengths in a relationship bring equal and opposite weaknesses. Any relationship requires mutual effort, and when you put in the work your love will be stronger for the tests it survives.
Eleanor and Chidi: Partners Push Each Other to Become Their Best Selves
When we first meet Eleanor and Chidi in The Good Place, they are total opposites. She is a coworker-betraying, senior-scamming, tequila-slugging piece of human garbage who dies and accidentally ends up in The Good Place. On the other hand, her supposed soulmate Chidi is a moral philosophy professor who specializes in ethics. She enlists Chidi to teach her to become a better person so she can earn her spot and stay in The Good Place. Chidi’s indecisiveness has plagued him his entire life. His inability to make even the smallest decision has hurt his friends and family members. Over the three seasons, Chidi and Eleanor push each other to become their best selves. Yet, the ways they change each other are exclusively positive, and they encourage their partners to be their better selves, not who they want them to be. Eleanor shows Chidi that sometimes the best things in life are the things that you take a leap of faith on instead of planning for. Chidi teaches Eleanor that it’s okay to open up to friends and loved ones even though you might get hurt. The show’s overall message is that we choose to be good because of our bonds with other people and our innate desire to treat them with dignity. Simply put, we are not in this alone. Through Chidi and Eleanor’s relationship, audiences are taught that relationships are supposed to make us want to become better versions of ourselves.
Jake and Amy: Relationships are a Balancing Act
The characterization of Jake Peralta is such a clear subversion of well-known tropes. The character we’re introduced to in the first episode is cocky and a smartass who doesn’t like listening to authority. Audiences completely understand why he drives Amy, a type-A anxiety-ridden perfectionist, up a wall. Jake and Amy are less alike than Ben and Leslie are. In fact, they are opposites. Their romance could have fallen into the well-known trope of “an endearing idiot eventually wears down the woman who is too good for him, and she realizes she was too uptight all along and they both change for each other.” However, Shur gives audiences something completely different. In Jake and Amy’s relationship, Shur keeps Jake’s core personality (quirkiness, childlike) but has him become a better boyfriend and person as a result of his relationship with Amy. Speaking of compromise, there’s a ton of that like every healthy relationship should have. If they do have a conflict, it doesn’t become some annoying arc; they work it out as normal people do. Both characters have significantly grown and absorbed the very best qualities of their partner.
In the end, none of these couples in all four sitcoms force the other to change who they are when they get together. The thing that makes Schur’s romances work is that they find ways to fit, and they remain their own individual selves, even after years, decades, or centuries in the case of Chidi and Eleanor. They don’t lose themselves, they just find each other along their own ways. Michael Shur’s comedies are praised for subverting the genre, embracing representation, tackling real-life social issues without taking away the comedic element, and heartwarming friendships. Perhaps Shur’s greatest feat is knowing how to write the kind of realistic-yet-inspirational love stories that we’ve been long awaiting to see on our screens.