Kid mode 🧒

Leslie needs to raise a lot of money at a fancy party so her town can build a new park instead of another burger restaurant.
A mean councilman named Jamm secretly plans a pretend emergency drill for the same day, which traps Leslie in a room all day so she cannot help set up the party.
To get out, Leslie cleverly tells her team to pretend to destroy the whole fake town, which ends the drill early.
Meanwhile her friends save the party without her, Ron goes on TV and does great, and Andy gets a perfect score on his police test but fails because he answers the personality questions in a silly way.
The party works and the park gets its money, and Leslie and Ben are so happy they decide to get married that same night.
The lesson is that no one gets anything done alone, and good friends can pull off almost anything together.

Parks and Recreation · Season 5 · Episode 13

Emergency Responsev3Deep Card

A Complete Scene Breakdown · references, callbacks, tropes

Emergency Response, the thirteenth episode of Parks and Recreation season 5, straps the Pawnee Commons dream to a deadline.
Leslie needs to raise the last fifty thousand dollars for the park at a black-tie gala, so she and Ben register for the park instead of wedding gifts and turn the fundraiser into the deadline that has to land.
Councilman Jamm rigs a full state emergency-preparedness drill for the exact same day, locking Leslie inside City Hall while inspector Leonard runs Pawnee through simulated avian flu and worse.
Leslie escapes the trap by ordering her own team to destroy the entire simulated town, Ron hijacks a hungover Joan Callamezzo's live show to promote the gala, Andy aces the written police exam but bombs the personality test, Mouse Rat plays the finished gala, and Leslie and Ben decide on the spot to get married that very night.

Source: Parks Wiki
Source: Parks Wiki

Set List

Interiors Pawnee City Hall emergency command center where Leslie is locked in for the drill, the Parks Department bullpen, the police-station testing room where Andy takes his exam, a restaurant kitchen where Tom begs the chef for free catering, the Pawnee Today TV studio where Ron takes over Joan's show, and the gala hall where Mouse Rat performs.

Exteriors The empty lot 48 that becomes the gala grounds and emergency triage site, and the wedding-registry store where Leslie and Ben decide to register for the park instead of gifts.

Placement

  • Falls in the back third of season 5, the episode right ahead of the Leslie and Ben wedding, so it functions as the launchpad that spends the season's built-up park and romance tension.
  • Caps the Pawnee Commons fundraising arc that ran across E10 to E12 while advancing the season-long Jamm vendetta that began in E03 and crests at the E14 wedding crash.
  • Serves as the pivot from civic-project season to wedding-and-consequences season, ending on the marry-tonight decision that reorients the next several episodes.

References

People

  • Dalai Lamaperson
    After Tom delivers a sappy line about love fading but things being forever, Leslie asks whether the Dalai Lama said that.
  • Robert Pattinson (R-Patz)person
    A radio caller asks Joan to settle a bet on the sexiest couple in history and names R-Patz and K-Stew as one option.
  • Kristen Stewart (K-Stew)person
    Named by the same caller as half of the R-Patz and K-Stew pairing in the sexiest-couple bet.
  • Justin Bieberperson
    The caller starts to offer Bieber as another sexiest-couple contender until Ron cuts him off.

Music

  • Johnny Cashmusic
    Ron names Johnny Cash, alongside chocolate-chip ice cream and The Grapes of Wrath, in a clipped list of things he approves of while taking calls on the show.
  • Mouse Ratmusic
    Leslie introduces Mouse Rat as the best band in Pawnee to close the gala, and Andy's band performs an improvised song about building the park.

Books and literature

  • The Grapes of Wrathbook
    Ron cites The Grapes of Wrath in the same three-item approval list during his radio segment.

Social media, apps, and websites named

  • Richter scalemeta
    In the closing Channel 4 news simulation, geologist Isabella Winchester reports the earthquake registered an 8.5 on the Richter scale.

Films, TV, and podcasts named

  • Herbie: Fully Loadedfilm
    Ron lists it as one of only three movies he has seen in his life, along with Bridge on the River Kwai and Patton, and adds that his girlfriend's kids love it and it is pretty funny.
  • The Bridge on the River Kwaifilm
    One of the three films Ron says he has ever seen in his life, cited during his radio-caller monologue.
  • Pattonfilm
    The second of the three films Ron names as the only movies he has seen, in the same call-in segment.
  • Thunderdomefilm
    The state emergency report quoted by Leslie's team says that whenever it drizzles, Pawnee risks collapsing into Thunderdome-style, post-apocalyptic mayhem, a reference to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
  • Mission: Impossiblefilm
    Leslie titles her avian-flu response binder Mission Im-Pawnee-able: Knope Protocol, a pun on the Mission: Impossible franchise and its Ghost Protocol installment.

