This article takes us untested innocents into the darkness of the Parks & Recreation writers’ room to uncover the mysterious - and often bloody - process of writing a TV show. Nah, just kidding, it’s mostly arguing about jokes, eating snacks and watching YouTube videos. And index cards, lots of index cards. The second part of the article is an interview with co-creator Mike Schur about which ideas from that first meeting made it into the show:
Certain ideas just linger, and linger and linger until you finally figure out a way to break them. In my experience, this is how story breaking goes: someone will come up with an idea that’s just a funny index card, and you go, “Oh, it’s funny,” and then you forget about it, and it sits up on your board of index cards. And three months later, someone will pitch a story and you’ll go, “Oh, maybe we can use that idea for this!” And someone will say, “Oh, it doesn’t really work here,” and you’ll freak out again…Those ideas that make you laugh, you keep them in your brain or on your wall of ideas until someday they magically fit into a story or you magically figure out how to break them.
So what he’s saying is, we’re definitely, 100%, absolutely going to see Pawnee’s version of SNL, with guest stars from the actual SNL? Great, that’s a binding promise. Don’t screw us on this one, Schur!
