This Was the Worst ‘Parks and Recreation’ Cameo

Even now, the Parks and Recreation decision to bring Republican lawmaker Newt Gingrich on for a cameo remains baffling. It was an entirely unnecessary, stiff,  and unfunny addition to an otherwise great episode. 

The premise was simple enough: In Season 5, Episode 10, the men from the Parks and Rec gather to celebrate Ron Swanson’s (Nick Offerman) bachelor party at the infamous and swanky restaurant called St. Elmo’s Steakhouse. In a classic Garry Gergich (Jim O’Heir) moment, he accidentally snags the wrong table—he and Tom (Aziz Ansari) sat down at a reservation for Newt Gingrich, not Garry Gergich (who at this point is being called Jerry in the show). 

“Excuse me sir this is not your table,” a waiter haughtily said to Garry and Tom. 

“Well I thought you said the Gergich party,” Garry replied. 

“No no,  I said the Gingrich party,” the waiter tersely responded. 

“Oh my gosh I'm so sorry,” Garry said.

“Damn it, Jerry,” Tom snapped. 

Enter Gingrich and his wife. Garry tried to make conversation, in typical polite midwestern fashion: “Gingrich, Gergich. I wonder if we're related?”

“I don't think so Jerry,” Gingrich responded, stiffly. 

It was a weird, anticlimactic moment. Unnecessary without much of a pay off—in the millions of ways that Garry gets humiliated on the show, this fails to be funny or even particularly clever. Even at that time in the series, when Parks and Rec was taking a very bipartisan approach to its guest stars, (John McCain, Joe Biden, and Michelle Obama would also appear in the show) Gingrich wasn't popular politcally or otherwise. The episode aired in January 2013, at which point Gingrich had just lost his presidential bid and was basically a full time media personality. Unlike the other big names who came on the show, this felt entirely random. 

Jim O’Heir, later discussing the cameo, said the entire incident made him nauseous—and that it came about in a totally unplanned way. 

Entertainment Weekly reported that O’Heir wrote in his memoir Welcome to Pawnee: Stories of Friendship, Waffles, and Parks and Recreation that he didn’t know the cameo was happening. "Unfortunately, not everything about that St. Elmo’s episode was worth remembering, like the unexpected appearance of Newt Gingrich," O’Heir recalled. 

O’Heir didn’t even know if Gingrich’s presence on set that day was planned or “just a coincidence," adding as an aside: "(I think most politicians have never met a camera they didn’t like.)” 

“Either way, he was on set and Mike Schur decided to throw a cameo appearance his way,” O’Heir wrote of the Parks and Rec showrunner. “I have to be honest, I wasn’t thrilled, since I’m not a fan of Newt or his politics, but I trusted Mike and knew he was always thinking about what's best for the show."

For O’Heir, Gingrich didn’t really represent the true spirit of the show. “I still didn’t like it,” he continued. “My problem with Newt’s appearance on the show was that nothing about his personality or politics reflected the communal—dare I say, democratic—spirit of Parks. Everything about him seemed to suggest it's his way or the highway."

It certainly never stood out as a memorable or particularly funny moment in the show—luckily the entire scene lasted less than 10 seconds, just a moment in our long history of having to tolerate Newt Gingrich.