Freddy Spaghetti (S2E24)
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And we're putting it on in a podcast. Then we'll send it up into the sky. Parks and Recollection. Come on, little podcast. Spread your wings and fly. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Parks and Recollection. How are you today, Mr. Co-host Alan Yang? What's going on, Rollo? I'm good. It's a morning record. We usually do afternoons. Morning record, feel refreshed. Just watch the episodes, feel good.

I feel... I think my coffee, my caffeine level is exactly right at the moment. I'll chase it for the rest of the day, but right now it's good. Well, I don't drink caffeine. Did you know that, Rob? What? Yeah. I don't drink coffee. Isn't that weird? It's kind of weird. Wait, wait, wait. You...

Is somebody as energetic as you? Well, you know, I guess I guess it's right because you'd be off the wall. I just never. That is true. I just never started. And so if I this is actually funny. If I drink even the smallest amount of coffee, like I went out to to to to lunch not that long ago. We were in New York and I I had a I had a Vietnamese coffee for lunch. We had a Vietnamese place. And that night I didn't fall asleep till 6 a.m.

Oh, no, no, no. Just had a coffee at lunch and then couldn't. My girlfriend's like, what's going on? I was like, I don't know. I had one coffee. So for me, it's the most powerful drug possible. Like if if if I drink any coffee, it's it's my body has no tolerance to caffeine. So you're lucky. That would be my my nightmare. See, I can drink it and then go to sleep.

That's insane. The adverse. Anyway, today is a good one, right? How excited are we about Freddy Spaghetti? I think we're pretty excited. It's a great season finale, season two finale. And we're just ramping up. We just did the master plan, your first appearance. And so this is obviously you're in Adam's second appearance. And it's an awesome episode. It's really like we talk about. This is the pocket to me. This is the pocket, the peak. The show starts to peak right around here. And so it was really fun to watch.

This is written by Mr. Dan Gore, our great friend, friend of the show, and directed by Jason Wollner. The original air date, obviously, as we just said, was season two. Episode 24? That sounds so insane.

That's unreal. Don't forget, Rob, we also then almost immediately shot the first six of season three. So we shot about 30 episodes in one calendar year. Take that, all you streamers out there. Anyone doing a streaming show, myself included, who are doing like, I'm doing 10 episodes or I'm doing six episodes. 30 in one year. 30. 30. Do you know how hard it is to do

10 great episodes of television. How about try doing 30 in a row? 30 decent ones, you know? It's like, try not dropping some duds in there. But yeah, no, it's 30 episodes. And I just saw Gore. I went to the Super Bowl and I sat near Gore and we were in the Universal section. So it was fun. So great. So it aired on May 20th.

End of the traditionally end of the network television season, May 20th, 2010. And basically the overview is, uh, the, you know, someone shut the government, the government down. I'm not gonna mention who it was, but somebody did it. And, um, the parks are closed. Leslie skirts the rules. No, no,

and holds a children's concert in the vacant lot. The legendary lot. The legendary lot. And some quick notes to start the episode. This episode marks the final performance for Paul Schneider as Mark Berdanowicz. It's also, some snark in the notes, by the way, one of the producers. It's also the last time anyone on the show mentions Mark at any capacity.

So someone just put that in the thing. The additional, in any capacity. Goodbye, sweet prince. Enjoy that big, beautiful architectural map in the sky. Do some city planning. Do some city planning. Goodbye, sweet prince. Yeah, there it is.

Natalie Morales, who plays Lucy, she's in this as well. She was in the last episode. I worked on The Grinder after this. Now has become a great director. And what else we got here? What else we got in notes? More guest stars. More guest stars. This episode also features Jayma Williamson reprising her role as Tom's ex-wife, Wendy, and comedian and writer Brian McCann playing the titular...

Freddy Spaghetti. So that's, that's a big, we'll talk about Brian a little later, but yeah, that's cool. And, uh, last notes note, April and Andy share their first kiss in this episode. A lot of romance happening. A lot of romance. That's my, um, Howard Stern ask, uh, you know, sound effects. I'm going to start doing that. I think in the show.

Constantly, just all the time. That's the coffee. That's the coffee gun. It is. By the time we get to the end of it, there'll be no more sound effects. Yeah. Well, hit us with the... Let's do it. So the beginning of the episode, as you mentioned, the Pawnee government has been shut down due to a budget crisis in the last episode of Master Plan. When Leslie explains at a town hall that a family concert featuring children's entertainer Freddie Spaghetti, played by Brian McCann, must be canceled due to the shutdown...

The citizens are outraged. Leslie visits state auditors Chris and Ben, seeking a way to keep the concert, but Ben insists there's simply no money for it. Leslie then goes to Mark to vent about her situation and seek help, only to learn he has taken a buyout and plans to join a construction company. Frustrated, Leslie angrily calls him Mark Brandanikwitz.