Brands, products, and places

  • Harvard Medical Schoolplace
    The fictional DVD doctor Donatella Breckinridge announces she graduated first in her class from Harvard Medical School so she knows what she is talking about.
  • Paunch Burgerproduct
    The recurring fictional Pawnee fast-food chain that Councilman Jamm wants to sell lot 48 to; its number-one seller is called the greasy lard bomb and its curly fries are praised by Ann.
  • Go-Gurtproduct
    Tom fires off a string of food puns as he leaves, ending with Good-pie, Go, Gurt, Go-gurt, riffing on the Go-Gurt brand.
  • Fort Wayneplace
    Leonard grades Pawnee's failed drill as Fort Wayne bad, using the Indiana city as a benchmark for disaster.
  • Muncieplace
    Councilman Jamm says he got all the way to Muncie and only then realized the emergency was just a drill.
  • Orlandoplace
    The chef Tom tries to flatter turns out not to be a refined Parisian; he reveals he is from Orlando.

Callbacks

  • The Pawnee Commons gala is the payoff of a money problem planted two episodes back. The park on lot 48 needs fifty thousand dollars it does not have, and the planning commission tells Leslie flat out that they cannot approve an underfunded project.
    That fundraising need was set up in the E10 to E12 Pawnee Commons thread, and this gala is the mechanism that finally closes the gap.
  • Councilman Jamm's sabotage is the latest move in a running vendetta. Jamm personally invited inspector Leonard and asked that the drill be run today, on the gala day, to stall Leslie.
    This is the same procedural weaponization Jamm has used against Leslie since the bathroom-for-a-vote trade in How a Bill Becomes a Law earlier in the season, and it escalates straight into his stink-bomb wedding crash next episode.
  • Andy chasing the police force pays off his long-running want to be more than a shoeshine guy. Andy studies the criminal codes with April, memorizes them with salt-shaker mnemonics, and scores 100 percent on the written exam, the first person in Pawnee history to do it.
    The chief still calls him a sweet kid who does not have what it takes, which lands because we have watched Andy's sincerity outrun his competence all series.
  • April giving Andy a dead-rabbit-foot lucky charm reprises their gross, devoted marriage. April cuts the feet off a dead rabbit she found on the road and gives them to Andy as a good-luck charm, and Andy loves it.
    The trade of creepy gifts is the same affectionate weirdness that has defined April and Andy since they married mid season 3.
  • Ron stepping in front of a live camera calls back his stage fright and his hidden competence. Ron admits he cried on TV last time, then goes on Pawnee Today anyway and calmly runs the whole broadcast, dispensing wet-socks hangover cures and woodworking talk.
    It rhymes with the guarded, secretly capable Ron who was exposed as jazz musician Duke Silver a few episodes earlier.
  • Chris Traeger surviving a simulated killer virus with a smile pays off his therapy arc. Chris notes that a few months ago the thought of any infectious disease, even a hypothetical one, would have sent him careening toward Bummerville, but now he feels fine.
    That is a direct callback to the depression and therapy storyline the season built for Chris.

Tropes used

  • Jamm procedural hijack. Jamm cannot beat the park plan on merit, so he weaponizes a state emergency drill, invites Leonard for the gala day, and has the bus-transit failure engineered on purpose to burn Leslie's clock.
    It is his most elaborate sabotage of the season.
  • Leslie Knope's binder and over-preparation. Leslie governs the drill with the Knope Protocol, a binder named after herself and retitled Mission Im-Pawnee-able, and she promises the team they will ace the test in ninety minutes if they follow every instruction.
  • Pawnee's grotesque local media. Joan Callamezzo shows up hungover from a booze cruise, pretends it is allergies, and collapses on live TV, forcing Ron to take over her call-in show mid-broadcast.
  • Andy Dwyer's golden-retriever sincerity. Andy gets a perfect written score, then answers the personality test by handing an imaginary kid his service revolver and asking his pulled-over father where his catcher's mitt is, cheerfully failing the human portion.
  • Ron Swanson's plainspoken competence. Ron volunteers for TV by saying he can speak in full sentences and will not cry, then anchors the whole segment with flank-steak hangover advice, anti-bank rants, and a pitch for the gala.

