All television shows evolve. It’s inevitable in 20-plus episodes a season. Sometimes that evolution is good; as characters develop and deepen, their stories grow to fill our imaginations and take on lives of their own. Other times change can be bad; the story runs off the rails and the show morphs into something we no longer find entertaining.

When Parks and Recreation first debuted in spring 2009, it was pretty clearly a knockoff of NBC’s other documentary-style sitcom The Office. In the first few episodes it was easy to see the similarities. They were both workplace comedies, satirizing the bureaucracy of mid-sized business or, in Parks’ case, small town government. Parallels between the principal characters were obvious. Leslie Knope = Michael Scott. Mark Brendanawicz = Jim Halpert. Tom Haverford = (a less loyal) Dwight Schrute.

And while The Office was still going strong as a series in 2009, there didn’t initially seem to be much hope that Parks and Recreation would amount to anything more than a shadow of its progenitor. Of course, fans of Parks and Recreation will note that their show did indeed evolve. It would grow and transform into one of the best programs on television.

Looking back over those early episodes, you can see occasional flashes of wit, sparks that gave hints of what the show might become if it could only find the right groove. But they had yet to figure out what to do with the show’s central character, Leslie Knope. Still, within that first truncated season, it’s possible to pinpoint the exact scene – in fact the exact moment – when the show’s creators began to figure it out.

For much of episode 4, entitled “Boys Club,” Leslie Knope is still nursing her crush on Mark Brendanawicz, still struggling to find her place in Pawnee’s city hierarchy. And much of it still feels like an Office retread. The scene that set the stage for the show’s eventual transformation takes place in that episode’s cold open.

Leslie and Tom are heading to a park to investigate reports that local teens have been engaging in dog poop fights. When they arrive at the scene, Leslie is horrified to find out the reports are true. Tom, seeing this, beats a hasty retreat to the car. But Leslie, summoning all the authority at her disposal, sets out to stop the fracas. “Hey. Boys. I am Leslie Knope. I work for the Department of Parks and Recreation,” she says, advancing on the teens. At which point, one of them sends a bag filled with dog poop flying her way.

Undeterred, she responds by picking up a garbage can lid to use as a shield. “No. Ah. That’s disgusting. What are you doing? Help! Help! Tom! Tom!” But Tom is back in the car, ignoring the goings-on. In a last-ditch effort to pacify the situation with logic, she asks the miscreants, “Why would you think this is fun?”

A flying bag of poop hits her squarely and Leslie finally decides she’s had enough. She lets down her mask of authority, picks up a bag, and becomes a real person. Her first throw is tentative. By her second, the game is afoot. She parries an incoming bag and fluidly flings one back, really getting some muscle on it. And that’s when the series changed.

In addition to being absolutely hilarious, it’s the first time we get a chance to see Leslie respond to a challenge in a way that had previously seemed outside her capability – she’s being irresponsible and having fun.

This push-pull between duty and fun would become the central struggle of the show’s heroine. And the battle of what she should do versus what she wants to do has served as the animating force behind some of Parks and Recreation’s most transcendent moments in later seasons. It was this tension that fueled her decision to celebrate marrying two gay penguins, her refusal to execute a wrongly accused fugitive possum, and her rescue of a painting that eerily depicted her as a semi-nude centaur.

To be sure, the cold open in episode 4 didn’t change things right away. It wouldn’t be until the second season, when they got the rest of the cast hitting their respective strides, that the show would actually become good in its own right, but this scene served as an early glimpse of what the show was capable of. It also showed the spark of life that Amy Poehler was able to breathe into Leslie Knope.

At the end of the scene, breathless from slinging dog poop, Leslie admits, “Actually, this is a little fun.” Yes, it was. And it was only going to get more fun from there on out.