Parks and Recreation's Leslie Knope Tyler Golden, NBC/AP
Television’s most enthusiastic local government employee got a taste of of what she enthusiastically dubbed the "sweet sugar of bureaucracy," federal-style, during Thursday night's premiere of NBC's Parks and Recreation.
Along with several lawmakers, including Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and John McCain, R- Ariz., the Interior Department made a guest appearance.
In the episode, Leslie, a newly elected city councilwoman in Pawnee, Ind., seeks to present an application for for federal funding to clean up Pawnee’s local river. But when she arrives at Interior's headquarters to meet with a federal official, she’s told he’ll be unavailable for the rest of the week. Instead Knope is forced to add her application to a huge stack of others.
Perhaps next week Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior, will stop by Pawnee in next week’s episode to make amends.
In the meantime, here are some federal highlights from the episode:
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