Chris Pratt thought Parks And Recreation needed to lay off the Jerry jokes a bit

Parks And Recreation is perhaps best remembered for its heart. The comedy spent seven seasons following a group of city hall workers in the fictional Pawnee, Indiana and saw them form a makeshift family as they worked together and did their best to improve their community. But pretty much everyone in that office was usually extremely mean to Jerry (Jim O’Heir) for no other reason than habit and he was an easy target. While this is certainly a dynamic that can and does happen in an office setting, it can be rather at-odds with the rest of the show’s messaging. 

This fact is not lost on cast member Chris Pratt, who spoke with O’Heir for the latter’s book Welcome to Pawnee: Stories of Friendship, Waffles, and Parks and Recreation. “I remember you, particularly more than some others, being worried about some of the Jerry bits being… mean,” O’Heir recalls in the book (via Entertainment Weekly). “I remember you saying, ‘Jimmy, you okay with these?’… Do you remember that feeling at all?” 

Pratt confirmed that he did, and explained, “I was concerned in some of those moments because I care about you and I love you, and I knew that there were some jokes that were, like, mean. But meaner than they were funny. If it’s a joke, it’s funny. But if it’s mean for the sake of being mean, well, I’m not a huge fan of mean-spirited humor, and I just wanted to check in on you.” Pratt recalls at least one concrete example where he put his “foot down.” “There was that time you use the printer and it says something like, ‘Jerry sucks’ on a piece of paper, and I just said, ‘I don’t think that’s funny. I don’t know about it,’” he tells O’Heir. “For the most part, I rolled with it, but there were a couple times where I think it went too far and I was concerned for you.” For his part, O’Heir recalls series lead Amy Poehler also checking in on him at some of the more pointed jabs at his character. “[I]t’s not like I expected everyone to check in on me,” he writes, “but the fact that you did was so special.”