Ann Perkins

Ann Perkins is a nurse in Pawnee whose boyfriend broke his legs falling into an abandoned construction pit, which is how she ends up in a town-hall meeting complaining to a parks department employee named Leslie Knope. She's sensible, a little exasperated, and clearly used to being the calm one in the room.

She starts as the straight-woman audience surrogate, bewildered by Pawnee's lunacy, and the show slowly rewards her by making her Leslie's most devoted friend rather than a joke. Rashida Jones plays exasperation with real warmth underneath it, so Ann's patience never curdles into condescension — she's in on the town's weirdness, not above it.