Mike Schur, the creator of “Parks and Recreation” and “The Good Place,” is like a kid on a Halloween sugar high. It’s the morning after the Dodgers won the World Series, and Schur — a baseball enthusiast with undying loyalty to the Boston Red Sox — is detailing the team’s extraordinary comeback in the fifth inning of Game 5 against the New York Yankees as a curious Ted Danson listens intently. “I’m not proud of this, I don’t feel good about myself when I say things like this, but it is a part of who I am: I wanted to see sad Yankee fans,” Schur says after his mirthful recap.
“I lived in New York for seven years, and in those seven years, the Yankees won the World Series four times. And I was miserable the whole time. That really just hardened my soul.
My soul in this area is black and tarred over. I have no empathy. It’s the only place in my life where I feel really dark and evil.
” “I was watching ‘The Great British Bake Off,’” Danson deadpans. “Did you feel the same way about whoever won or lost?” Schur asks. “No,” Danson says.
“But I felt that way about the Celtics during the Magic [Johnson] era.” The power of human connection, from the camaraderie among amateur home bakers to the euphoria of sports fans supporting their team, is not just part of Schur and Danson’s repartee. It’s also a central pillar of the pair’s edifying new sitcom.
Four years after concluding their work together on NBC’s “ The Good Place ,” a.