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Start a show together with your included Paramount Plus subscription. Walmart Plus members save on this plus so much more. Start a 30-day free trial at WalmartPlus.com. Paramount Plus is central plan only. Separate registration required. See Walmart Plus terms and conditions. The laughs, the passions, the lips, the passions, the pits we're failing to. We'll put them in a podcast. Then we'll send it up into the sky. Parks and recollection. Come on.
Welcome, welcome, welcome everyone to Parks and Recollection. It's me, Rob Lowe, who will eventually play Chris Traeger. Not today, not in this episode, not in the episodes you've been listening to so far, but they tell me.
At some point, my character will show up in this show. I hear they actually went back and edited all the episodes on Peacock. You're not in any of them anymore. So it's just it's just going to be a watch party. Just you just to watch party. They took you out of like 80 episodes is crazy, man. I don't know. Look, I wasn't in charge, but I heard that happened.
Alan Yang, I blame you. I blame you. Listen, at this point, I should just do a podcast about The Sopranos. I like that show, too. That's a good show. I mean, yeah, look, man, I think it's been instructive watching this thing. What's up, everybody? What's up, Rolo? Good to talk about another episode, but...
Yeah, man, we're getting there. We're really like, what is this, episode 10? We got 12 more to your episode. And so, yeah, I mean, it's coming. Oh, boy, but this is a good one. This is a very good one. This is season two, episode 10? That's right. Season two, episode 10. The episode's called Hunting Trip, a classic episode. First aired November 19th, 2009. This is a really good one, man. Written by Dan Gore, directed by Greg Daniels, powerhouse team. Yeah.
Yeah, this is one of the ones people talk about. Why don't you do the synopsis because I have thoughts. I have many thoughts on this episode. I can't wait. Yes, I have a lot of thoughts about this one too. This is great. So the episode synopsis, synopsis fans, here we go. In an effort to prove she can be one of the guys, Leslie leaves April in charge of the Parks Department and insists that she and the other ladies of the Parks Department tag along on Ron's annual trail survey.
which is actually just a secret hunting trip the men of the Parks Department go on each year. Once on the hunt, Leslie proves to be an excellent hunter, and an increasingly threatened Ron agrees to Leslie's challenge of who can shoot more birds. The two split up, and not long after, we hear a loud gunshot! We hear Ron shout, and it's revealed Ron has been shot in the head. Great act break. Leslie claims responsibility for shooting Ron to protect a fellow Parks employee.
prompting Ron in the end to call her a stand-up guy. Now, the way that's written, it's almost like protecting the viewer, but we spoil these things, so she protects Tom. Like, it's Tom who shot Ron. So the way that's written, it's like, have you seen it or not? Hopefully you've seen it because you're listening to this, but yes, Tom shot Ron. Meanwhile, back in the Parks Department, April and Andy bond, and there's potential chemistry that's sparked. When April gives Andy multiple hickeys, that's off-screen. We don't show that in NBC.
And April gives Andy multiple hickeys to make Anne jealous. So a really big episode. Man, it's fun and rollicking, man. It's fun and rollicking. It's raw. What I was going to say, it's so frenetic and not in a bad way, but it's like there's yelling and screaming and running and it has a completely different energy, I think maybe than any other episode ever.
in the run of the series. Definitely up to this point, too. I mean, we're a far cry from the pilot, right? We're a far cry from paperwork and sort of the comedy of drudgery, the anti-comedy, sort of, as Rob Lowe put it, the independent film nature of some of the first season. Like, this is not that. This is like, it literally opens with
And he started working as a shoeshine guy, and he gives everyone piggyback rides. So the beginning of the episode is a series of frenetic piggyback rides all around our set. And it's like, God damn, the set is pretty big. It's a really funny cold open. He gives Tom a piggyback ride, and he gives Leslie a piggyback ride. It's really funny. Definitely has the most Tom Haverford small jokes per capita, for sure.
