S2E15: This kind of job is magic
The Parks and Rec fam lives on
This week was the first episode of Parks that I don’t remember at all. Legitimately. If you had lined up 4 episode plotlines and said “which one’s fake?”, I would’ve picked this one.
Episode 15 is all about Leslie realizing that a local food company, Sweetums, is a horrible corporation that produces wildly unhealthy “protein bars.” Ron and Leslie bicker a bit because he has a whiskey or two at the Sweetums kickoff party and she refuses to let him drive home, despite him saying that Swansons have a higher alcohol tolerance than most men. To prove his point, he heads home, drinks 6 more whiskeys, and carves a fully functional harp out of wood. I’ve found my inspiration for the next time I drink 6 whiskeys.
The A plot I care less about in this episode; the B plot is way better. Tom decides to move out of his shared home with Wendy and manipulates Mark, Donna, April, Andy, and Jerry into helping him out. Read: they do all the work, he orders shoes online (“brown Timberlands, size 8, narrow”). I kind of love this little tour of the Parks department’s homes, tbh! We’ve seen Ann’s a million times, we saw Leslie’s last week, and now we’re seeing Tom’s. I can appreciate Tom’s particular style of “having stuff.” While I’m no true hoarder like Leslie, I do often have shiny new thing syndrome, especially as it relates to fun objects and souvenirs. Tom owning a Roomba with an iPod attached is deeply relatable to me. I’m an absolute sucker for a souvenir.
Despite the fact that Tom manipulates his friends — after last week, it’s official, they’re friends — into helping him move, I do really love the fact that they show up for him. They set aside a whole Saturday to pack up his life, albeit reluctantly.
Sitting down to write Park It this week left me with a bit of good old fashioned writer’s block. Maybe it was because I have no real emotional attachment to this particular episode, but the more I thought about, the more I realized: I was thinking way too much about camp, and not enough about Parks and Rec.
My friends reading this are letting out a collective groan. I think I’ve spared the good readers of Park It too much camp talk thus far, and honestly it’s a huge accomplishment for me if we’re 23 issues into this thing and camp hasn’t come up. But alas. No time like the present to rip the bandaid!
For those who aren’t groaning: I spent summers during my college years working at a family camp in the Sierra Nevada. It was a hugely, hugely formative experience for me. We served meals and wrote silly variety shows and entertained kids by wearing costumes. It’s incredibly rustic, so I spent 12 weeks each year living in the dirt and sleeping under the stars. It gave me many of my very best friends and it’s my favorite place in the whole world.
Each year, the camp has a big 5-year reunion, where everyone who’s ever worked at camp comes up for a weekend of shenanigans. It’s been open since 1949, so staff members dating back to the 50s and 60s were in attendance (they’re in their 90s now, but doubtless still had shenanigans). There were hundreds of us up there spending the weekend together in the mountains and it was pretty freakin magical.
It got me thinking a lot about the community of people camp has given me. There are so many friends I saw who I would drop everything if they needed me, but I can barely tell you what they do for work right now. It’s a deeper sense of family created by sharing such a defining experience. It made me feel so incredibly lucky to see that that community is as intact as ever, even though I might not see the people for years.
I’ve seen similar instances over the years of the Parks and Rec community showing up for each other, even on TikTok this week! Aubrey Plaza and Kathryn Hahn are starring in the new Marvel show, Agatha All Along, a post-WandaVision witchy little miniseries. I watched the first episode right before I wrote this and I will be watching the second episode the minute I finish writing this.
Aubrey’s obviously parts of the Parks family, and true fans will know that Kathryn Hahn crops up in later seasons as Jen Barkley, a campaign manager for Bobby Newport and Ben Wyatt. Both Aubrey & Kathryn have been on campaign tours for Agatha, and the Parks and Rec community has been! Showing! Up!
Kathryn was on Las Culturistas today talking about the show and mentions that in Parks, she and Aubrey “only really passed each other in hallways.” They never had scenes together and never really had a reason to interact. Now they’re co-starring in a Marvel show together, but they can’t stop talking about their P&R roots.
THEN they were walking the red carpet last night for the premiere and this happened:
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I mean, the headline of the Hollywood Reporter article is legitimately “‘Agatha All Along’ Premiere Becomes ‘Parks and Recreation’ Reunion.” You can’t make this shit up.
The cast has reunited publicly so many times over the years and openly talks about how they privately stay in touch. Rob Lowe invited Amy to his 60th earlier this summer and golfs with Chris Pratt on the weekends. Amy and Nick Offerman fully hosted a reality TV show called Making It back in 2018. (I can’t remember if I’ve already written about this but) Amy recently made a TikTok with Rashida Jones on the streets of New York.
It’s clear from how much the cast keeps showing up in each others’ lives that they built an incredibly unique community on Parks. Amy writes about it in her book:
“Most days I was handed an amazing script that allowed me to stand in front of people I really loved and tell them how much I loved them. I got to work with the best writers and the best directors and the best producers…This kind of job is magic. It comes around once or twice in a lifetime if you’re lucky.”
I’ve loved seeing how much they love each other play out on TikTok the past few days and I loved feeling my own sense of that up at camp this weekend. It’s made what the Parks family has more tangible to me. My camp job was of course much harder than producing an multi-Emmy-winning hit TV show and constantly dodging the threat of network cuts but still … I get where they’re coming from.
And in the world of Pawnee, I love seeing these little pockets of friends come together more and more, with the dinner party last week and now with Tom’s move. It’s honestly pretty damn tender.
Quote of the week: “Mmmmm, Andy. You’re fine but you’re simple.”
Instead of favorite other moments this week, I wanted to focus on one: the fact that DJ Roomba plays only “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas. This is iconic for several reasons:
It REALLY situates this show in 2009. The absolute chokehold the Black Eyed Peas had on us …
It was the first ringtone I can remember my mom having on her pink Blackberry
I took a page out of her book and set it as the ringtone on my first phone, a Motorola Razor
I took this one step further and decided this was “my song,” so I made sure to request it at every. single. middle. school. dance. When I tell you the crowd when wild
I have a follow up questions which is where do the 90 year olds sleep at camp?
Hahahahhaah bailey that picture