'Parks and Recreation' Season 4, Episode 19 Recap - 'Live Ammo'

It's back! Thursday nights just weren't the same without "Parks and Recreation," and it's great to have the show back where it belongs.

We're right back into the thick of the campaign season, and Leslie is still shooting herself in the foot, unfortunately. She dogs the current city councilman about not cutting the Parks Department's funding, but that ends up causing funding for the local animal shelter to be cut. And of course, with Bobby Newport's new campaign manager, that gets spun into Leslie being a pet murderer.

Leslie's solution is to adopt every single animal in the shelter and bring them home, later assigning April to putting together a pet adoption drive. April is surprisingly enthusiastic about it and puts and even more surprising amount of effort into it, only to see it fail. Tom gives her a pick-me-up, though, telling her that the job is mostly frustrating, but you can change a few lives here and there.

With that plan failed, Leslie and Ben find some spots in the budget to cut, but that means Ann getting fired, so that's out. Eventually, they come up with a final plan: have Bobby pay to keep the shelter alive, which will unfortunately make him look great. But as they note, Bobby will have to do a debate soon, and that will almost certainly go Leslie's way. Will we see Paul Rudd next week? Let's hope so!

Meanwhile, Chris takes Ron to a meditation class to test his adaptability before giving him the assistant city manager job. Ron doesn't get much out of the meditation (but he does do it flawlessly, except he's standing for the entire six hours), but he does convince Chris. However, if Bobby wins the race, Chris probably won't have his job anymore. The upside? He would then be able to date Ann.

A simple episode, one that seems to just get us back into the swing of things and prime us for what's to come. Things should get good starting next week.

Notes & Quotes:

- "Hey honey good morning, how did you sleep I adopted 32 cats and dogs."

- "Whaaat? This cat was in 'Boogie Nights?'"

- "There's a hot spinning cone of meat in that Greek restaurant next door. I don't know what it is, but I want to eat all of it."