Tropes subverted

  • Leslie's protective protocol is weaponized against itself. The Knope Protocol is built to save Pawnee, but Leslie is trapped until the drill ends, so she orders her team to flush the vaccine, have officers give infected birds CPR, and destroy the entire simulated town to force Leonard to declare the drill over.
    The binder works by being turned inside out.
  • The predatory interviewer is upstaged by calm. Joan Callamezzo usually runs her guests over, but here she is incapacitated on air and completely eclipsed by Ron's unhurried, deadpan competence, flipping the show's normal power dynamic.
  • Passing the test is not the same as succeeding. Andy earns the first perfect written score in Pawnee history and still fails to become a cop, so the episode splits intellectual achievement from the human qualities the job actually needs.
  • A sabotage designed to kill the park instead triggers the wedding. Jamm rigs the day to destroy Leslie's gala, yet the gala lands, the goal is met, and the night ends with Leslie and Ben deciding to marry on the spot.
    The antagonist's biggest stall produces the season's happiest turn.

Threads planted, where they pay off

  • Leslie and Ben's spur-of-the-moment decision to marry tonight sets up S05E14. Standing in black tie with food, music, and the whole town already gathered, they choose to get married immediately, which launches the two-hour improvised wedding of the very next episode.
  • Jamm's sabotage escalates into the stink-bomb wedding crash in S05E14. His procedural vendetta continues one episode later when he disrupts the wedding, gets punched by Ron, and sends Ron to jail, then sues over the punch in S05E17.
  • The completed Pawnee Commons gala closes the multi-episode park-funding arc. Reaching the fundraising goal here resolves the money problem that ran from E10 through E12 and cements lot 48 as the park rather than a Paunch Burger.
  • Andy's failed personality test leaves the door open for a re-do. Leonard tells Andy the drill was rigged and offers to come back in a month, seeding Andy's later paths toward security and eventually the FBI.

Production file

  • Written by Norm Hiscock and Joe Mande, directed by Dean Holland, aired February 14, 2013 to 3.18 million US viewers viewers.
  • The episode is the thirteenth of Parks and Recreation season five and aired on NBC on February 14, 2013.
  • It marked Joe Mande's debut as a co-writer on the series, sharing the credit with veteran writer Norm Hiscock.
  • Matt Walsh guest starred as Leonard Tchulm, the deadpan head of the Indiana Department of Emergency Preparedness who runs the disaster drill.
  • The plot braids three threads: Leslie's team is locked in a disaster-preparedness simulation, Ron subs for a hungover Joan Callamezzo on Pawnee Today, and Andy takes the police-department entrance exam.
  • The episode ends on a to-be-continued cliffhanger, with Ben and Leslie deciding to get married that night at the gala, leading directly into the following episode Leslie and Ben.
  • Steve Heisler of The A.V.
    Club graded the episode an A-, praising it for stripping the usual format down and assembling something distinct.
    He credited it for trusting its audience with a slower pace.
Scene by scene
Scene 1

The Fifty Grand Gap

Pawnee City Council Chambers

Scene Summary

  • Leslie pitches the Pawnee Commons park for lot 48 with her Dynamite acronym while Councilman Jamm counters with a Paunch Burger sale.
  • The planning commission privately tells Leslie her plan is stronger but the park is short fifty thousand dollars.
  • Leslie is given one week to close the funding gap or lose the lot to fast food.
  • The stakes for the whole episode get set in the first three minutes.

Recap Girl play-by-play

  • Leslie presents Pawnee Commons and unpacks Dynamite as daring, youth-friendly, natural, amazing, merry, inviting, tourist-attraction-y, and eco-friendly.
  • Jamm shoves his own proposal in Leslie's face and pitches selling the lot to Paunch Burger with his win-win-win-win burger logic.
  • Jamm signs off with his catchphrase, Jamm out, and Ann fixates on the curly fries.
  • Leslie corners the commissioners for a hint and learns they lean toward Jamm because her project is underfunded.
  • They tell her the math is simple, raise the missing fifty thousand and the park is hers.
  • Leslie turns to her team and asks how they are going to find the money in a week.

