House of Burgess

I was reading some wire stories this morning and I stumbled across this otherwise innocuous story about a new television starring Amy Poehler. See if you can guess why my heart skipped a beat as I read through the description:

Amy Poehler and Greg Daniels Talk About New Series And no, it still doesn't have a name. by Matt Fowler January 15, 2009 - The new show, which was once thought to be an Office spin-off, starring Amy Poehler and Rashida Jones is now starting to take shape. There's a script for the pilot and we can now take a look at the story of this new single-camera mockumentary project from Executive Producer Greg Daniels. The show will be centering on the minutia and the mundane bureaucracy of local government, like those boring town hall meetings you might see on local cable TV access channels. Poehler will play Leslie Knope, a mid-level bureaucrat in the Parks and Recreation Department of Pawnee, Indiana. She has aspirations, probably delusions, of getting promoted up through government. She's a more likeable character than say…The Office's Michael Scott (Steve Carell). Leslie is a big reader…Michael Scott is not a big reader," remarked Daniels at the recent TCA press tour. It was said that Leslie will not be as dumb or unintentionally mean as Michael, but, as Poehler stated, it will be "easy to humiliate her." "She wants to run with the big boys, so you've got to take the hits," Poehler added. Leslie's goal is to help get all the permits and paperwork passed to build up a new playground in her hometown, and she's got dreams of her success leading into an eventual promotion for her. "She's an opportunist and very ambitious. She's struggling to find herself in a 'man's world,'" said Poehler. "She looks to a lot of women in politics for inspiration. She looks to them as her heroes." The central joke here is that it takes an unbelievably, and comically, long time to get anything done on a local level, when it comes to government. Daniels told the story of a Claremont, California bureaucrat finally cutting the ribbon on a park that had taken eighteen years to get built for that town. Poehler's character mistakenly thinks that her playground project might take as long as…three whole months. And that that would even be a long time for her. Little does she know… Rashida Jones (The Office) and Aziz Ansari (Human Giant) are also along for the ride in this show, which may at one point actually been considered as an Office spin-off. Daniels stated "There is an idea for a spin-off with other Office characters, but once Amy came on board, we set that aside." There still are talks of actual Office characters getting their own show however. "I am talking to people about it," said Daniels. "Steven Merchant came back and directed an episode this season and he and I were talking about it." When asked if this show was meant to be a commentary on the "last eight years," Executive Producer Michael Schur said that the show was "not about politics as much as it is about government. We didn't have an axe to grind here." Schur added "It's not about a specific party or a specific agenda. Poehler herself expressed her excitement in being able to play a single character for a while on TV. She expressed that the chance to "get invested in someone very specific and who is very real is great." "I was excited about the idea of being able to turn down the volume and sit with a character for a while."

So apprently someone has taken my beat (local government involving California and Indiana) and turned into a T.V. show. And since it's by the creators of "The Office" (which I really enjoy) and stars one of my favorite female comedians I have to say I'm speechless. I absolutely cannot wait until this show comes out. I feel like someone's been following me around while I cover my beat and then made an awesome mockumentary television show about it. Wow.