I know. Even those... By the way, not just small jokes, but there's way too many jokes about him being derogatorily being called a woman, which is kind of out of character for Leslie Knope. It's like, we don't do that anymore. But Leslie's literally calling him less of a man and like, hey man, this is 12 years ago. Let's remind everybody it's 12 years ago, so it's a different time. But
But, you know, we've all learned. We've all grown and changed. But, yeah, it is certainly some of those things. By the way, we'll get to some other stuff in this episode and the next one that are kind of shocking. But, yeah, this one's really sort of, I don't know, it's sort of a quintessential Ron and Leslie story. There's just so much
between the two of them with Ron, especially in the beginning of The Haunting Trip where Leslie's just nipping at his heels like this terrier, you know, and that's kind of their dynamic the whole time. Yeah, it's true. I mean, you know, someone once said that comedy is made for the time...
that it exists in. And that's very, very true. Yeah, I think there's definitely something to that. So, you know, you could still watch this now and it's not so, so dated, but yeah, there's certain aspects of it. It's like, yeah, we wouldn't do that today. Poor Aziz. He just got ruckus'd.
in this one. He gets carried by multiple men in this episode. He gets carried by Andy and by Ron. Ron lifts him up like he's a sack of potatoes. And then he gets carried around and Ron says he weighs nine pounds or something like that, which is like, you know, I think he's probably buck 20 or so. It's just so, I don't know why it's so funny, but it is. I mean, well, because he's such a petulant guy in the show. You know, he's just as earth. Just as earth.
desserts um leslie nope is is such a a noted feminist icon comedy character that the notion of her trying to fit in with the guys is is kind of a a good a good storytelling place to be and and uh
Leslie's idea of what guys would want to do and talk about and have fun with is a great area for comedy. And it always leads into, yeah, guys love it when you show them you're better at something than something they love. Better than they are. That's a great way to win friends over. One of the main themes that the show kind of comes back to again and again was the idea of a woman succeeding in a world that's kind of designed against sex.
you know, against females succeeding. And that was very true in government. That was very true in politics. I mean, if you look at, just look at everyone in the history of the country who's been elected president and name how many women there are. But so that was one of the themes. And especially, you know, I think that's taken a little bit more for granted now, but 12, 13 years ago,
even having the lead of your comedy show be a woman as opposed to a man was a bigger deal. I w you know, you, you, again, you take that kind of for granted now. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, you know, more 50, 50, it's more equal right now. Not that we've, we've overcome everything, but, uh, so that was one of the, the, the, the themes that I think, you know, was ripe to be tackled throughout. So I think the idea of the men's hunting trip, uh,
came about kind of as a response to wanting to do an episode about that theme. And then there's this pretty legendary jump cut sequence where Amy is talking to the park ranger and explaining why she shot somebody because she's a woman. And I think that was an instance of we had a few alts lined up and
And then it was like, okay, let's just let Amy Poehler be funny for, you know, 30 minutes. And so I think she just kind of, we just let the camera roll and she just improvised a ton of shit. And the result is what you see in the cut. So they filmed this. Here's the thing. I know nothing. I was not there when they made it. I know nothing. I'm merely a Parks and Recs fan. But this is that cottage, the hunting cottage. Yeah.
I have shot in five billion trillion times. It's like, I think we did the West Wing debate camp, Camp David there. I think in Brothers and Sisters, that was like, you know, Sally Field's second family pie making home or whatever the hell they did on that show. I mean, I have spent more time at that damn poison oak infested backlot area than
deep in the hills of Sylmar. Yeah, is that Disney Ranch or is that a separate area? I think it's Disney Ranch. There's a thing called Disney Ranch that every time you see, like Rob was saying, the wilderness or forests or a cabin or a lake, it's all on Disney Ranch. You'll start seeing the same places pop up and up again. There's only so many places in LA to shoot. Once in a while people pull it off and even a jaded person who
has done a lot like me gets fooled like somebody was like yeah they shot the entire season of justified there like what it's like how i didn't you still that's the you know what that is the magic of tv because i've seen a lot of shows that shot like places that i've shot before but then there's so many that i again they're unrecognizable like there's parts of west world west world you think of this like big big like you know it's like a 200 million dollar show someone that they just shot on like the universal backlot
It's like, yeah, it's just like, they're still saving money on a show like that. They're not building those sets. They just exist. And you're like, what? When you go and walk around in person, it looks like shit. You're like, this looks like shit. I don't know how this, this works on a big budget show, but that's kind of the magic of, of what you see in real life versus what things show up like on camera. I really do think that there's something to that. Here's, I have a philosophy and maybe it's just because I love Parks and Rec so much that
Love The Office so much. Love 30 Rock so much. Love Always Sunny in Philadelphia so much. All the shows, they look thrown together. It's like nobody cares about the makeup and hair. The lighting is rudimentary. But I love that. And then I think I can name you a handful of comedies that are so super glossy and high-end and they're not funny. Do you think there's a correlation between
between glossy thousands of extras and you know dewy movie star close-ups that just aren't funny and all the shows i mentioned which are killer and look like shit i think about this a lot because as someone who makes shows and direct shows and some of them are comedic in nature i love things to be beautiful but i also sort i definitely understand where you're coming from which is
There's something about a show that feels a little bit handmade, that feels a little bit like you're kind of with the characters, right? You take away some of the artifice when you're kind of running and gunning and you're just getting natural reactions. You're cross shooting, which means shooting two people at the same time. So you get the natural sort of reactions. You're not going back and doing the reactions over again.
