Pilot (Parks and Recreation)

"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 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.

"Pilot" received generally mixed reviews, although Poehler herself was widely praised by most television critics. According to Nielsen Media Research, "Pilot" was watched by 6.77 million households in its original airing. Although it received lower ratings than the two Office episodes it aired between, television critics pointed out it achieved an identical rating to the NBC show 30 Rock, which was broadcast the same night. The pilot, along with the rest of the first season of Parks and Recreation, was released on DVD in the United States on September 8, 2009.