Color Host notes

  • The cold open front-loads the season's civic-underdog engine, small local government versus a greasy corporate default.
  • Jamm is written as a pure obstacle antagonist, his cheerful cruelty is the friction the whole plot needs.
  • The acronym runner is classic Leslie characterization, competence expressed as over-preparation played for laughs.
  • The commission conceding her idea is better but blocking it on a technicality sets up the whole rigged-game reveal later.
Scene 2

Register For The Park

Department Store Wedding Registry

Scene Summary

  • Ben and Leslie are supposed to be building their wedding registry but Leslie is consumed by the funding problem.
  • A pushy registry clerk keeps pitching housewares like a citrus reamer that neither of them wants.
  • Ben has the idea to register for the park instead of gifts and throw a fundraising gala.
  • The A-plot engine, tonight's black-tie gala, is born from a romance-plot scene.

Recap Girl play-by-play

  • The clerk delivers a mock-profound speech that love fades but things are forever and pitches a citrus reamer.
  • Leslie says all she wants is to marry Ben and to somehow get fifty thousand dollars.
  • Ben pitches registering for the park, organizing a black-tie gala with food, music, and a silent auction.
  • Leslie riffs that donors could bid to put their names on benches, cobblestones, trees, ants, and air.
  • Ben gently notes some of that is possible, then declares Leslie a genius.
  • The two rush off to launch the gala plan with the one-week clock running.

Color Host notes

  • The show fuses the season arc, the wedding, with the episodic problem, the funding gap, so both plots feed one event.
  • Ben as the calm idea-guy to Leslie's runaway enthusiasm is their core comedic dynamic in miniature.
  • The clerk is a one-scene guest bit whose absurd sales philosophy earns a quick laugh and then vanishes.
  • Naming rights on air and ants is a joke that also characterizes Leslie's boundless civic imagination.
Scene 3

Everything I Say

Parks Department Office

Scene Summary

  • Leslie rallies the Parks team to execute the gala on a punishing same-day timeline.
  • She assigns Tom to book free food vendors, kicking off his food-pun exit.
  • The team is briefed that success depends on following Leslie's instructions exactly.
  • The B-plots are seeded just ahead of the surprise emergency drill that hijacks the day.

Recap Girl play-by-play

  • Leslie thanks the team for their hard work, then tells them their applause is premature.
  • She delivers the jump-off-a-bridge bit, saying the gala only happens if they do everything she says.
  • Tom is told to contact three more food vendors who must work for free.
  • Tom launches into a string of food puns, I'm omelet, good-pie, go-gurt, I'm-credible, as he leaves.
  • The scene establishes each team member has a job for the day.
  • The mood is confident and controlled, setting up the chaos about to hit.

Color Host notes

  • This is the quiet beat ahead of the storm that makes the drill's disruption hit harder.
  • Tom's pun spiral is character-as-comic-relief, his hustle expressed through relentless wordplay.
  • Leslie's benevolent-dictator gala management foreshadows how far she will go to control the outcome.
  • The scene efficiently distributes tasks so each character has a thread to fail or salvage later.
Scene 4

Class-One City Emergency

Pawnee Command Center

Scene Summary

  • Donna and Jerry summon Leslie to a supposed emergency that turns out to be a state-mandated disaster drill.
  • Pawnee has a history of failing its annual Department of Emergency Preparedness review.
  • Leonard, the state examiner, arrives to bring death and destruction on the worst possible day.
  • The drill traps Leslie in a locked room for hours, colliding directly with the gala.

Recap Girl play-by-play

  • Jerry panics over a class-one city emergency and Leslie fears for her daughters Gayle and the girls.
  • It is revealed to be a drill and the disaster-preparedness people picked gala day.
  • The backstory lands, Pawnee's last report warned the town collapses into Thunderdome-style mayhem at the first drizzle.
  • Leonard Tchulm introduces himself as head of the state emergency department and vows to bring destruction.
  • Leslie declares herself the Pawnee Emergency Czar and protests that today is inconvenient.
  • Officers bolt the doors into lockdown mode and Leslie realizes the gala is eight hours away while she is stuck.

Color Host notes

  • The fake-emergency reveal is a reliable sitcom rug-pull, dread flipped instantly into farce.
  • Leonard is a deadpan bureaucratic foil whose flat cruelty, the colonoscopy mom line, mines dark comedy.
  • The Thunderdome quote is world-building that reinforces Pawnee's running gag of civic incompetence.
  • Locking Leslie away from her own event is the episode's central engine, control-freak protagonist stripped of control.
Scene 5

Andy Takes The Test

Police Station Testing Room

Scene Summary

  • Andy takes the written and personality exams to become a Pawnee police officer.
  • April supports him with a pep talk and a homemade dead-rabbit-foot lucky charm.
  • Andy's answers reveal deep sincerity and total unfitness for the badge.
  • The runner sets up the bittersweet late reveal about his results.