Look, I like for a lot of the shows I work on to look beautiful, but there's something that doesn't look too fussed over, right? You look at The Office. It's like The Office obviously was designed to be a mockumentary, and it feels real because it's...
it's not, it clearly wasn't set up by 200 people and Janusz Kaminski. Right. It wasn't, it's not, it's not Robert Elswit shooting it. It's not Christopher Doyle. Well, all my DP cinematographer heads out there, like these are, these are name drops for you. These are, these are for no one but you, but, but it, it's, it,
It's definitely, I think it's naturalism, right? It's naturalism. Does it feel real? And that lends itself to something being funny. And in the case of like Always Sunny or classic shows, it's like then you're talking about the tradition of multi-cam sitcoms and you being programmed to laugh by seeing that standing set and just cutting quickly, right? Cutting and being able to move quickly on your feet. But yeah, I agree with you. There's something, Surf Slime has really, really beautifully shot things. It's like, yeah, but it kind of took all the air out of it.
Oh, and also just as an actor, having done both in my career, I remember coming to Parks and Rec and being, it was so refreshing that you just, you just went on the set and you did what you were going to do with your other actors and you found stuff and the cameras had to find you. Sounds subtle, but it's huge. It's huge. And I started, you know, the first real thing I directed was Parks and Rec and I
no marks, there's blocking, but it's loose. You know that because the cameras can find you, you know, and the blocking is just, you know, where the actors are walking to and the sort of movement in the scene. And, you know, you're not really setting up shots in the same way that you are in, you know, things I worked on later. It's very different. So it's fun, man. And you get some chemistry and some camaraderie that way too, right? Sometimes
you know, sometimes you sacrifice performance, you sacrifice spontaneity in the name of getting a cool shot. And you sometimes, uh, that's bad for comedy. So, um, but man, I mean, this, this, this episode, it, it, it really, it hits on a lot of things that are hallmarks of Parks and Rec, right? Like I said, the Ron and Leslie stuff, it also hits on issues of sexism. You know, that, that's, that's addressed in episodes like beauty pageant and woman of the year. It's kind of recurring theme in the show. Right. And, and, um,
It builds a few relationships that we didn't have prior. So sometimes when you're doing a show with this many characters and this many episodes a season, you have to make some pragmatic decisions as far as who's in what story and what stories you're choosing to tell. So this episode, you know, everyone is pretty much in the cabin and up on this hunting trip except for two remaining characters, April and Andy. And so this is an example of this pragmatic decision of,
of having those characters there and April Andy back at the office resulting in something pretty fruitful, which is that they kind of have a turning point in their relationship. They, the Andy and April saga, uh,
uh really takes a turn in this episode and it was kind of a little bit by happenstance like I think the writers maybe had an inkling that there might be something interesting there but what really happened is they had so much chemistry and there was a lot of ad-libbing and improvisation and you know they had a lot of chemistry together so in some ways it was a little bit of a happy accident where the pragmatic decision of leading April and Andy back of the office together um
led to something really amazing and led to these two characters building this really incredible relationship that was very touching and sweet over the course of the show. To me, it jumps off the screen so much that I would have thought you guys had planned it. We asked Chris Pratt, our good friend, to tell us a little bit about filming those scenes with Aubrey and what they did in this episode. Take a listen.
