From the “Archives”: How the writing staff of “Parks and Rec” (and their friends) ended up watching “Breaking Bad” in my apartment

{Tonight is the series finale of “Parks and Recreation” on NBC. I thought it would be fun to revisit the time the writing staff came over to my apartment to watch “Breaking Bad.” This post is from my previous blog, Another Rainy Saturday on September 6, 2013. That blog, is unfortunately, lost in the vast ether that is cyberspace and doesn’t exist any longer. I found this from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, and made a few small edits.}

My very favorite part of Bumbershoot last weekend was the panel for the writers of “Parks and Recreation.” That was even before much of the panel (and some of their friends) inexplicably ended up in my apartment to watch “Breaking Bad” Sunday night. I still have trouble believing it happened.

I confess I’m not the most loyal viewer of “Parks and Rec” as the algorithm for my Netflix queue is trained to de-prioritize all shows featuring Aziz Ansari. But the panel was fantastic. It included writers Alan Yang (who I recognized from the amazing — and missed — sports blog “Fire Joe Morgan”), Dave King (who was also part of FJM), Aisha Muharrar, Joe Mande, Matt Murray, and my very favorite person to follow on Twitter, Megan Amram.

Not only is Megan Amram hilarious, but there has been more than a few times where the jokes she’s tweeted have provided some comic relief in the middle of some petty arguments I’ve seen among the music writers I follow. I learn a ton from the critics I follow, but there are some moments where I see an argument about selling out or authenticity or arguing about Robin Thicke lyrics and I want to throw my phone out the window, and possibly myself with it. So I’ve come to appreciate the comedy writer who can make me laugh in the middle of that frustration. And she does that more often than anyone else I follow.

Here are some of the reasons why I think she’s the funniest person on Twitter:

Back to the panel. It was great, like I said. Everyone laughed out loud in the room when someone said that they didn’t want to give away any spoilers but “murder/suicide” would be how they dealt with Rashida Jones and Rob Lowe leaving the show in the upcoming season that premieres later this month. The petty jostling between Muharrar and King was done playfully and not maliciously — and often very funny. Another point, someone on the panel asked the audience if one of them could invite them over to watch “Breaking Bad” because there was a new episode over and their hotel didn’t offer AMC.

Afterward, I stuck around long enough to buy a copy of the “Parks and Rec” book that the University Bookstore was selling in the lobby of the Leo K. Theater. All the writers signed it and I got to chat with Alan Yang a little bit about Fire Joe Morgan and everyone was very nice. I was sort of starstruck when I met Megan Amram, who was super-nice and funny. When I told her how I thought she was the funniest person on Twitter, she said something about how it was nice that all of her peers could hear me saying that.

After that, I met up with my friend Amie from Three Imaginary Girls to try some Siracha-drenched french fries and then we met up with Royal Stuart (also covering Bumbershoot for ARS) to watch The Breeders. They were okay, I suppose, and don’t have much to say about that. Then I went home, somewhere around 9:00pm, satisfied after a full day of Bumbershoot, knowing that many of my friends would be seeing Death Cab for Cutie in Key Arena as they played through their Transatlanticism album.

When I got home, my girlfriend (who went to Bumbershoot the day before to see Heart, but stayed home Sunday and Monday) was telling me that she was in the middle of washing laundry after getting a late start earlier in the day. I helped with putting some clothes away and told her that I was hoping to get to sleep sometime around 11.

Very shortly after saying that, I checked Twitter and saw that the writers still hadn’t found a place to watch “Breaking Bad,” and thought I would invite them over since I live just two blocks from Seattle Center. (Conveniently, the close proximity to Bumbershoot was one of the reasons why I moved into this apartment in late May.) My girlfriend, bless her, reacted exactly as one would expect when you tell them that you’re going to invite a bunch of strangers over to my 650 square foot, 1 bedroom apartment late at night to watch a TV show while they are already in their pajamas. In other words, she asked me, “What in the fuck is wrong with you?” Besides, we hadn’t started watching “Breaking Bad” yet and already missed the 9 pm showing (fortunately, it aired again at 11:35).

