Read This Oral History of Parks and Recreation

• Courtesy NBC

Tonight is the night that Parks and Recreation shuts their doors for good (NBC, 10 pm), so what better time to read an oral history of the show that started out as a sorta weakish knockoff of The Office, and turned out to be one of the more earnest and creative sitcoms on television. In this oral history put together by Uproxx, they interview some of the people who were instrumental in creating the show—so be prepared to learn a lot! For example, here’s co-creator and executive producer Greg Daniels on how the character of Ron Swanson came about…

Ron Swanson was supposed to be the foil to Leslie. Leslie is the most optimistic and energetic person. So Ron’s her boss and he’s the most obstructionist and anti-government person. We thought, wouldn’t it be funny if he were a libertarian and actually doesn’t believe in government? When we were doing our research and going to government meeting places, we went to Burbank to the city planner’s office to research what that was like. There was a woman in that office, and I said, “I want to try this character out on you, tell me if it’s at all believable. It’s a person who’s in the parks department, but he’s a libertarian. He doesn’t believe in the mission of having a parks department.” She laughed and said, “Yeah, I’m a libertarian, and I don’t actually think we should have a city planning department.”

There’s so much more and you can read it all here.