Jerry, Parks and Recreation's pudgy and picked-on office dope, got a very special episode last night. Mugged while feeding hummingbirds, Jerry saw his plight unite the cast in pity, fear, and zingers at the expense of his supreme lameness.

Jerry is part of the gang in the office, but the words are still brutal. After years of derision and disrespect, broken and battered, battling over a burrito with a Corgi, Jerry knows the fate that awaits him, and lies about the incident. In self-victimizing, Jerry carries on pathetically, the only way he knows how.

In an episode about outsiders, the real conflict comes after Jerry tells the truth, when Park Ranger Carl (special guest, Andy Samberg), hears he is to be blamed for the mortal dangers of the outdoors. Carl is a character of Samberg's usual kind, funny-obnoxious, always bordering on a bit much. A charmingly simple dude, Carl has no indoor voice, and is kept away from human contact and sent to the open wilds of Indiana as an act of mercy. Left in the forests, nearly forgotten, he works with whatever crew of rejects he's relegated to, with few resources and little outside contact. When Carl threatens to leak the truth about Jerry's "accident", Leslie learns what it is to love a loser.

Carl and Leslie come to an understanding because they too share a secret: they're losers. The Pawnee Parks crew comprises losers entirely. They know they are laughable, that their dreams and lives are ridiculous caricatures of "real success". The third wall breakdowns and gleanings of pitiful understanding inherited from The Office, a stylistic predecessor, evidence the characters' self-awareness in each episode. Leslie will never be the first female president, as she hopes, Andy will never achieve super-stardom in Mouse Rat, and Tom will never own a nightclub on each continent. They can love someone for the same reason they laugh at him because they're in on the joke, while also the butt of it.