Recap Girl play-by-play

  • Andy explains his mnemonic system, picturing salt shakers and batteries to memorize criminal codes.
  • April reassures him he will pass and pledges a bizarre plan to divorce and cheat back to him if he fails.
  • April presents the roadkill rabbit-foot charm and Andy calls her creepy as a compliment.
  • In the personality exam, Andy says he would hand a high schooler his service revolver to fulfill a dream.
  • Asked how to handle pulling over his own father, Andy detours into asking where his catcher's mitt is.
  • His answers are earnest and completely disqualifying, played for warmth not stupidity.

Color Host notes

  • Andy's arc is the emotional B-plot, a lovable innocent chasing a dream he is temperamentally wrong for.
  • April's macabre affection is her signature love language, devotion disguised as deadpan menace.
  • The test scenarios function as character X-rays, each answer exposes Andy's childlike goodness.
  • Setting up the results now lets the payoff land quietly at the gala rather than in a big scene.
Scene 6

Destroy The Town To Save The Park

Pawnee Command Center

Scene Summary

  • The locked-in team races the drill as Ben, Ann, Chris, and others fight gala fires by phone.
  • Chris is declared infected, then killed off, embracing the scenario with therapy-fueled calm.
  • Leslie discovers Jamm rigged the drill specifically to sabotage the gala.
  • She retaliates by deliberately failing the drill as fast and catastrophically as possible.

Recap Girl play-by-play

  • The team runs the avian flu scenario from Leslie's Mission Im-Pawnee-able binder and watches a fake news DVD.
  • Jamm's sabotage surfaces, no one shut down transit, so Chris rides the bus and infects thirty-nine people.
  • Leonard lets slip the drill will run six to eight more hours and that Councilman Jamm requested this exact day.
  • Leslie announces the game is rigged, they have been jammed, and vows to destroy the whole town to save the park.
  • She orders the vaccine flushed, CPR performed on infected birds, and escalates to a tornado-quake.
  • Leonard finally wraps the drill, everyone in Pawnee is dead including Jamm, and gives another failing grade.

Color Host notes

  • The rigged-drill reveal converts a bureaucratic obstacle into a personal duel between Leslie and Jamm.
  • Chris cheerfully narrating his own diarrhea-and-death is peak absurdist commitment to a bit.
  • Leslie sabotaging the drill on purpose is a satisfying character move, her competence weaponized as scorched earth.
  • The escalating disasters, flu to tornado-quake, are joke-density comedy, each order more gleefully unhinged.
Scene 7

Ron Swanson On Pawnee Today

Pawnee Today TV Studio

Scene Summary

  • With Leslie trapped, Ron volunteers to promote the gala on live television.
  • Host Joan Callamezzo is too hungover to broadcast, so Ron takes over the show.
  • Ron fields call-in questions with blunt Swanson wisdom while plugging the event.
  • Tom separately salvages the food by turning Paunch Burger's rivals into donors.

Recap Girl play-by-play

  • Ron argues he can speak in full sentences and will not cry, and heads to sub for Leslie.
  • Joan slurs through a booze-cruise hangover she blames on allergies and cuts her own show short.
  • Ron introduces the black-tie gala on air, promising only that it will be enjoyable.
  • Ron answers callers with tips on masking table scratches with a walnut and denouncing banks as Ponzi schemes.
  • He dispenses his hangover cure, flank steak in salted butter and wet socks, and lists his interests.
  • Tom reveals his Haverford genius, getting rival fast-food chains to donate food against Paunch Burger.

Color Host notes

  • Ron on live TV is a fish-out-of-water showcase, his libertarian minimalism weaponized into deadpan gold.
  • Joan's hangover is recurring-character comedy, Pawnee's media figures are always slightly disreputable.
  • Ron's call-in answers are pure character monologue, philosophy delivered as unsolicited hardware advice.
  • Tom's competitor-donation play shows the ensemble each rescuing the gala through their own signature skill.
Scene 8

Ghost Jammed And The Rescue

Parks Office / Pawnee Commons Lot

Scene Summary

  • The freed Leslie despairs that she destroyed the town for nothing with the gala seemingly doomed.
  • The team reveals they secretly pulled the entire gala together while she was locked away.
  • Jamm gloats but is out-taunted in a ghost-themed exchange, then loses when funding lands.
  • The episode resolves the A-plot triumphantly against the deadline.