It's a legendary joke. It's almost worth having him on the show just so you can call him Mark Berndanikwitz when he leaves the show. It's a super funny, super funny joke. Do you know any way of remembering who came up with that one? Mark Berndanikwitz. God, I don't know, man. That really feels like there's a lot of wordplay in the show. And so by this point, this is the end of season two. You know, it's there.

Greg is pitching that maybe it was gore. This was an episode that he wrote. It sounds possibly like him, but I don't want to give him too much credit. So I'm going to say TBD. We don't know. We don't know. But yeah, it's a great setup for an episode. And really, you see the turn from Ron in this one. And he's happy about the budget being cut at the front. And then by the end of the episode, he has a turn. When Chris made his appearance, he talked about creating the character and where it came from and the references to Tom Cruise.

Uh, and, and I did in my first meeting with you guys in the writer's room, I, I mentioned a story about how intense Tom is, um, even when ordering a glass of water.

And we put that in the show and that's in this episode. Chris orders a glass of water and it's almost a word for word recreation of my story. I'd like a glass of water. I'd like it to be in a glass. I'd like it to be cold. Good stuff. We just put it right into the show. And it's also like, look, this is the second I was like, you're probably your fourth or fifth scene in the show. It's like, yeah, if you come up with these things that kind of

explain who the character is or show who they are. And you just, you just pop them in. You just pop them in. It's also, this is also very popular cold open and it's in, I think it's in a lot of clip reels. It's, it's Pratt falling over the, the, uh, the desk on his skates in the very beginning. And this episode is so much physical comedy and Dan Gore loved writing on stuff in. So in the cold open, like it goes into that theme song and it goes, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't do all that shit. Like, uh, well,

in the writer's room, we would pitch cold open. So we would go like, okay. And then, and then Andy comes in, he's on skates and he falls over the, the, the desk at the front and it goes bump, bump, bump, bump. So we just would say bump, bump every time, every time we would pitch. And then, then we would, we would go on to pitch a lot of things that would make no sense. Then we go, then we go bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump,

and we bump them and then we kill on. So that was the beginning of that. And that continued for like six more seasons. We would say that over and over again. Wow. I'm looking, I'm looking ahead at some of our notes. These are, these are amazing notes that we've been handed before we do this one. Yeah.

Shout out to the notes. The shout out to the notes. Later in the episode, Anne struggles with her newfound feelings for Andy. April and Andy finally reveal their feelings for each other. A lot of feelings. But April rejects Andy, believing that Andy still has feelings for Anne. Meanwhile, Ron has been assigned a task force to help fix the city's budget problem and is delighted at the prospect of deep municipal cuts, gloating and chanting at

Wow.

way, way, way later, we would do a huge concert, right? It was like, what was the Unity concert? It was like hundreds of people. So Freddy's Spaghetti was like a mini version of that. We also got to go back and talk about this talking head where you're going to run to the moon. Do you remember shooting that one? Oh, we should go back and talk about that, yeah. Legendary talking head. And...

Again, very character formative, right? Formative for the character. And we actually learned later that the math was kind of off. But do you remember shooting that? I remember shooting it for a number of reasons. I live in Santa Barbara, and it's not close to L.A. Everybody else in the cast lives in L.A. I got a phone call from Morgan Sackett, our wonderful line producer. And he said...

I hate to ask you this. I know that you're day off and you're in Santa Barbara, but God, we have this talking head and gosh, we're shooting in Pasadena, which is probably 200 miles away. Because would you mind, I mean, is there any way you could come in and shoot it? And I read it. It's hilarious. And I drove all the way to 200 miles and shot a 30 second shot.

talking head and turned around and drove 200 miles home. So I'm never likely to forget. And then the other thing was, I was super worried about because I take off running so fast about pulling a hamstring. Yeah, you're not supposed to like it, you know, at my age, just run that fast. And the fast running was it made me laugh about it. Yes. Well, that's what was my follow up question was watching this talking in this morning, like, was this an exaggerated run, like a little bit of a comedy run? Or was this your normal Rob Lowe? That

that's what you look like when you run. What is your opinion? Do you remember? I think it's

I think I'm putting a little sauce on him for sure. I guess that was my guess as well. Because we also have a moment later where Nick is running, and I'm like, he's putting a little sauce on it too. But it's just enough so it's like, you're not looking like a bozo going way too big. It's just a little bit. But it's also, by the way, that is dangerous. If you ever played touch football or anything over the age of 40, you're going to pull something. It's like if you ever play pickup basketball, anything.

if you're over 30, people get injured every game. They're just getting injured every game. You just can't do that. You're not supposed to. Softball games, you know, that first step out of first base, off home plate to first base, so many people roll those hammies up, and that was my big thing. I just didn't want to do that. It's a dead sprint. Take it from me, a man who has torn both of his Achilles tendons. You do not want to, we want to stretch. You want to stretch. Yeah, that's a good talking head. That's a, I think it's,

I mean, it's fun when we go through and note sort of, you know, Jeff's memes that live in perpetuity. And I think that's Chris running to the moon is definitely one of them. Yes, that's up there for sure.