Yeah. I mean, it was great. We, it was, it became, it pivoted into becoming like a really nice love story for the entire, you know, arc of the show from whatever that second season on. And it's another example of sort of,
Just throwing these ingredients together, seeing what happens and then rebranding it. It's a little like a pharmaceutical company. You know, they're like, just you guys take all these pills. It's a heart pill. And then it gives you a boner. You're like, it's a boner pill. We intended the entire time for this. We're going to call it Viagra and sell it. You know, so like you throw all the ingredients in and the ingredient here was a chemistry between
April and Andy. And I think April, I think I have to credit Aubrey. I have to credit her completely. I mean, she, as a character, her character, April was into irony at all costs. And, and I think the idea that she likes nothing and she has a boyfriend who is a gay guy who she makes out with periodically or her best friend. And, you know, like she's just,
not impressed by anything. And she's a total hipster and everything is bathed in irony. I think for her to have affection for somebody who's like a big kind of American goofball who sings like Pearl jam, knockoff music is the ultimate in irony. It's exactly what you would expect her not to like. And I think that's why, um,
instinctively she was so compelled to like it because it was like unexpected. And so people have likened our relationship to like a dog and a cat being in a relationship together, like a golden retriever and like a really angry black cat that, you know, it was great. It all started, the chemistry was all right there. It was a lot of improv, a lot of goofing around us just kind of having fun together and
while the rest of the show and the A story was on this hunting trip. So we got to really just have the space to ourselves, which in a big ensemble, a workplace comedy like that doesn't often happen. Everyone's sort of fighting for their opportunity to do something funny or say something funny. So it was like, you know, if...
two of the Jackson five showed up for rehearsal one day and they're like, let's see what we can sing together. You know what I mean? Like Tito and Jamal. And they're like, wow, you guys sound pretty good together. We should have a little side thing going. So that, that relationship did really take on a life of its own and was really
right up there with my very favorite part of being on the show. It really is an example of the luxury in some ways of a show that runs for a long time and that has longer seasons like this. You adjust, you get to see not only what your actors do, but what they do with each other. And you don't know that, right? You don't know that in the pilot. Think about the pilot of this show. Can you imagine the end? We're going to write the intern and Ann's boyfriend, this lunk headed guy who broke his legs. They're going to get together. Um,
No, you would never. You would never. Yeah, I think we thought so. Greg Levine's pointing out producer Greg saying we thought they'd have a friendship or something. Unlikely friendship was kind of one of the things we talked about. And, you know, obviously became much more. They get married. Yeah. I mean, Aubrey has always brought such a succinct like her special sauce. I just saw her. She's written a book as a witch or something. It's called The Christmas Witch.
Well, there you go. And she's chosen to go on the talk shows as the witch. And that is the definition of being a tough nut to crack. If you look no further than showing up to, you know, Good Morning America dressed as a witch and, you know, you're a tough nut to crack. Yeah. So, I mean, and what I always liked about her character was she's the only person who could ever possibly pull off anything.
that sort of note that she's so good at hitting. Yeah, and she's so great in this show because she's able to be deadpan and she's able to be sort of ironic and sort of above it all, but there's still that... You can feel that there's that tiny hint of vulnerability and that you think that... You realize she's doing it because...
you know, she's hiding something or she's feeling a certain way, but you know, she's able to convey that at the same time. And I definitely, as far as her being a tough nut to crack, I do remember meeting her season one and you know, we exchanged phone numbers and we were texting a little bit and then,
Every so often she would text me something like, I'm going to kill you or I'm going to ruin your life. Just every couple months out of the blue. So that's what being friends with Aubrey was like. Keep in mind at the time she's like 21 or something. Yeah, she likes to fuck with you. I'm going to ruin your life. Just ding, midnight. What the hell, man? It's 11 p.m.
What is this? Okay. Oh, it's Aubrey. I haven't texted her with her in like three weeks, but yeah, cool. I remember Aubrey. Meanwhile, clearly she was texting you death threats in the middle of the night, but I know she was always texting with Bill Murray, and I was very impressed with that. Yeah.
I was super impressed that like she had the direct line to Bill Murray, Bill Murray, who literally no one in show business can get a hold of. Like it's, the stories are legendary. He doesn't have an agent, doesn't have a manager. He has like a, he literally has an answering machine, a machine, an answering machine. Yeah.
where you go, he's like, this is Bill Murray. If you'd like me to be in a movie, leave the information to the beep and maybe he gets back to you. This is true. And meanwhile, Aubrey Plaza was like texting away with him all the time. And I was like, wow. And that's part of the reason he ended up appearing on Parks. You know, he, you know, Aubrey knew Bill and I think Rashida knew him a little bit too. And I think they put the heart full court press on him to get him on the show. One of my favorite pictures I ever took
On the set of Parks is me on a park bench in front of one of the great murals with Aubrey on one side of me and Bill Murray on the other. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, maybe we can, hey, I know it's going to be an NFT that I'm going to sell for a billion dollars.
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Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash parks. That's linkedin.com slash parks to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. But it was funny watching the episode because there's still things, look, it's hitting its groove, but there's still things that make me laugh when I see them because they're so jarring. Like in the beginning of this episode,
Ron and Jerry and Mark seem to be great friends. Like they're really good friends. And you're like, wait, what? Like, like, cause you know what the dynamics are ultimately in the show, right? Coming, like we've, I've seen every episode of the show, right? I worked on every episode, but I've seen every episode. You go back and it's like, why are they buddies? Like, they're just like really good friends. Like, I don't know. They're not friends in the majority of the show, but in this one, you know, they're, they're buddies. You know when Ron Swanson fist bumps Jerry under the table? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, you're still figuring that out. You're trying to build the dynamics of like the guys in the office are all buddies, but that would obviously never happen later. So, but that I found that really funny. Is this the first mention that Jerry has three daughters at home? Yes, I think it is. It was the whole thing was like, this is the only place I don't have to sit down to pee. And I think that, again, that's an idea of the world kind of being iterative where you
in a show like this where there's so many episodes, you put that little nugget in and then he's like, hey, what is Jerry's family like? And it's like, yeah, he's $3. Oh, what if they're
they're all beautiful by the way you know this very well they're all beautiful you date one of them at some point and then his he's married to christy brinkley of course and so that all becomes part of the mythology but it starts with a tiny talking head in this one right it's like a tiny talking it kind of reminds me of you know a bunch of my friends have worked on the simpsons and right for that show and at one point they were you know that show has a million episodes if whatever thousand episodes and and at one point there's a character named carl who's a who's a
a black man in the show. And there was a throwaway joke that he was, I think from Finland or some Scandinavian country. And it was a joke, but it's in. So then they just were like, okay, I guess Carl is from Finland now. So they just did that for the rest of the season, like the rest of the series. Like, I don't know. That's what I was going to ask you is,
For the sake of a joke, a good joke, really a good joke, you've now saddled him forever. You've chosen what his backstory is. A major character in the show for one joke. Now there's no turning back.
This is why writers have anxiety, because you make that decision, and it's like, oh, God, you just, like, you can't go back. That's in the show. It's canon. You can't suddenly be like, you know what? He has eight sons. Like, no. What happened to his daughters? Like, are they dead? Like, what happened? That...
That is a real thing, man. That is a funny, by the way, that's a great directorial choice, I thought, where he says that talking head and then some commotion happens and Ron got shot. And so it's using the talking head where he's being interviewed as a kind of misdirect, which I thought was kind of cool. I don't remember. I didn't remember that watching. I was like, oh yeah, that's kind of a cool choice. They did that talking head and it becomes a scene. Not only does it
a scene, but it actually has legitimate stakes. I mean, a lot of times what's funny about comedy is there aren't real stakes or there are stakes that make you laugh. But you're like, holy shit, as an audience member watching, you're like, oh, Jesus Christ, somebody actually got shot. You're like, whoa. This is also why comedy writers are jealous of drama writers because we're like, it's exactly what you said, which is we're trying to write stories with...
