Parks and Rec: The Underdog TV Show That Lit'rally Inspired a Vision for a Better America - Hardcover

Keishin Armstrong, Jennifer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593854519 ISBN 13: 9780593854518

Verlag: Dutton, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

From the New York Times bestselling author of Seinfeldia, the definitive story of the creation and legacy of Parks and Recreation, with exclusive interview content from its cast, crew, and creators

More than fifteen years after Parks and Recreation premiered, it has become a streaming staple. It’s beloved for its jokes, characters, and expressions—the show even created a now widely observed holiday, Galentine’s Day. How did it all happen and how did the show transform from a ratings disappointment into a cult classic? Pop culture historian Jennifer Keishin Armstrong reveals all this and more in the authoritative history of the show, which is as full of humor, optimism, and heart as Parks and Recreation itself.

Through new and exclusive interviews, as well as deep insight and smart and entertaining pop culture analysis, Armstrong tells the story of how Parks and Recreation came to be: how it grew from The Office’s success and Obama-inspired optimism, how producers assembled one of TV’s most lovable casts but barely survived a mediocre first season, how the show found its voice by getting more political and more romantic, and how it became a cultural force despite middling ratings during its network run, going on to become a television savior of the Trump era and a modern classic.

Lovingly told and deeply researched, Parks and Rec is the ultimate history of the show that taught us what’s important in life: friends, waffles, and work.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Keishin Armstrong has written nine books, including Seinfeldia, Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, Sex and the City and Us, and When Women Invented Television. She is the cofounder of the “Ministry of Pop Culture” Substack and a former local newspaper reporter. She lives in New Paltz, New York.

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1

"The Nobility of Working Really Hard
for Your Little Tiny Slice of America"

Creating the Show

Mike Schur rushed into Greg Daniels's office on the set of The Office. The entire space was like a set of office nesting dolls: offices in offices from The Office, offices pretending to be offices, offices that actually were offices. Because of this, you can imagine Daniels's office fairly accurately by picturing Michael Scott's office on The Office, with its blinds and cheap particleboard furniture. Here, real life and fiction blended easily.

Schur couldn't wait to tell Daniels the news he'd just heard: Amy Poehler was leaving the cast of Saturday Night Live. Schur and Daniels had continued to brainstorm concepts for their Office spin-off, but the idea they felt momentum behind was not an Office spin-off: a show that would focus on a small-town government official. NBC was waiting for their big Office follow-up, ready to rush whatever Schur and Daniels came up with straight into production for a post-Super Bowl premiere set for January 2009. But the producers had yet to hit upon a galvanizing moment, the feeling that they were onto something ready to present to the network.

They continued to brainstorm on the government idea, a show that, in Daniels's mind, would center a "gullible, optimistic" bureaucrat: "She's really into the power of government, and I thought it would be funny to contrast her with a libertarian who didn't believe in government at all," he says. This concept could match well with Poehler, with whom Schur had worked at SNL.

Poehler as a sitcom star made a lot of sense to Daniels. Both Steve Carell and Tina Fey had become major stars in NBC's strong comedy lineup, on The Office and 30 Rock, and Poehler had also come out of the Second City improv troupe around the same time.

"Carell had proven to be such an amazing leader, partly because he had all these years of improv experience," Daniels says. "Amy seemed like somebody who had the same heft as Carell, who could lead the show."

Hearing about Poehler's sudden availability felt like the glimmer of a real vision for Schur. He had started as a writer at SNL in 1998 and met Poehler when she joined the show in 2001. Poehler, a petite blonde who was now thirty-six, had become one of Saturday Night Live's standouts over her seven seasons, known for her impressive range. She could play a Boston teenager; pop stars Avril Lavigne, Madonna, and even Michael Jackson; conservative commentator Ann Coulter or, on the other side of the political spectrum, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. She became part of the series' first all-female team to host its faux-news segment, "Weekend Update," with Fey, her frequent comedy collaborator. Now, at the end of SNL's 2007-2008 season, Poehler was planning to leave the legendary sketch comedy show that had made her famous (though she'd stay on for the fall of 2008 for the impending presidential election).

Like Daniels, Schur thought she would make a stellar sitcom lead. That is, if they could get her. As far as Schur was concerned, Daniels ranked as the No. 1 reason The Office was so successful, but No. 2 was Carell. As cringeworthy boss Michael Scott, Carell carried the show with his underlying intelligence and his comedic talent, but behind the scenes, his grounded personality, work ethic, and dedication were also key. "He's just a very, very sturdy, load-bearing wall on a TV show," Schur recalls. "And those people are very rare. There aren't that many people who can be at the center of a giant ensemble comedy like that."

Parks and Recreation grew from seeds cultivated at The Office and cross-pollinated with Obama-era spirit.

Its existence became a foregone conclusion when, in 2007, NBC hired a successful agent-turned-producer named Ben Silverman as cochair of its entertainment division. He would be taking over for Kevin Reilly, who hadn't managed to reverse the network's downward trajectory. The thirty-six-year-old wunderkind's expertise became widely coveted after he, as an agent, shepherded hits such as Ugly Betty and The Office to television, translating other countries' shows to American audiences.

As one of Silverman's first acts in his new job, he had asked Daniels, who had adapted the British Office for American audiences, to make a spin-off of the breakout show for the 2008-2009 television season. As talks progressed, the offer crystallized: thirteen episodes in the second half of the season, starting with a premiere in the hottest slot on TV, after the Super Bowl in January 2009.

Optimism was taking hold at NBC and in America. The nation was on its way to electing its first Black president, the handsome and charismatic Barack Obama (a man who literally espoused "relentless optimism" in a 2017 speech). The Great Recession remained many months in the future. And The Office, a show about mundane office workers with regular-person problems, was hitting new heights in its third season on NBC, a bright spot on an otherwise struggling network. The network had ordered six "supersize" forty-minute episodes of the season's total of twenty-five, one of their latest promotional gambits and a major vote of confidence. Surely the guy who had brought The Office to America could turn things around for NBC.

The Office's American life began with a six-episode first season in 2005. Along with the British series' cocreators, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, Silverman-who had secured the American rights while an agent in England-had chosen Daniels, cocreator of the animated series King of the Hill, to make it for US television. Daniels cut a professorial figure, standing six feet two with dark, slightly graying hair, a light beard, and, often, dark-framed glasses.

The American version employed a mockumentary style, like the British version, this time to chronicle the workday lives of the employees at the Dunder Mifflin paper company branch in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The first season, largely a remake of the first UK season, struggled tonally, and it landed with a thud, ranking No. 102 of 156 network shows that year. The cast and the creative team did not believe they had a hit on their hands before it aired. "There was a moment when we were shooting the last episode [of the first season], where the cast was sort of huddled outside, and everyone was a little bit glum because it was our last week of shooting," remembered Schur, who was writing for the show at the time. "Even though the show wouldn't air for months, everyone kind of felt like, there's no way this ever works."

Schur, then twenty-nine years old, was six feet tall and had a thicket of dark hair, a boyish face, and an impish smile; he was prone to wearing Converse sneakers, jeans, and fleece jackets. He was one of three junior writers who supported Daniels, along with Mindy Kaling and B. J. Novak, both of whom also appeared on the show. Schur had a different vibe, coming from Saturday Night Live as a writer, just as Daniels had. "We hit it off pretty early," Daniels recalls of Schur.

By the third and fourth seasons, The Office had found its own voice and steadily grew to become one of the biggest and best comedies on television at the time. Its focus on regular characters at a regular job resonated with viewers, and the mockumentary format, with characters often talking to the camera as if being interviewed by an unseen producer, rhymed with the zeitgeist as reality TV invaded airwaves using a similar technique. Thus Silverman's excitement over the possibility of a spin-off, though Daniels felt too overwhelmed by The Office's speeding train to think it through much and he generally resisted the idea of trying to clone...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Dutton
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593854519
• ISBN 13: 9780593854518
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Dutton; https://www.penguin.com/dutton-childrens-overview/; ; Im Mittelfeld 25; K?ln; Deutschland; 51105; Deutschland