Pawnee (Parks and Recreation)

Pawnee, Indiana
'Parks and Recreation' location
Created by	Greg Daniels and Michael Schur
Genre	TV
In-universe information
Type	City
Locations	City Hall
Characters	Leslie Knope Ron Swanson

Pawnee, Indiana is the fictional setting of the NBC comedy series Parks and Recreation. Since the show's start in 2009, the fictional town of Pawnee has received acclaim by fans and critics, with the town's colorful history and inhabitants being the joke or focal point for many episodes.

Founding

Pawnee was founded in May 1817 by Rev. Luther Howell. Howell came from Terre Haute on an ox. The Native American tribe of the Wamapoke that already lived on the land were driven out of town by July 1817. Howell founded several Lutheran churches in town. The first mayor of Pawnee, Charlton Sharpspeed, took office in 1818.Pawnee is actually based on the city of Muncie.

Geography

See also: List of cities in Indiana

Several times on the series, Pawnee is said to be in South Central Indiana, although the exact location is unknown. Pawnee is said to be located about 90 miles from Indianapolis. Pawnee is also believed to be the seventh largest city in Indiana. This would put its population between 80,294 and 80,405, the populations of the real ranking sixth and seventh largest cities in Indiana, Bloomington and Gary. However, the population has also been described as between fifty and seventy thousand.

Government

Walter Gunderson has been the mayor of Pawnee since 1994, according to the book Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America. Pawnee's government is set up like most local governments in the United States, with several departments, such as Parks and Recreation (the primary focus of the show), sewage, etc. The current city manager is Chris Traeger. The primary protagonist of the series is Leslie Knope, the deputy director of the Department of Parks and Recreation and later a councilwoman.

At the end of the second season, Pawnee had a serious budget crisis that eventually led to a temporary shutdown of the government. This storyline was inspired by the real life global recession. The third season opened with the budget of every department being slashed.

Notable locations

Exterior of City Hall (Actually Pasadena City Hall)

• City Hall, sometimes referred to as Pioneer Hall, in season one. The primary setting for the series. Contains the Parks and Recreation Department, as well as other departments and offices.
• The Fourth Floor, of City Hall, the "creepy" floor that has the DMV, divorce filings, and probation offices.
• The Snakehole Lounge, a sleazy nightclub where many after-work functions are held. Donna Meagle is an investor, so was Tom Haverford before Chris Traeger made him sell his shares.
• JJ's Diner, a diner that is the unofficial meeting place for people in the government. Leslie Knope's favorite diner, where she always orders waffles.
• The Bulge, a gay club. Leslie became an inadvertent hero of its patrons when she married two male penguins at the Pawnee zoo.
• The Glitter Factory, a strip club that Tom frequents. They serve an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet that Ron Swanson appreciates.

Notable people

• Mayor Gunderson, the mayor of Pawnee and, although he has been mentioned in multiple episodes of Parks and Recreation, he has yet to make an actual appearance on the show. He was first mentioned in "Christmas Scandal", when the parks and recreation department held a satirical holiday skit full of inside jokes about Pawnee, and April declared, "That's crazier than Mayor Gunderson's dog, Rufus." The mayor and his dog played a major part in the episode "The Possum", when Mayor Gunderson's assistant ordered the parks department to capture an opossum that bit Rufus on a Pawnee golf course. Andy, who helps Leslie capture the opossum, said at one point, "We're acting under direct orders from Mayor Gunderson's dog." For the funeral scene in the third season finale "Li'l Sebastian", Michael Schur said the writing staff considered killing off Mayor Gunderson, but they instead went with miniature horse Li'l Sebastian because it was decided having an animal die would be more appropriate and less morbid. Amy Poehler has stated she would love Bill Murray to play Mayor Gunderson and, during an appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, jokingly announced she would pay him $250 if he played the role.
• The Newport family, the owners of the Sweetums candy manufacturer in Pawnee and one of the city's richest and most prominent families. The company has operated and thrived in the city for years, as indicated in the episode "Sweetums", where Leslie screened 30-year-old video footage of a then-young Nick Newport, Sr. (Christopher Murray) discussing how corn syrup was used to fatten cattle at farms. By the time of Parks and Recreation, Nick Newport, Sr. is an elderly man in a wheelchair so senile he can barely speak, and the company is run by his son Nick Newport, Jr. (Gary Weeks), who himself appears in Sweetums commercials along with has two children, Dakota (Harley Graham) and Denver (Ryan Hartwig). In "Sweetums", the company formed a partnership with the city hall to run the concessions stands in Pawnee parks, and Nick Newport, Jr. unveiled their new, supposedly-healthy energy bars Nutriyums. He promotes the energy bars through commercials that use similar propagandistic techniques as the commercials of real-life corn refiners: they feature warm images of Nick Newport, Jr. with his dog Shoelace insisting corn syrup is "fine in moderation". Ann and Leslie held public forums to inform people the energy bars are not actually healthy, but the citizenry of Pawnee ultimately rejected their arguments and were won over by the charisma of Nick Newport, Jr. and his family, particularly when Denver announced they should look under their seats for free Sweetums candy. Nick Newport, Sr. appeared in the episode "94 Meetings", where his young and attractive gold digger wife Jessica Wicks held his 85th birthday party at the Turnbill Mansion. Jessica made major alterations to the historic mansion, and Leslie unsuccessfully tried to intervene to stop her. Paul Rudd plays Bobby Newport, who runs against Leslie for city Council in season four.

