The Reason Paul Schneider Left Parks And Rec After Season 2
We all remember Parks and Recreation season 2: Leslie was trying to fix the pit. Andy and April began their triumphant weirdo love story. Chris Traeger and Ben Wyatt joined the merry band of civil servants. But do you remember Mark Brendanawicz?Paul Schneider played Mark, the Pawnee, Indiana city planner who was a relatively central character on Parks and Recreation's first season and who had a scrapped romance subplot with Amy Poehler's Leslie Knope. In the second season, Mark's purpose began to flounder despite a second, and ultimately crumbled, romance with Rashida Jones' Ann Perkins. During the Parks and Rec season 2 finale, Mark announced he was leaving city government for a job with a private-sector construction company...
...which earned him a new nickname from Leslie, "Mark Brendanaquits”, and he was never heard from again. Chris and Ben's entrance into Parks and Recreation as guest characters on season 2 proved to be the perfect gift in disguise to slip Mark's departure past everyone with few questions asked.
Looking back, there are some mysteries left unsolved. Why have Mark leave at all, and why did Paul Schneider exit Parks and Recreation and never return?
In short, Paul Schneider left Parks and Recreation because he felt sidelined. Several years after the fact, the actor opened up about his Parks departure in an interview with Screen Crush, revealing that he felt he'd been at a creative crossroads with the series' writers after Mark's character was altered from the first season. The early episodes of Parks and Rec are rougher and feature more tension and disdain between the characters, just like its predecessor, The Office. Mark Brendanawicz's character is a relic of that previous style, and he was reportedly an even less likable character in earlier versions of Parks and Recreation. A shift in emotional perspective came about as the series continued on, and while it worked out well for many principal characters, it didn't for Mark. Keep watching the video to see the reason Paul Schneider left Parks and Rec after season 2.
I vaguely remember him from the beginning, but mostly I remember Leslie continually badmouthing Mark Brendanawicz in later seasons. It seemed relatively obvious to me that he would leave given his minimal interaction on the show from the beginning of the series to the end of the first season. These sorts of situations are never fun for the agents/managers, particularly if the writing staff and producers aren’t sure what they’re doing or where the show is going.
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