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Watercooler: Parks and Recreations' Great Scott

Can we have a huge round of applause for Adam Scott? Last night, the Party Down vet absolutely stole the show on Parks and Recreation as his Ben Wyatt came face to face with the shame of bankrupting his hometown back when he was a kid. Damn you, Ice Town! For those not in the loop, a little background: After being elected Partridge, Minnesota's mayor at the tender age of...

Damian Holbrook

Can we have a huge round of applause for Adam Scott?

Last night, the Party Down vet absolutely stole the show on Parks and Recreation as his Ben Wyatt came face to face with the shame of bankrupting his hometown back when he was a kid. Damn you, Ice Town!

For those not in the loop, a little background: After being elected Partridge, Minnesota's mayor at the tender age of 18, Pawnee's socially challenged budget advisor championed a skating rink that sent the town into a financial death spiral. "Ice Town Costs Ice Clown His Crown" read the headlines, and the slip-up has been causing poor Ben nothing but grief ever since.

But for P&R viewers last night, it was a cause for celebration. Because once news of Ben's monumental bungle broke during the Parks department's Harvest Festival promotional tour, we didn't just get goofy jabs at the lameness of local media (like radio joke-offs "Ira & the Douche") hungry to jump on the Ben-bashing bandwagon, we got a blazing showcase for the frantic-awkward freakiness Scott seems to have been waiting to unleash.

Bouncing from self-righteous to shamed man-child to seriously disturbed — even prompting Leslie to remark on Ben's "psychotic" look after one priceless on-air meltdown — Scott was a machine of mania, a dork gone wild, who gave the rapidly unraveling Ben just the right amount of crazy while completely cracking us up. No wonder the equally offbeat Leslie is such a smitten kitten.

How about you? Was Scott great or what?

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