10 essential Parks and Rec episodes to watch when you’re missing Pawnee

Season 4, Episode 4: Bus Tour

During the fourth season of Parks and Rec, there are plenty of ridiculous moments as Leslie runs against Bobby Newport for city council. The ease with which the inexperienced Newport gains support throughout Pawnee is meant to be comical, but it’s a glaringly accurate representation of how many political campaigns go—particularly when a woman is running.

Leslie receives more than enough backlash from Newport’s supporters, and during “Bus Tour,” she’s even hit in the face with a pie on the campaign trail. It turns out the pie was actually intended for Ben, but that doesn’t stop the Parks and Rec crew from spending the entire episode attempting to find the person who threw it.

Of course, there’s only one man to lead the case: Andy’s recurring alter ego, Burt Macklin. Andy’s first shown pretending to be an FBI agent during season two, but at this point in the show, he’s a pro at taking on the role of Burt Macklin—and at botching basically every “case” that’s thrown at him. Watching Burt Macklin try to solve the pie case makes for one of the more amusing episodes of the show, and it’s only made more comical by the fact that he spends most of the investigation repeating the incident with Jerry.

And although Jerry is used to his coworkers making a fool of him, he doesn’t take pie after pie to the face in vain. Andy does eventually solve the mystery, though not in time to stop Ben from being hit in the face with one. As it turns out, the pie-thrower is someone Ben fired. And while Ben might not have necessarily deserved the revenge, it’s hard not to laugh at seeing him covered in pie.