human stakes, emotional stakes, which are the most important, but usually it's piddling, right? It's small potatoes. And then it's a drama. It's like, who killed his daughter? That obviously has stakes. It's very obvious why that's important. But oftentimes for comedy, it's like,
you know, it's like these two, like she wants to take over this guy's desk. He wants to, they want to switch places in the office, like so low stakes. And it's like, but it's important because like, it's really about their jealousy of whatever. It's like, you're, you're going for something emotional, but it's always funny. Like who shot this guy? Like that is ultimately like the simplest plot and it does work. Totally worked. God, I laughed out loud with Donna screaming the noises she was making when she was screaming that her Mercedes had been shot.
She was crushing it in this episode. A seminal Donna episode because we find out that she's a little bit materialistic. She lives the fine life. It's like, how is she to have a Mercedes? Like, what's going on? She literally tackles Leslie for one of the act breaks. Like, she full-on, I think, a stunt person, but ran and tackled Leslie.
a lot of, a lot of physical comedy in this episode, but, but yeah, it's, it's a, it's a great Donna episode. She gets some great runs with Tom, like the, you know, and that's followed up in the, in the subsequent episode. But yeah, it, that stuff was great. And I also, I also want to shout out Greg Daniels who directed this episode. Very quick anecdote about Greg, and this is not meant to be insulting as anyways, this is all out of love, but, but he, you know, he, he's a
brilliant writer, right? He's a brilliant writer. He's created some of the most important television shows of the last, you know, 30 years between The Office, Parks and Rec, King of the Hill. Like those are important comedy shows in some ways. Maybe the story is apocryphal, maybe not. I'm going to say it anyway. In that cabin that you talked about that is on the Disney ranch that you shot in all those other shows,
He comes in. As the director, you're in charge of everything, right? Not just the actors and performances, but the production design and the furniture's arranged in a certain way. And he comes in and it's just like he's a mad professor, right? He's thinking about everything. There's a million things going on. He's probably thinking about the blocking, where the actors are going to move, the camera, everything.
And he's like, I just don't think the bed should be there. I think it should be over here and everything we should move. Everything should move 90 degrees. Let's put this over here, this over this. So everything they're like, OK, well, we're about to shoot, Greg. Like, should we move this stuff? He's like, move this stuff. He's like, move the stuff. So everything gets moved. The people come in. They move stuff all around the room. Takes an hour, whatever it is, 45 minutes. He comes back in. He looks at the room. He thinks for a long beat.
And then he's like, move it back. Move it back. Like, this is not like, it's like, yeah, sometimes you make, sometimes you make those decisions as director. It's like, it's not going to work. Like you were like, I was wrong. I was right. Like, and, and like to his credit, he at least admitted that it wasn't the right thing. But, but yeah, that was sometimes a microcosm of, of, of the writer's room as well. Right. You, you, you go down a path and it's not necessarily fruitful, but, but you know, it's worth it. And I think the bigger the director, the more balls they have,
To do it, I mean, you know, the great stories of David Fincher on Zodiac, where, you know, and I'm not kidding, would do 70 takes. And the actors, because Downey told me, Robert Downey Jr. told me the story. And he'd come to the thing, and he'd be like, I think we kind of got it. He goes, yeah, let's just do a couple more. And Downey walks off, and he hears Fincher turn to the script supervisor and go, delete all the takes. Yeah.
to another one. That's very much Kubrick, right? Fincher definitely is thinking about Kubrick doing that. I heard, you know, a similar story about Sidney Pollack in Eyes Wide Shut, right? Sidney Pollack, brilliant director, actor in his own right, and there's this scene where he's playing pool with Tom Cruise, right? And
forget 71 day. Like they were shooting this pool scene for, for days, just a day after the same scene over and over again. And at a certain point, again, what I heard was after maybe a day, you know, five days or even longer than a week or something, Pollock comes, their city Pollock goes over to, to Kubrick. It's like, do you think we got it? Like, do you think we got the seed? And, and,
He's like, I think it's pretty good. And Kubrick is like, well, do you want it to be good or do you want it to be right? Like, do you want it to be like, do you want the scene filmed in the right way? Like, do you want it to be correct? And it's like, okay.