Here's a little note about Anne's house and bedroom. This does make me laugh because people don't know what's a stage and what's not a stage. They don't know. That's right. Because you can't tell. Sometimes it's a duplicate of something that exists in real life. So Anne's house in the show is an actual house. The exterior, obviously, is an actual house in Studio City. But what we then did was we duplicated...

some of the house on the sound stage. And so the inside we have on stage and then the outside there's like a little bit of a fake exterior. But we don't know, we never go into her bedroom. So there is a little bit of a funny note here from Greg which is like if you see any of the bedroom it looks kind of normal but if you actually went into it we never go in it. It's a twin bed with like one foot on either side. There's like

Like, no, there's no room. There's no, it's like, it's like aunt's bedroom is the saddest thing. Every time you'd walk into like, oh, this is like a child. This is like a doll's bedroom. It's, it's, it's a nothing. You'll just never see in the inside of it. Like when you watch the show, you'll realize you've never seen the inside of that, that, that room. So that's a little, a little fun fact.

I pass the lot all the time when I, as I'm like driving around LA and I, and Ann's house and I go, Oh, there's Ann's old house. And like that whole area of the Valley, we shot most of Pawnee in, um, in the Valley, in the San Fernando Valley. And, um,

I mean, I feel like we shot every single inch that we possibly could. I mean, it's 125 episodes. Yeah, the lot is around Hazeltine and Collins, if anyone is from Studio City. Like, it's in that area. And then, yeah, every location is around there. And then sometimes Pasadena, like you said, because the City Hall, Pawnee City Hall is Pasadena City Hall.

So sometimes we would, you would try to, as a locations person, you know, find locations near there so you could shoot out your days. Anyway, that's production logistics. We got to talk about this massage scene as well. I mean, that's the scene where Ron, you massage Ron first and then Ron is supposed to massage you. What was that like? What was that? What was shooting that like? The thing that I remember most about this was.

I could not believe how uncomfortable the wool sweaters are that Nick Offerman has to wear as Ron Swanson. Yeah. You can't. I mean, for those of you who don't like to wear raw wool on your body like me.

You just can't believe it. So when I touched him and felt what those sweaters feel like, I just I just could. I was like, I almost couldn't breathe. It's the most uncomfortable wardrobe an actor has ever worn. And and credits to Nick, man, he just owned it. I mean, and it's so perfect. But that was the beginning, I think, of a long story.

wonderful flirtation, like bromance between Chris Traeger and Ron Swanson. Yeah, you do the burger contest later. It's like two very different kinds of men. But, you know, there's some kind of respect, I think, there. Did he feel solidly built? I feel like whenever I slap Nick on the back, he's like, he's pretty solid. It's like this guy's made of oak. You're talking about two Midwestern boys. You know, he's from Indiana. My family's from Indiana and Ohio. Yeah.

And, you know, we're solid as we're solid as oak. But Offerman is is is is truly a rock. He's he's chiseled out of granite and bacon. He's very compact, very compact. What I love about this massage scene is that it starts out with Rob. Chris is saying that.

a massage train will loosen everybody up. And it's not even that I want a massage. I'll be the caboose and Ron Swanson is the locomotive. You just want people loose. And then by the end of the scene, and we have a screenshot for you to look at, your face is so pained that you are not getting a massage. Yeah.

From Ron Swanson. Yeah, he really turns and wants the massage pretty quickly. He doesn't care about the rest of the meeting whatsoever. No. The meeting was a pretext for a massage. That did make me laugh also because it's really important plot information. It's literally Ben saying he's going to fire Leslie Knope, the lead of the show. Like the lead character of the show is being fired. And then meanwhile, there's this comedy bit that's like very funny. But it's like Ron is trying to defend Leslie that has to massage you.

It is. I really like rewatching. It's like it's very important plot stuff happening. And this is what was fun for me. I know I talked about it last episode is I'm usually the guy involved with or delivering the plot. And in this, I didn't have to do any of that.

I was never asked to do any of it. And I loved it. That's just fun. I just came in and was funny or, you know, tried to be anyway, and never worried about any of the other stuff. So like you said, there's this big scene where the lead of the show is being fired. I don't have anything to do with any of that. And you're massaging somebody. I'm just being ridiculous in the corner. And it was so fun. Yeah, that must be fun.

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Chris and Ben go to Lot 48 to shut the concert down, and Leslie explains everything's been donated and nothing's on the taxpayer's dime. Leslie then learns Freddy Spaghetti has booked another gig, and the concert once again seems in a state of peril. Leslie asks Andy to play instead, but he's hit by a car while driving his new motorcycle home to retrieve his guitar, breaking his right arm.

attending to Andy in the hospital. Anne suddenly kisses him, but immediately stops and guiltily walks out. Later, April visits Andy in the hospital and is relieved to see Andy's fine, finally agrees to go out with him, and kisses Andy. In an effort to be upfront and honest, Andy admits that Anne also just kissed him, but that it meant nothing. April angrily storms out, taking back her decision to go out with him. A lot of plot. I mean, this thing flies. This episode is really packed. It just keeps going. I do love that. So a couple things.

