Parks and Recreation Returns for a Brand New Reunion Episode Next Week
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Get ready to go back to Pawnee. Parks and Recreation will be returning for a brand new episode on April 30, Deadline reports. The one-off reunion will bring the entire (non-Paul Schneider) cast back together—Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman, Adam Scott, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Pratt, Rashida Jones, Aziz Ansari, Rob Lowe, Retta, and Jim O’Heir—in an episode that finds Leslie Knope checking in on her friends and former coworkers during quarantine. It’s all a benefit for the COVID-19 Response Fund that Feeding America has set up, with State Farm and Subaru of America donating $150,000 each, and an extra half a million coming from NBCUniversal and the stars and creators of Parks and Recreation.
According to Deadline’s piece, the whole idea was kicked up by Michael Schur, the show’s creator and executive producer, whose follow-up show, The Good Place, just wrapped up its run earlier this year. “Like a lot of other people, we were looking for ways to help and felt that bringing these characters back for a night could raise some money,” Schur says in a statement. “I sent a hopeful email to the cast and they all got back to me within 45 minutes.”
Parks and Recreation’s unflagging commitment to positivity might make it seem out of step with 2020. It’s fitting that the show ended in 2015, right before the 2016 election really kicked off—its brightness would have rang especially false during the increasingly cynical and fractious days we’ve seen since. The sitcom still holds up, though, with its fantastic ensemble and top-notch writing; just earlier this week we called it the second best sitcom currently streaming on Netflix. A small dose of Parks-style positivity certainly wouldn’t hurt in the midst of all this, even if it’ll all be put together over Zoom or some other online video app.
The Parks and Recreation quarantine special will air on NBC on Thursday, April 30, at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT. If you’d like to make your own donation to Feeding America’s COVID-19 Response Fund, you can do so here.