File:Parks and recreation christmas scandal.jpg

Dexhart in "Christmas Scandal"

• Bill Dexhart (Kevin Symons), a Pawnee councilman who regularly participates in outrageous sex scandals with multiple partners. His character was inspired by South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and his 2009 scandal, in which he admitted to a long-time extramarital affair with an Argentinian woman. Dexhart first appeared in "Practice Date", when he publicly admitted to having participated in a Foursome in a Brazil cave under the guise of building houses for the underprivileged. Dexhart was featured prominently in "Christmas Scandal", which began with Leslie portraying him in a satirical holiday skit in which he discussed an affair with multiple women that resulted in a love child. Unbeknownst to Leslie, Dexhart turned out to be involved in just such a sexual arrangement: four-way sex in a hospital room where he had just overseen the birth of his love child. When he confronted her about it, members of the media took pictures of Leslie and Dexhart together and speculated that the two of them were having an affair. Dexhart refused to deny the allegations, and even went so far as to confirm them, because the fictional affair was less scandalous than his actual sexual indiscretions. As proof of the affair, he claimed Leslie had a mole on her right buttock, but she publicly proved him wrong by dropping her pants on live television and revealing there is no mole.
• Li'l Sebastian, a miniature horse who debuted at the Pawnee Harvest Festival in 1987, and became an instant sensation. The animal held an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame.

Annual functions

• The Harvest Festival, a carnival-like festival that spreads across the entire town. Lost due to budget cuts, but brought back by Leslie in season three, and was a huge success.
• Government Follies, a yearly pageant held around Christmastime, hosted by one of the departments, parodying Pawnee's government.
• Tellenson Award for Public Service, a yearly award given to government officials for public service, given to Leslie's mother in the first season.
• Ted Party Day, a celebration supporting the historic tea party where a random person named Ted is thrown into the lake because the old handwriting makes "Tea" look like "Ted" in the document.

Reception

The city of Pawnee has received critical acclaim. Several critics have noted that the city has become the show's secret weapon. Hillary Busis of Entertainment Weekly, wrote that "the show wouldn't work nearly as well if it were set in a less wonderfully quirky place." and raved that "some of the show’s funniest moments come when the extreme weirdness of its setting is revealed — when, say, Leslie explains what’s going on in one of City Hall’s numerous, horrifically offensive murals, or when she dispatches ridiculous bits of Pawnee history. ('For a brief time in the ’70s, our town was taken over by a cult.') And then there’s how absurdly cosmopolitan Pawnee is: Why does this blip on the map have its own tabloid news show, zoo, beauty pageant, periodicals, and thriving nightlife scene? Pawnee is more than a setting — it’s a rich comic universe, like Springfield."

Merchandise

Since the premiere of the show, NBC has sold merchandise for the town of Pawnee. Shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and others were sold with the seal of Pawnee, and shirts with Pawnee's slogan, "First in Friendship, Fourth in Obesity". In the episode Born & Raised, Leslie writes a book about the town, called Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America. After the episode aired, NBC released an actual book of the same name, filled with information about the fictional town. The author is listed as "Leslie Knope", although it was actually written by show writer Nate DiMeo. In 2012, it was nominated for the Thurber Prize for American Humor.