First of all, when Ron shows up at the concert, he's running, and then he slips and falls really hard. And it was kind of not really in the script, kind of Nick's idea. And Aziz has said that this moment's one of his favorite shots in the whole series because it's a comedy fall. It's a comedy pratfall, yet another pratfall in this episode. I remember it well because, again, I was so new to the show still. What's what? It's my second episode? Second episode, yeah. Jesus Christ.

It's my second episode. And Nick went for, I mean, he sold out. He, and multiple times. I mean, and there was no like half-assed actor thing.

dainty fake. I mean, he wiped the fuck out. And it's so funny. It's so funny because Ron Swanson is a character who never moves. You know, he's like a stone, right? That's his character. Like literally one of those first episodes, he has a hernia and he doesn't move like this one. And it's like he slips on a banana peel. I don't know how he did it, but like, yeah, he's very, very talented physical comedian when he has to be. So yeah, it's really funny. Also,

almost equally funny to me is when you guys show up, you're wearing like, you're wearing like sunglasses, just Ray-Ban sunglasses. There's something about that. And I don't remember, I've been trying, when I watched the episode back, I was trying to remember there was a huge discussion about the wardrobe that day. Yeah. And, well, again, because Adam's character was new, mine was new, and we hadn't,

When a character's new, you're just kind of figuring out what would they wear. In certain things, look at Ron Swanson. He was wearing, I think, members only in the first few episodes. He's wearing full suits. It just doesn't look like him. His hair's different. And then now he's wearing those sweaters all the time. But you guys were learning. So we were learning and didn't... There's something about that...

That outfit that makes me laugh the way we're walking, the way we're walking onto that lot. I also remember it being 1 billion degrees. We would always shoot parks in the summer in the Valley and it was just so hot. You,

You couldn't believe it. It's just the worst. But yeah, you guys walking up like hit men with the glasses on always made me laugh. I just want to say what I love about that is that also it kind of, if you think about it, like you guys are outsiders coming in and like you haven't been ponied yet in a way. Right. So like here you are, these people from the state budget office. And of course you're going to come in almost like, like,

weird nerdy hitmen and then you slowly become a Pawnee person and that kind of facade goes away and become who you're supposed to be. That's what I think about. And you guys start dressing differently from each other too, right? It's like Chris is a little bit sportier and then Ben's a little bit like hipster nerdier. Speaking of improv, this is another thing that did make me laugh when I saw it. Aubrey improvises the moment. If you watch closely...

he, Andy's walking over to talk to her and she spits something. I was like, is she spitting? I actually rewound it to see she's spitting out some hay straw. So it's like some straw in her mouth. And, uh,

Episode director Jason Walner asked her not to do this, but she insisted and thought it would be great. And it did make the final cut. And a little color to this, Jason Walner is a friend of mine, just the nicest guy. And it's so funny to imagine him trying to tell her to not do that. Walner's really talented director. He's a super funny guy. He directed Borat 2. He's on the shorter side, so he looks really young. So he...

he wears a suit to set so people know he's not a PA. He's not a production assistant. So it's just funny to me to imagine him asking a very stubborn Aubrey Plaza not to constantly spit hay out of her mouth and probably failing to do so. So that's very evocative to me. I can just see her. I think it's funny. I can't think of a horrible Aubrey Plaza impersonation I just did. I know, but it's also like, okay, I won't do it and then she'll do it anyway. Yeah.

That's right. That's right. Okay, I won't do it. Yeah, then she'll just do it. I remember the other part. I remember the Freddy Spaghetti concert itself. I had mentioned earlier that the way Parks was shot was so shocking to me in the freedom of it. And that usually the way you shoot something, everybody, is you do...

what they call your coverage. It's you shooting, camera's on you. It's all the different angles of you. And then you turn the camera in a different direction and do all the angles of all the other people. And that's how everything is done. On Parks and Recreation, we had multiple cameras shooting all the time and you never, quote unquote, turned around and shot the other people. So there might be someone shooting you

Every single moment you're on the set. And that was like, I have very rarely worked like that. And I remember during Freddie spaghetti, there's a moment where Amy comes out and tries to get the crowd hyped. And it's like, if you're happy and you know, clap your hands and nobody claps. It was Amy's moment, Amy's whole thing. And I'm way in the back of the crowd, not near anybody, but,

And I am the only person to clap. That was my it was an improv I did. And it made it into the show. And what it taught me, and I'm sure has talked about this, is like at any moment as an actor, you can be giving something on the show and it could end up in the show, even when it's not a scene that's about you.

