- Ben: Well, effective tomorrow morning, the entire government will be shut down until further notice.
(Beat while Ron begins to grin maniacally)
Leslie: I'm sorry, I just started hearing really loud circus music in my head, what did you say?
Leslie is excited to present the Parks Department budget proposal, aka the "master plan". However, city manager Paul announces that due to Pawnee's huge budget deficit, all proposals will be postponed indefinitely and state auditors have been sent by the governor to solve the problem, which makes Leslie fear severe cuts. Ron is delighted because he hates any government spending, which leads him to heated arguments with Leslie.
Meanwhile, April is turning 21 and is having her birthday party at Tom's favorite nightclub, the Snakehole Lounge. Andy is still not sure whether to ask April to be his girlfriend due to their age difference, as he's 29. He asks Tom for advice but doesn't find it helpful.
Ann and Mark have lunch together for the last time as they discuss the end of their relationship. Mark is confused as to why Ann has decided to break up because they never fought and everything seemed to be going smoothly. Ann explains that she simply didn't feel any excitement or passion in their relationship and adds that Mark hadn't really dated anyone for a long period of time before and thus, overestimated the strength of their relationship as a result.
State auditors Chris Traeger and Ben Wyatt soon arrive, and the extremely cheerful Chris paints an optimistic picture of how they will fix the budget but leaves the details to the more serious Ben. When Ben explains they will need to slash the budget of every department by nearly 40 to 50 percent, Leslie angrily lashes out at Ben, who simply responds to her that he's just doing his job and the poorly managed government is to blame for the crisis.
At April's party, Tom desperately tries to pick up women, but to no avail, while Leslie and Ann get extremely drunk together. Andy and April appear to be getting along, but when he goes to the bar to get a drink for April, a drunken Ann flirts with him. Upset, April flirts with Tom's annoying friend Jean-Ralphio to make Andy jealous. Andy gets upset, believing he misread April's signals all along, and April later regrets what she did. Ben arrives at the party and tries to smooth things out with Leslie, but she again angrily drunkenly lashes out at him.
The next morning, Ann fears she made out with someone at the party but cannot remember who. She eventually learns she made out with Chris, who now wants to ask her out.
Tom returns to the Snakehole Lounge to close his tab and he meets the bartender, Lucy, who pokes fun at his efforts to pick up every woman at the bar. The two hit it off and Lucy gives Tom her phone number, to his immense pleasure.
Leslie, feeling bad for her drunken behavior the night before, goes to apologize to Ben, and he invites her out for a beer. As they finally start to get along, Leslie realizes Ben is actually Benji Wyatt, the former mayor of a small town called Partridge, Minnesota. Ben's election made national news because he was only 18 when he became mayor, and he failed at the job due to a series of bad policy decisions that ended with the city going bankrupt. