Summary: A HUNTING WE WILL GO—Leslie (Amy Poehler) tries to prove she can hang with the guys so she invites herself on Ron’s (Nick Offerman) annual hunting trip, but things don’t go as planned. Meanwhile, April (Aubrey Plaza) and Andy (Chris Pratt) bond in the office while everyone is away. Rashida Jones, Paul Schneider and Aziz Ansari also star.
Poll:
In a poll conducted on Knope Knows from November 19-29*, viewers gave “Hunting Trip” an 8.81/10.
Here are some event quotes from executive producer Greg Daniels and actors Amy Poehler, Aziz Ansari and Nick Offerman, courtesy of IGN.com:
Amy, on how giving Parks and Recreation time to breathe has been the difference maker this season:
I always knew this show was complex and needed to open up a little bit. I like to think that the show needed to decant. … People are starting to care about the people on the show. It was always our intention that the show be funny, but also a show where you actually wanted to see what happened to the characters.
Greg, on writing for the actors:
Mike (Schur) and I have been writing the characters more specifically to the actors and I think we can see more of the intelligence of the characters.
Amy, on Leslie Knope:
The comedy for her comes out of her trying to stay optimistic in the face of all these challenges. Pawnee is a real town as far as I’m concerned and the show’s concerned. To be able to have the real base where surreal, crazy stuff happens and have a real character that can deal with crazy stuff is great. It allows you to be able to go very small or very broad.
Nick, on his favorite Parks scene:
The scene where Leslie takes Ron to break up with Tammy is my favorite. Because, you know, I just got here and just to be sitting in that room with Amy and Megan, I just wanted to pinch myself. I was thrilled last season just standing in a doorway sipping a cup of coffee but I’m over the moon now that I get to do gymnastics.
Aziz, on his favorite Parks scene:
In the (upcoming) divorce episode, it gets pretty rough for Tom. It was really fun because there was some serious acting for me to do compared to my usual d*** jokes. And what guy out there hasn’t been distraught over a girl before? It was a really fun episode for me.
Here’s a Q&A between Greg Daniels and TheWrap. In it, Greg mainly discusses The Office. However, he answers fairly unique questions, such as the likelihood of The Office continuing with a mostly new cast and whether there’s any chance of a Parks and Recreation/Office crossover.
The Office is such a hit now, it’s easy to forget how close the show came to dying at birth. Was there a moment during that first season where you thought, “OK, we’re toast.”
I knew we had a lot of unusual features for an NBC comedy at the time, like no laugh track, the concept of the documentary, a pretty flawed main character, etc. — so I had prepared the executives for the reality that we weren’t going to be a hit out of the starting gate. The mid-level NBC and GE executives loved the show, though, and related to the absurdity of corporate life and supported us internally.
How long would you like The Office to continue in its current incarnation? Could you see the show continuing with a mostly new cast, a la ER?
Mindy Kaling very early on made the comparison to ER, and I think it would be possible to keep bringing new characters in. Ed Helms’s Andy Bernard was introduced in season three, for example, and Ellie Kemper came on last year. In our premiere, we introduced three summer interns just for the episode, but by the end of it I was curious to see more of them.
But it is hard to imagine the show without Steve and the current cast at its core. We are still several years away from having to think about it, and I have a good idea for a series finale episode, too.
Any chance of a Parks and Recreation/Office crossover? And how are things on the new show?
Things are great on the new show. Mike and I tinkered with things after our six-episode season one, and the reaction has been extremely positive. The show gets better and better every episode, which is tough for me as the pilot co-writer and director to admit. When we cast Rashida Jones on Parks and Recreation, though, I think we closed the door on a fictional crossover between the two worlds.
In a Q&A published today, Greg Daniels sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to answer a number of questions mainly dealing with NBC’s The Office.
Here are a few of the questions, with Daniels’ responses:
Looking back over the past several seasons (of The Office), do you have any particular episode or moment that stands out to you as a favorite?
We had a 100th episode party, and Dave Rogers, the senior editor, cut together an “100 Moments” montage (featuring one from) each episode, and there’s stuff that I love about all the episodes. The other thing is just having all those memories of the actual filming, like being out there under the scorching sun shooting the “Beach Games” episode, and Harold Ramis directing it from under this little black cloth that he had to go into to look at the monitor, everybody just sweating a ton.
How does it feel to have “Parks and Recreation” launching as “The Office” hits this milestone?
It feels great! I feel really glad that “The Office” hit 100 episodes. I feel that from the standpoint of (”Office” co-creators) Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, I didn’t let them down. I remember interviewing with them seven years ago, and this was certainly the goal, so I’m very pleased that we got to 100 episodes in a strong fashion. I think the show is in a very good place right now. I don’t know if you saw the ratings last week (ending April 19), but we were beating “CSI” in 18-49 — who would have thought that when we aired for the first time? While I’ve been working on “Parks and Recreation,” Paul Lieberstein and Jennifer Celotta, who are two other executive producers (on “Office), have been really stepping up and doing an excellent job. They have taken “The Office” to some really great places, and it seems very in-its-prime. From that standpoint, it’s not a bad time to try and launch something else.
“Parks and Recreation” was kind of born out of Ben Silverman really, really wanting another show as a companion piece, and I think it has a good potential. I think Amy Poehler’s super funny, and again, I think the mockumentary format is the way to go for single-camera comedy shows. I don’t know how you shoot an “Ugly Betty”-style show. It seems like that would be so much work to light it properly and have dolly tracks. There’s so much energy and improvisation you can do when it’s all handheld and the concept is if the lighting isn’t perfect, it’s because there wasn’t perfect lighting in that room.
Writers: Greg Daniels, Michael Schur | Director: Greg Daniels
Summary: SERIES PREMIERE–MAKE MY PIT A PARK— From Emmy Award-winning executive producers of “The Office” comes a new mockumentary that looks at the exciting world of local government. The documentary cameras follow Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) a mid-level bureaucrat in the Parks and Recreation Department of Pawnee, Indiana. In an attempt to beautify her town Leslie takes on what should be a fairly simple project: help local nurse Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones) turn an abandoned construction pit into a community park. Leslie is alternately helped and undermined by her colleague, Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari), who cheerfully exploits his government position for personal gain. She is also thwarted by her boss Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) who is philosophically opposed to government in any form. Helping Leslie and Ann navigate the Pawnee bureaucracy is charismatic city planner Mark Brendanawicz (Paul Schneider), whose outlook has been soured by 15 years of public service. If they can pull it off, Leslie hopes that she also will have inspired her uninterested college intern April (Aubrey Plaza) and April’s whole generation – all the while moving one step closer to her ultimate goal: becoming the first female president of the United States.
Poll:
In a poll conducted on Knope Knows from April 9-12, viewers gave “Pilot” a 7.74/10.
Ratings:
6.77 million viewers | 3.0/9 A18-49 | Source
OK, hypothetically if you’re going on a mission to, say, catch a guilty whale. And while you were catching the whale, you saw something else that may also be another whale, and you were like, “What?” But then you thought, “Maybe it’s not a whale. Maybe it’s a big fish, maybe it’s a submarine with a face painted on it.” The point is if I kill the first whale, am I technically a murderer?
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Original air date: November 19, 2009
