“We take great pains in all the episodes to show how much her friends’ happiness means to her and the crazy lengths that she’ll go to to help her friends when they’re in trouble. Like when Ron is in trouble with his ex-wives, she’ll throw herself on a number of different grenades for him. In the first ever Ron and Tammy episode, Ron saw that happen and it really affected him. It laid the foundation for the rest of their relationship. Part of the theme of the show is if you’re that kind of person, that will come back and help you. That was the whole design of last season for us: When she was in a crisis and her campaign managers pulled out, her friends said, “Screw it, we’ll help you.” That’s the essence of who the character is and the world she inhabits: She’s a person who is so genuinely mindful of the people around her and wants so badly to help them succeed and achieve their goals and dreams that she’s now in a situation where there’s no length to which her friends will not go for her. It’s a little bit of a friend fantasy. She’s what everyone wishes their best friend could be like.” - Mike Schur on Leslie Knope