PARKS & RECREATION: Mike Schur Teases ‘Live Ammo’

PARKS & RECREATION fans, our long national nightmare is over — the series is finally back tonight! (A little overly dramatic? Sure. But warranted.)

I spoke with P&R executive producer Mike Schur before his Television Academy Foundation TV Summit panel to see what he could share about tonight’s episode…

“There are four episodes when we come back,” he told me. “They’re not linked, really, but they’re the last four episodes of the campaign. The first one is the one that Bradley Whitford guest stars in and it’s an episode where Leslie ends up wading into an issue that the current city council is dealing with and she ends up in over her head. It’s an episode where she learns that if she were to win, what her new job would actually be like. And it’s very scary and much more difficult than the job that she’s had all these years at the parks department.”

And yes, Whitford’s appearance is intended to intentionally make you think of another much-loved NBC series.

“It was meant as our of little homage to THE WEST WING,” Schur said. “And that’s why we asked Bradley Whitford to be in it and there are a bunch of fun little WEST WING references in it for people who were fans of that show. And who isn’t? I was a huge fan, which is why this all happened.”

PARKS & RECREATION airs at its new time at 9:30 PM on NBC.

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