Yeah. And that's actually really, I feel like it's energizing and liberating for actors because you're totally right. When you turn around, say, you know, we're shooting, I'm in a scene with Rob and we're shooting, you know, cameras are on Rob, you know, I could theoretically, I'm not, I'm off camera. And some of like, look, just let's, let's, you know, the sauce is made on some of these sauces made sausages made. I don't know. Saucy sausage. Either one.

There are actors who won't even be there sometimes. Like I gotta go and then someone will read the off camera like they won't even be there. Forget acting or improv and it's like you could technically lead or you could technically get a shoulder double or like the back of the head double.

you know, it's like, you don't even, so to, to actually do the scene and, and be on camera for almost all of it's kind of cool. And that has to do with the lighting. The reason, the reason it's possible on this show is because, you know, it's not meant to look like a, you know, David Fincher movie. It's, it's, it's a, it's a mockumentary. It's, it's, it's, it's kind of just like an overhead light. And, and, and we try to just,

just run and gun and go. So, um, and then you get more, it's called cross shooting sometimes, you know, when you're able to shoot both people in a scene and, and it allows people to improvise together. Cause if you think about it and you're only shooting one side of the conversation and Rob is improvising a bunch, we don't get my side of the conversation. And then you have to, you have to turn around and reshoot it all again or whatever, you know? Yeah, I, um, it's my,

It's one of my proudest moments. It sounds stupid, but it is as an actor on the show because it was early on. And, you know, and the other thing is, you don't know. I mean, there's there's, you know, 150 extras and it's a big thing. And then in the whole point is nobody claps and you choose to clap. I mean, I could add Jason Wollner coming over to me and saying, don't do that. Yeah. And you being terrified of this small man in a suit. Which.

Which happens all the time to me. We love Jason. Let's see what else. Oh, so there's a big stunt in this. Andy gets hit by a car on his motorcycle. It's almost definitely a stuntman in this case since he's riding a motorcycle getting hit by a car. But we did talk about the symmetry of...

We start the show with Andy in cast with his legs, and then we always kind of wanted him to end up in the hospital again. We thought that would be kind of funny. In this case, it matched because it worked with this story, and he ended up there again. But it's kind of a testament to...

And I'm spoiling a little bit of the rest of the episode, but by the end of season two, he begins the series. No one likes him. End of season two, two women are kissing him. Two principal characters are going in there and kissing him. Like everyone loves him. And then there's obviously that joke where, you know, a nurse walks in and, you know, he's like, don't kiss me. But yeah, that's how much that character evolved. It was the beginning of the story.

Star-Lord. Yeah, it was, yeah, it's Star-Lord, it's Owen Grady, Jurassic World. Owen Grady? Owen Grady, the character names are so funny, man, it's, yeah, he's just still a little kid, man, I just, you know, this is going to date the episode, but the

the new Jurassic World trailer. What is it? Jurassic World Dominion or something came out and there's like the older characters and I used to love Jurassic Park so I texted Pratt and I was like, man, it's so awesome seeing like Sam Neill and Laura Dern and Goldblum like in the scenes with you guys and he texted back immediately. He's like, yeah, my God, it's insane. Like he's like, he's just a little kid. He's like, he's like, yeah, it's like, it's awesome, man. He's like, he's just really excited. He's like, glad you liked the trailer.

Like, just really excited about it. Before we move on, can I just call up one of my favorite moments from the series? And it's perhaps one of my favorite moments with Rob, with Chris in the series, and it made it into a producer's cut. And I think actually now on Peacock,

NBC's Peacock, you can watch this scene over the credits. It's a deleted scene where Tom and Lucy go off to have sex in Anne's house. And I pulled up the script, by the way, and when she says, hey, do you want to go to that house over there? She just wants to go to a random house and sleep with her boyfriend.

But anyway, in the scene, you're just chipper and walking up to the front door. And it's Chris Traeger. Hello. And you peek in, right? And you see Tom. Hey, Tom Haverford. And who's your friend? He's like, what the hell? Get out of here, man. And he said, you got it, Tom. And you leave as happy and chipper as you walked in. It is so funny. You're whistling both times. In the script, it says Chris walks off whistling to himself.

Do you remember shooting that? Do you remember this moment with Aziz? I do because, yeah, they're having sex. Yeah, that's the premise. They're having sex in there and Aziz lays on him. He's basically like, get the fuck out of here.

out of here. I'm like, you got it, Tom. And I just leave like nothing, nothing has happened. It's so funny, man. Yeah. That's not in the, so that's one of the instances of that got cut for time. And so it's in, you know, if you watch it on Peacock, this episode and master plan are both longer than you're allowed to do on network. So network is like something like 2130 or 2117, whatever it is. And so these episodes are both much longer on Peacock

Peacock Premium is what I watch, John. Sorry, not the commercials. I want to point out to people, you know, because most people just watch what they watch. They watch it on their phone or they watch it on a computer. They watch it on TV. They watch it on Peacock or they watch it on NBC or they watch it on Netflix. But there's a real difference. I mean, you pick, you know, I love Veep, for example. Veep's a hilarious show, right? Guess what? On Veep, if the episode ends up being a certain amount of time, that's what they get to do.

on a network show, you have to cut it to a certain time. Have to. And you have to have commercial breaks that have to be at a certain time. So all that affects the storytelling, the writing, the shooting, the editing. And, you know, on streamers, they just get to, there are no rules and they get to do whatever they want. So again, if you ever see something on network television that you like, it's exponentially hard to make it good because of the constraints of working there. Absolutely.

