8) Leslie Knope
Actor: Amy Poehler
Show: Parks and Recreation
There shouldn’t be any special excuse needed to celebrate Amy Poehler’s optimistic-until-the-apocalypse Parks Director Leslie Knope. She has been consistently brilliant since the show’s 2009 premiere, and Parks and Rec itself finally caught up to her comedic sprinting as the years went on. The final season was no different (despite my qualms with that time jump): Poehler dominated a year full of petty rivalries, Gryzzlboxes, and enough character-ending montages to justify a Kleenex box or three.
Leslie and hubby Ben (Adam Scott) retained their indelible chemistry, and the show as a whole remained its weird, frustrating self (you can only milk a joke out of Pawnee’s idiocy so many dozen times). “You did and said exactly what I thought you were going to do and say,” Leslie admitted to an unmoving council member early in the season. “And that’s oddly comforting.” Leslie was the blinding eclipse of enjoyment at the show’s center, but, honestly, I’d say the same for the Pawnee Parks Department as a whole.