Recap Girl play-by-play

  • Jamm needles Leslie that the lot is his, and the two trade I-am-a-ghost taunts ending in Ghost jammed.
  • Leslie assumes the gala is ruined and prepares to postpone with the deadline one day away.
  • The team reveals the food, publicity, and setup are all handled, Tom's donors, Ron's TV hit, triage drink tickets.
  • Leslie is stunned and grateful that her friends built the whole event without her.
  • Ann quietly notes Andy aced the written test with a perfect score but failed the personality exam.
  • The gala opens with Leslie moved by what the team pulled off.

Color Host notes

  • The reveal rewards the ensemble, the show's thesis that Leslie's people carry her when she cannot.
  • Ghost jammed caps the Leslie-Jamm rivalry with a childish flourish that fits both characters.
  • Andy's failure is delivered as a soft gut-punch, comedy structure making room for genuine disappointment.
  • The postpone-then-surprise structure is classic sitcom, despair immediately overturned by off-screen teamwork.
Scene 9

No One Achieves Anything Alone

Pawnee Commons Gala

Scene Summary

  • The gala succeeds and Leslie announces the fundraising goal has been reached, securing the park.
  • Chris quietly gives Andy hope for a retest, and Andy demonstrates his police wrist lock.
  • Leslie thanks her friends, crediting the community for the win, and Mouse Rat performs.
  • Ben and Leslie decide to get married that very night.

Recap Girl play-by-play

  • Leslie announces they hit the fundraising goal and every dollar goes back into the park.
  • She thanks her community and delivers the thesis line that no one achieves anything alone, then introduces Mouse Rat.
  • Chris tells Andy the truth about Jamm rigging the drill and floats a re-do in a month.
  • Andy eagerly shows off his official police wrist lock, insisting no one can hit him.
  • Ben confesses he hates not being married to Leslie and cannot wait three more months.
  • They resolve to marry tonight since the whole town, food, and entertainment are already gathered.

Color Host notes

  • The thank-you speech states the series' emotional core out loud, friendship as civic infrastructure.
  • Chris giving Andy a path back keeps the B-plot hopeful rather than a flat loss.
  • Springing the wedding at the fundraiser braids the two plots into one payoff, the season-defining move.
  • Ending on the spontaneous wedding decision converts a bottle-episode farce into a milestone for the couple.
Scene 10

Channel 4 Signs Off

Channel 4 News Set

Scene Summary

  • A short comedic tag features the local news reporting a fresh disaster.
  • The joke calls back to the drill scenarios that dominated the episode.
  • Absurd anchor and reporter names deliver the final gag.
  • The button closes the episode on Pawnee's running media incompetence.

Recap Girl play-by-play

  • An anchor reports breaking news that a devastating earthquake has hit Pawnee.
  • The desk throws to reporter Winnifred Makepiece live at the Pawnee Weather Center.
  • Geologist Isabella Winchester confirms the quake registered 8.5 on the Richter scale.
  • The reporters redundantly agree it was a large one, that's correct.
  • Anchor Jessica Rabrit signs off wishing everyone a good evening and to be safe out there.
  • The tag lands entirely on the gag of an actual disaster and the silly names.

Color Host notes

  • The tag is a detached comedic button, a standalone gag unattached to the plot resolution.
  • The escalating fake-news bits pay off the drill's disaster theme one final time.
  • Punny character names, Makepiece and Rabrit, are the show's signature background-detail humor.
  • Reporting a real earthquake right after a drill about disasters is a dry ironic capstone.

Verbatim lines

I can speak in full sentences, and I won't cry. I did cry last time.
After I've had too much whiskey, I cook myself a large flank steak, pan-fried in salted butter. I eat that, put on a pair of wet socks, and go to sleep.
Any dog under 50 pounds is a cat, and cats are pointless.
In order to save our park, we have to destroy the entire town.
It's a lesson that I have learned over and over again, but it bears repeating. No one achieves anything alone.
Banks are Ponzi schemes run by morons. Your house isn't haunted. You're lonely.
Named in this episode
Herbie: Fully LoadedThe Bridge on the River KwaiPattonMad Max Beyond ThunderdomeMission: ImpossibleMouse RatJohnny CashThe Grapes of Wrath
Sources: Parks Wiki · transcript saved locally (tv-scripts corpus) · trope/callback data from the Parks trope index
Parks trope index Format reference