Absolutely. I felt it through the editing walls. That was the nightmare of Mike and Dean's life. Editing those episodes was not making them great, of course, but then it's like, it's 2153. We have to take 30 seconds out of this and you're just dying. You're pulling frames out. And now it's wild. I'm looking at the Ted Lasso runtimes and they're like,

46 minutes. I'm like, 46 minutes? This is a half hour show. But yeah, but there's, but you know, they really range and you get to do that. We did that on Masternode. We had a 50 minute episode and we had a 22 minute episode. It's like, it's so, but certainly like,

Like, you know, it's much more like film now with streaming. And, you know, back in the day or on network, it's just, man, it's to the second. It's to the second. Every episode has to be the same length to the second. So that was always a constraint. But, you know, sometimes constraints are good. You know, watching these episodes today, it's like, you know, they just move. They move and it's kind of a lesson. You know, certainly in comedy, faster, funnier, tighter. Sometimes those constraints can be good. And I always love in parks where you will cut into something

either way earlier or way later.

Than you would have normally thought when you read the script and it, and the cut itself makes you laugh because, um, it's because of the timing of it. And, and I think parks does that better than, I mean, the office did it a little bit, but parks took it to a new level. And I think if you're paying any attention to the editing, um, you, you should be paying attention to the editing cause it's, it's super, super like a comedy masterpiece, the editing on the park shows, I think.

There's absolutely a lot to be said for economy, just economy and the storytelling and all the jokes and the speed. On set, you'll hear that a lot. Polar would say it all the time, faster, funnier, faster, funnier, because it's a little bit faster than people normally talk. It just is. When you get in the edit and people are talking slowly, it's death. It's just death. It really is.

Speaking of which, economy in this show, back to the synopsis. At Lot 48, Freddie Spaghetti surprisingly arrives, having been paid by Ben to perform at Leslie's concert. Ben explains he's not a bad person, but the budget still has to be slashed. That night, Leslie sits on a bench in Lot 48 and Mark joins her. Mark tells her that if more people like her worked in local government, he wouldn't be leaving and gives her plans. He drove for a park at Lot 48 before giving her a goodbye kiss on the cheek and walking away.

The next day, Ron withdraws from the budget task force and appoints Leslie in his place. As Tom and his new girlfriend Lucy are clearing out his office, he notices Ron is wearing a red shirt and black pants, the outfit he always wears the day after having sex. Tom's ex-wife Wendy then appears and kisses Ron and the two leave together. Shocking, Tom. First of all... Soap arpa twist. I love... One of my favorite jokes ever is Ron wearing his...

It was from Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods! Yeah, when Tiger on Sunday. It's one of my favorite jokes in the show ever. We have a little bit of a piece of trivia here. When Leslie and Ben are talking during the concert, the Freddy Spaghetti songs continue and are playing in the background and you could just hear an

endless call and response of different types of noodles. So I guess he just had to say noodles for just hours as we shot the rest of the scene. That sometimes happens if you're in the back. You know what I mean? Like if you're in the shot, you're like, God, I just got to keep doing stuff. What made the cut is also he says like tortelloni, macaroni, ziti. Then he just says egg noodles, which is like not the most fun name. But yeah. Yeah.

We should play the bit about Mark talking about writing the music for Freddy's Spaghetti. Yes. Because the Freddy's Spaghetti stuff is so good. Freddy's Spaghetti is one of my favorite panins.

Yes. Mark Rivers, drummer for Mouse Rat. He did a lot of the music for Mouse Rat, and he also did the theme song for this show. Here's him talking about Freddy Spaghetti. So when the producers first asked me to come up with some kid songs for Freddy Spaghetti, the direction was pretty wide open. Just come up with a few silly kid songs that this local Pawnee kids party entertainer would do.

But there was no specific joke angle that I remember. So I came up with a couple original songs, and I recorded some demos. One was called Kitty Cat Farm, about a farm that had nothing but hundreds of cats. Meow, meow, meow, and a mew, mew, mew, down on Kitty Cat Farm. Another was called Mouthful of Worms. Don't want to end up with a mouthful of worms. Yuck!

But then they came back and said, nah, what if Freddy Spaghetti is just all about pasta puns? So they asked me to do just a straight up parody of the old 60s novelty song, Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, just replacing bikini with linguine.

Which at first was, you know, it was a little less exciting for me than writing original songs. But then I came to realize ultimately that that's a much more appropriate joke for the world of the show. Of course, in Pawnee, you wouldn't have a guy writing anything close to clever original songs. You'd have this guy who finds one stupid angle, pasta puns, and he just milks that for all it's worth. ♪

So good.

