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Come and check out the Early access edited reaction: Parks and Recreation 4x17 Campaign Shake-up - Available on the drive now!

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13nuLJc9B6zB7p0a8kzgZfSPyHkiyp-nQ/view?usp=sharing

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Eric Johnson

One of the many strengths of this show is its incredible roster of minor characters. The writers have built such a great stable of recurring players at this point that they can always find exactly the right option to fill a small but crucial role in an episode. In this one, for instance, Jen Barkley is doing such a great job tearing Leslie apart on her own that she doesn't need help from anyone in the media - so the media member featured is the lovably dense Perd Hapley, who is actual, literal gold every time he is on screen. In this episode alone, we find out that his full name is Perdrick L. Hapley, and he delivers the following lines, all in his characteristic, unbelievably stilted delivery: "Issue number one is the first issue we're going to talk about." "That's a hilarious image! A foot, in a mouth!" "Let's begin this show by starting it." (There she goes again, Perd.) "I don't know where she went the first time." And there are probably a dozen more characters who can do the same thing - Jean Ralphio, Sewage Joe, Joan Callamezzo, Kyle (the frequent shoe-shine customer), April's creepy friend Oren, Councilman Dexhart (the walking sex scandal), any of half a dozen people who always speak up at the community forums, and so on. The rest of the episode was great too, obviously. There needed to be someone in the campaign plot to provide an actual challenge for Leslie and Ben, and now there is; the Parks Department needed to deal with Leslie's absence, and now they have. It would be a rock-solid outing without Perd there at all - but he's there anyway, and his presence gives it the extra push that Parks earns so often because the writers have invested so much in the town as a whole.