like, God, but you can't argue with the movies. You can't argue with the results, right? And same thing with Fincher. Fincher, I think, has a legendary quote also where he's like, there's 500 ways to shoot a scene and only one of them is right. Like, 499 of them are wrong. It's like, I'm sure he thinks that way. And then you've got Clint Eastwood who he will like
you'll be okay let's rehearse and he'll secretly move his hands like rolling to the camera to the camera roll on a rehearsal the actors have no idea yeah and then okay I think that's about enough of that move on and like what we get what the way what and he doesn't never calls action just says go ahead when you're ahead Reese's peanut butter cups are the greatest but let me play devil's advocate here let's see so no that's a good thing that's definitely not a problem
Reese's, you did it. You stumped this charming devil.
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Terms apply. Learn how to get more out of your experiences at AmericanExpress.com slash with Amex. What do you say? Town hall it up? I think we should town hall it. Yeah. Where do we want to do it? Where do we want to place our town hall today? I've been thinking about it. Maybe over at the Snake Hole Lounge. I feel like having a drink tonight. Yeah. Let's get messed up and, you know, if you really want to do it, order some snake juice. But I would be a little hesitant on that one. Snake Hole! Let's do it.
All right, we got a town hall question. This one comes from Steffi. Is it Steffi Graf? Is it Steffi Graf? I hope. I can only assume it's Steffi Graf. I mean, there's no way of knowing whether it is or not. Let's just say it is. Let's just say it is. Yes, it's from Steffi Graf in Stuttgart, Germany. I'm going to say it's Steffi Graf. Yeah, she's home with Andre, watching the show, just having some questions, listening to the pod, big fan.
What is your favorite prop stolen from the set? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Done. Got it. Rollo. Rollo to the rescue.
I have it. I saw it. I just saw it. It's on my desk at my home all the time. It's my desk placard that says Chris Traeger, city manager. That's so sweet, man. That's really sweet. Did you just steal that? Did they just take it? Did someone give it to you? Although I have to say when I rapped on this show and I thought when I rapped on the West Wing, it was a big deal and emotional and all that. But rapping on Parks and Rec,
which we'll talk about when we finally get to it, was one of the most emotional, wonderful days of my career. And part of it was the gifts that I was given by were so thoughtful from Mike Schur and Greg and the cast.
But also, you know, I was brought onto Chris's office and said, anything you want, you know, take it. And that is what I took. I took the little Chris Traeger thing and it's at the front of my desk at home in perpetuity. That's beautiful. That's really good. I actually, I have something similar, which is,
I have a mouse rat poster. So this was the mouse rat poster that was hanging in Andy and April's house. And, and, and it's, I can picture it because it's in my garage right now, but it's, it's basically a, a black poster with it, the mouse rat, and it has the logo and it has pictures of all four of us. Right. So it's, it has like our posters and our name. So it's like, you know, it,
Andy Dwyer is whoever as, you know, vocals. And then I think my name was...
tennis theme i think my name in the show for a while was michael chang who was a tennis player so that was like an in joke i don't know for nobody because it's like i never say my first name but yeah it was it's some picture of me smoking even though i don't smoke it's very it was so i remember that it was it was very uh and and and it's it's it's in my house so very sweet very sweet uh good question from steffi graf in stuttgart germany
All right. That's the town hall. I think that's all we got for today's episode. I had a really great time. I had a good time. Good to be at the snake hole. I'm going to go drink some snake juice. And in the meantime, join us next week for more Parks and Recollection. Tell your friends. Get on those boards, the Apple board. Give us some good reviews or not. Listen, we're big enough. We have success in other areas. We can take it if you don't like it. We can take it. Be honest with your opinions. But that said, give us a good rating. And we'll see you next week.
I love it. Thanks to producer Rob. Thanks to producer Greg. Bye for money. This episode of 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 Brent 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. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are the greatest, but let me play devil's advocate here. Let's see, so...
No, that's a good thing. That's definitely not a problem. Reese's, you did it. You stumped this charming devil. With your Amex card, entertainment benefits like special ticket access and pre-sales to select can't miss events while supplies last. Make every tap music to your ears.