A Parks and Recreation Special reunites the stars of Parks and Rec over video chat during the coronavirus crisis, sparking hopes another workplace comedy, The Office, can make its own one-night-only comeback. The half-hour Parks and Recreation special — reuniting series stars Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman, Chris Pratt, Aubrey Plaza, Rashida Jones, Aziz Ansari, Adam Scott, Rob Lowe, Retta, and Jim O'Heir, alongside other familiar faces from Pawnee, Indiana — is canon and comes five years after Parks and Recreation aired its series finale after seven seasons, bringing the quarantined cast together to fundraise for Feeding America while addressing, but not trivializing, COVID-19.
Mike Schur, who co-created Parks and Recreation with The Office developer and executive producer Greg Daniels, told press Leslie Knope and the gang were brought back together only for the "compelling reason" to benefit charity during a global pandemic.
A full series revival or reboot is unlikely — on a conference call with press, Schur said he would "never say never" — but when NBC asked Schur to reunite the Parks and Rec cast for a remotely-filmed table read of a previous episode, the stars quickly agreed. That's when Schur decided to instead script new material revealing how the Parks and Rec characters are coping with the pandemic and navigating their daily lives.
"If you get all 10 of these performers together, even virtually, you should do something new," Schur, also a writer-producer on The Office, said on the call.
The original version of The Office created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant aired a two-part Christmas special to bring the series to a close in place of a full third season. 10 years later, in 2013, Gervais reprised his role as David Brent in The Office Revisited, a Comic Relief special aired during Red Nose Day.
As one Twitter user suggested, charity could once again bring together the past and present employees of Dunder Mifflin, now working from home during the pandemic, for the first episode of The Office since its series finale in 2013.
The U.S. version of The Office hasn't lost step in popularity since going off-air and remains Netflix's most-watched acquired content during the pandemic. Like the fan-favorite Parks and Recreation, a virtual reunion of The Office would answer fan calls for a catch-up special that has seen support from star John Krasinski, who played Jim Halpert across all nine seasons of the show.
When ComicBook.com asked about an Office revival in a March interview, Daniels said he hasn't discussed the idea with Peacock, NBCUniversal's upcoming streaming service planned to launch this summer. The streamer once declared hopes for a potential reboot once The Office leaves Netflix at the start of 2021.
"I think that the talk really came up when [NBC] did Will and Grace. They rebooted that show," Daniels said. "But I don't think that we would either be able to get all the cast together, because a lot of them are doing different things, or whether we'd really need to do that, because I feel like we had our finale."
Like A Parks and Recreation Special, a potential remote reunion of The Office could be produced even as the film and television industry remains at a standstill. Actors are provided with the necessary equipment — rigs, tripods, lights, microphones, and iPhones — allowing performers to film themselves while creative teams supervise on Zoom.
Daniels is unsure if fans really want The Office restarted — "Sometimes, it seems like people want something, but I don't know if they really do want it, or just means that they really liked the original," he told ComicBook.com — but social media is growing with calls for a one-off episode special: