Pilot (Parks and Recreation)

"Pilot"
Parks and Recreation episode
Ann Perkins overlooking the Pawnee construction pit. Filling the pit and turning it into a park would serve as the main plotline for the entire first season and part of the second season.
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 1
Directed by	Greg Daniels
Written by	Greg Daniels & Michael Schur
Original air date	April 9, 2009
Guest appearance(s)
Martin Chow as David Jon Daly as Drunk Jim O'Heir as Jerry Gergich Bryce Hurless as Older Boy Chris Pratt as Andy Dwyer Retta as Donna Meagle Ian Roberts as Ian Winston Loudon Wainwright III as Barry Lennon Wynn as Little Girl
Episode chronology
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List of season 1 episodes List of Parks and Recreation episodes

"Pilot" is the pilot episode of the American comedy television series Parks and Recreation. It originally aired on NBC in the United States on April 9, 2009. The episode was written by series co-creators Michael Schur and Greg Daniels, and directed by Daniels.

The episode introduces the protagonist Leslie Knope, played by Amy Poehler, as well as the other regular characters played by cast members Rashida Jones, Paul Schneider, Aziz Ansari, Aubrey Plaza and Nick Offerman. Knope is a mid-level bureaucrat in the Parks and Recreation department in the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana. In "Pilot", Knope sets out to turn a construction pit into a park after local nurse Ann Perkins (Jones) complains about the dangerous pit during a town meeting. Her anti-government boss Ron Swanson (Offerman) reluctantly allows her to form an exploratory committee after her friend and colleague Mark Brendanawicz (Schneider) secretly intervenes on her behalf.

Daniels and Schur first started writing the script in the summer of 2008, when they were in the early stages of conceiving the series. Like the rest of the series, the pilot was filmed in the same mockumentary style as The Office, the NBC comedy series also directed by Daniels. About one month before the pilot aired, a focus group report discussing several perceived problems with the episode was leaked to the media, which led to speculation that Parks and Recreation was not ready for prime-time television. The pilot episode featured a number of cultural references to such people as Bob Knight, Larry Bird and Laura Linney, as well as female political figures to whom Leslie compares herself, such as Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Nancy Pelosi.