I didn't know it would be pasta based and suddenly I was a pasta based songwriter for a day. And Freddy Spaghetti also, thank you for that, Mark. Very, very informative. Freddy Spaghetti was played by Conan writer Brian McCann. Dan Gore, who wrote the episode, also worked on Conan and so they were friends.

And I think he thought of Brian to play this part, and he did a great job. Well, I'm going to pop in, everyone, with an early oops moment, just since we're talking about Freddy Spaghetti, that this is not the first time we see Freddy Spaghetti in the show. And his picture shows up in a slide in Season 2's episode, Park Safety, Episode 19. And that episode, he's played by one of our editors, Ivan Victor. So, a little fun fact.

What's funny is I think like Ivan has kind of, at the time he had kind of crazy hair on top. So like it was like, yeah, he looks kind of goofy and like, not goofy, but he has kind of silly hair. Let's use a photo of him. So then Freddy Spaghetti, I like to think that in the world of the show, Freddy Spaghetti is kind of like Batman. Like anyone can play him with a costume on. It's just like, you know, you just keep putting, it's a replacement thing. Actually, Batman's not like that, but whatever. I remember Brian,

ad-libbing really inappropriate Freddie Spaghetti powder. Yes. He did a song about paying too much alimony about his divorce, about his very bitter divorce. It's like, none of this is usable, Brian. Not the tone of the show, but it's very funny. And again, that's the stuff that, you know, you wish, I wish there were the extended cut

That would be so fun to have of this show. Maybe we'll get NBC to do that at some point. Another piece of information from the notes, the final moment between Leslie and Mark on the bench was written to mirror their scene in the season one finale, Rock Show, where they're kind of looking out over the pit.

Dan Gore said he liked the symmetry of having it play a critical and opposite role this finale. This time, last time they sat on the bench and kissed and it seemed like they might be getting back together. This time they sit on the bench and Mark kisses Leslie goodbye. A note for me, Mark gives plans for a park and we never mentioned those plans again. Like those plans never come. I mean, she does build a park there. So I guess you could fill the blanks, but we never specifically mentioned those plans, but it's still a sweet moment.

I mean, the thing about leaving, you know, leaving shows, being fired from shows, written off shows, whatever it is, is every actor who's been around long enough will have some experience with that. It's just, it's just part of what we do. It just is. And, um, it's rarely personal. It's, you know, it's,

It's you don't have chemistry with your leading lady or you can't handle the jokes or whatever it is. I mean, it happens. I mean, people get fired after table reads.

People get fired mid-episode. I mean, it just happens. And, you know, this was... I mean, you were there from the get-go, Alan. I won't put words in your mouth, but this is a character you guys had an idea for. And it just never came together. And it just was not the right match for this actor, who's a great actor. And who's gone on... Who had a great career and still has a great career. But he's not...

And if you look at the work he was doing, it's obvious. It's like he's in a different show than everybody else. Yeah. And to me, it also made me think about, as an actor, you don't have control over that aspect of your career a lot of the times. And that's just the job of an actor in some ways. You get hired and you get let go sometimes based on other people's opinions, whether it's the network, the studio, the showrunner, director, whatever. And

you know, that's kind of the actor's life. It's kind of, you know, the more I reflect on it, the more it's like, you know, it's great. There's obviously huge perks to be an actor. It's really rewarding and it can be artistically fulfilling, but there is that element of you're never quite in complete total control. You know, it's, it's, it's always like, it's, it's a cooperative, it's a cooperation and it's a collaborative experience. So, you know, the character of Mark,

You know, I think served served his purpose on the show. And, you know, we're really excited to have you guys come in, you know, Adam and Rob come in and really felt like they became part of the town and, you know, kind of lasted for the remaining run of the show. Yep.

Final thoughts on this episode? Great, great season finale. It's only the second season finale. We had to write so many more. Yes, it was a season finale, but as you alluded to, we went right into the next episode right after this. Yeah, we took a very limited break. So Go Big or Go Home, the next episode, I think I ended up writing the draft of that one. We had to write it and come up with essentially the whole Harvest Festival arc in the interim. So

It was a season finale, but at the same time, as Rob said, we had to almost immediately work on the next season. So that's pretty unusual. But that being said, for a 24th episode in a season, that's pretty fucking good. Unbelievable. Shall we do an oops moment? There's a math one here. There's a math one here. Chris Traeger's math in the talking head where he talks about going to the moon is faulty. Right.

possibly justifying his partnership with Ben Wyatt, who's a numbers guy. So Chris says he's run 10 miles a day every day for 18 years, which is 65,000 miles. And he says it's a third of the way to the moon. We've done some fact checking. At his current pace, he actually has about another three to four years, three years to 10 months before he can honestly claim to have run a third of the way to the moon.