But I didn’t expect anyone to come over, as they had already gotten a bunch of other offers from other Seattleites who probably had larger and nicer homes than I did. I pleaded with my girlfriend Stacy that they probably wouldn’t even come, but that I was just going to extend the offer because it would be amazing if they did, and there were only six people on the panel and I didn’t think they’d all show up, so it would only be like 3–4 people. A few communications back-and-forth between Megan Amram, Joe Mande, and myself over Twitter made me think this could actually happen.

It played out sort of like this:

After Joe Mande sent me a tweet asking if it was okay if they came over around 11 pm, I said that was fine and then sent him a direct message with my address and phone number. I started getting tweets from people I didn’t know asking if they could come over.

And some from my friends:

We started cleaning up the apartment as quickly as we could, including throwing stuff in closets just to get it out of the way. Neither of us were sure, though, that they would still be coming over as we hadn’t gotten any confirmation either way and about 90 minutes lapsed since Joe Mande asked if coming over after 11 was still okay. I figured that it was certainly possible they could have gotten another invitation from someone with Bumbershoot, which would have been fine.

It wasn’t until about 11:15 that Megan Amram called me and asked if my offer still stood and I said of course, but warned her my apartment wasn’t huge. She said they’d be joined in with a few friends — nine people total. I told her we would make it work, though my girlfriend may end up killing me. Luckily, Stacy didn’t kill me, but it would’ve made a good memory to go out on. I assured her that they wouldn’t stay over at all hours of the night and that they would be good guests for the sake of our neighbors. She warmed up to the idea and really had a lot of fun meeting everyone and having them over (she just wished that I would have told her before that Morgan Murphy is a writer on “2 Broke Girls,” one of her favorite sitcoms — which I didn’t realize until after reading her biography the next day).

We started recording the 11:35 “Breaking Bad” and about 11:45, she called me again and said they were outside of my building. The group included five of the writers from “Parks and Rec”: Megan Amram, Joe Mande, Alan Yang, Aisha Muharrar, and Matt Murray, plus their comedian friends Emily Heller, Morgan Murphy, and Jerrod Carmichael.

They brought a bunch of snacks and drinks (including a bunch of 4Loko) that they had picked up at a nearby quick stop — some left behind — and Megan brought us some sleep aides, knowing that we were going to be up late(r).

During the first commercial break, I remember Jerrod Carmichael, who hadn’t watching “Breaking Bad” before, exclaim, “I don’t know what in the hell is going on, but I’m in!” It was pretty intense.

Everyone made excellent guests and it was a fun night — and a once in a lifetime event that I’ll always remember. They were all super-nice and really funny. I don’t remember everything that was said between commercials, but during the show, you could have heard a pin drop. Everyone was glued to the TV.

After “Breaking Bad” wrapped up, we took this photo on Morgan Murphy’s iPhone (who put the photo on Instagram):

I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the jealousy from my friends almost as much as I enjoyed having all of these super-nice and super-funny people over the night before:

The next morning, I was up earlier than I usually wake up on weekends, still buzzing from the night. I headed back to Bumbershoot early, ostensibly to get in the line to get the fast-moving tickets to see Patton Oswalt.

While in the press room talking to Bumbershoot’s wonderful press intern Julia, she notices this tweet (which has since been deleted, but that isn’t uncommon for comedians who want their Twitter feed to only be comprised of jokes):

(All that remains is my manual retweet.)

Before the euphoria from that tweet wore off, I ran into my friend Dave, who had to remind me how sarcastic she can be on Twitter. My girlfriend loves that Megan accepted her friend request on Facebook, but I was told she had too many when I sent her one.

I spent all day at Bumbershoot only watching comedy shows, glad that I was able to catch sets from two of the aforementioned guests (Joe Mande and Emily Heller, who was one of the comedians on Patton Oswalt’s show). Jerrod Carmichael’s show with Todd Barry overlapped with Oswalt’s, or I would have gone to see him, too.

Now I’m anxious to see how Bumbershoot 2014 will compete with this memory. I think my friend Nikki said it best: