Kristen Bell had a short stint as an Eagleton city councillor called Ingrid de Forest. She and Leslie crossed paths initially when Eagleton ran into financial difficulty, and again when she took Leslie's role as Pawnee city councillor once the towns were merged. As well as being a successful politician, de Forest apparently "thinks she's so great because she won the Miss Indiana beauty pageant... last year... while she was in office... and pregnant." A successful lady indeed. Bell played an archetypal Eagleton snob with elegance and poise, and has been one of the most enjoyable parts of the current season. We discover that Eagleton's tendency to do things like filling public pools with bottled mineral water (for full-body hydration) is not particularly sustainable, so their council comes to Pawnee for advice on avoiding financial collapse. After a decent amount of gloating, Leslie proves herself as the most decent human being on this earth (real or fictional) and decides that the best course of action is to merge both Eagleton and Pawnee to absolve some of Eagleton's mass debt. As de Forest tells the citizens of Eagleton who object, Pawnee is town of angels: greasy, denim-clad angels. Of course, no good deed goes unpunished. Leslie, upon bursting out of the whizz palace to tell Ben that she was peeing so hard it was like a jacuzzi jet, discovers that de Forest is her opposition in her recall election as councillor for Pawnee. And, of course, being the absolute perfect specimen of humanity that Kristen Bell - sorry! I mean Ingrid de Forest - is, she beats Leslie in the election. De Forest proves herself as one of the more graceful and kind of the Eagletonians as she consoles Leslie on losing her position. She relates a story of what Sir Ian McKellen said to her the day she sold her boat to Karl Lagerfeld: "parting is such sweet sorrow". I don't know much about how it feels to lose a governmental election, but parting from Bell truly is.