So a little fact check there. It'll be another 43 years and eight months past that before he reaches his goal. That being said, you know, if he's continuing to do that, which I think he has, he's now only like 30 years away. So I think he's going to do it. I think Chris could get to the moon. If anybody can, it's Traeger. He's not even middle-aged yet, according to his math of getting to 150 years old. He's young, you know. That's also true. He's still in the prime right now. He's like LeBron. He's never slowing down. That's right.

All right. Episode MVP, most valuable Pawnee. And what do you think? Character moment, character story beat. What do you think, Rob? What's your favorite? I mean, it's the title of the episode. You know, I kind of like Freddy Spaghetti. I mean.

I'm kind of going with I'm going to go with Freddy Spaghetti because he made me laugh on the day shooting. He looked so weird and I just had a good time clapping to his to his hijinks. That's great. I love that. And he doesn't get that much shine in other episodes. So so I like giving it to him. I think my runner up is is Nick for running and wiping out and also for his acting in the scene where he gets a massage from you. So good job, Nick.

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Do you want to go to the town hall? I think you do. Let's take a trip to the town hall. Where should we do this, Rob? I think we need to do it at the bench. The bench where the world's greatest romantic couple separates forever. That's great. And Amy. Yeah, let's do it on that little bench with the moonlight.

The moonlight, the dappled moonlight, and the romance. I want to know something about that bench, actually, is that's the same bench from Rock Show. And it's throughout the second season, that bench sits in Leslie's office. Yes. So there's some lovely chemistry and symmetry in that.

I love the notion that Leslie would have brought the bench to have that conversation with Berdano. It's I like that logic. I remember the talk and the writers was like, she really took the bench all the way out to the lot. It's like, yeah, she did. She's a superhero. She took it out there. Like, yeah, don't think about that. Don't think about her carrying it out there, taking a pickup truck or whatever. All right. So this town hall from that lovely bench at the end of the season comes to us from Kimberly. Kimberly writes, uh,

I've always thought it was funny that Ann and Andy have the same names as the famous ragdolls and that Tom and Jerry have the same names as the cat and mouse pair that always taunt each other. This is never referenced even when Ann is Raggedy Ann for Halloween. Is this purely a coincidence or a behind-the-scenes intention? Love the podcast, specifically that you're both fans of the show. What if we hated the show, Rob? Specifically that we're all fans of it. That's a tough pod to do if we hated the show.

Or is it? Because I think I could do a podcast of shows I hate. Shows you hate? Like shows you hate watch? Man, I could talk about them for hours. Forever. Just hours. Hours. Maybe that's just the next pub. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Right? So as far as the names go, it's really...

It's a coincidence. Tom and Jerry and Ann and Amy. Keep in mind, keep in mind, these characters didn't always have these names, first of all. So like Jerry, God, was Jerry always Jerry? Because I remember in the first draft, the first draft I ever wrote, Donna was named Paris, which is insane. And then also April was named just Aubrey.

And then Whitney.

And sometimes you'll have to do like a find and replace or something. And, you know, you find a name or whatever and you replace it with something. At one point, he accidentally found and replaced Anne's name and wanted to replace it with something. I don't know why this happened, but he replaced her name with a space. So just to say, do you remember this, Greg? So this happened for the entire script. And so I bet you had to go back in and just look at look at.

Her name every time was a space. So every time, it just fucked up the entire thing. And we're like, oh, no. And you couldn't undo it. And it was like, it's 2 a.m. or whatever. And we're in there trying to just replace it. I have to tell you, I remember that very well. There's no fixing it, right? That's the problem. At the time, the Final Draft software, thank you, Final Draft for everything. You could not...

undo the find and replace. So I had to then everybody watched me go through the script and find every instance of where there was an extra space to put an name back into it. That's what it was. It's like, Oh,

Go be writer's assistants, people. Go be writer's assistants. It's a tough job. It's a tough job. But thank you for the question, Kimberly. You know, we'll do a spinoff, Anne and Andy, Tom and Jerry, the animated spinoff for those four characters. And that'll be future. I think that's it for this episode, Rob. What do you think? I think this is it. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Don't forget to subscribe.

There's so much more fun to be had here. We love our five-star reviews that have been showing up on Apple. So if you're inclined, we would love that. Very important for the show. And thanks to this wonderful team, Schulte and Greg. You guys rock. And for me, that's all I got to say from Pawnee today. Alan, what do you say? Thanks for listening. Goodbye from Pawnee.

Parks and Recollection is produced by Greg Levine and me, Rob Schulte. Our coordinating producer is Lisa Berm. The podcast is executive produced by Alan Yang for Alan Yang Productions, Rob Lowe for Low Profile, Jeff Ross, Adam Sachs, and Joanna Solitaroff at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson at Stitcher. Gina Batista, Paula Davis, and Britt Kahn are our talent bookers. The theme song is by Mouse Rat, a.k.a. Mark Rivers.

with additional tracks composed by John Danek. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time on Parks and Recollection. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Stitcher.

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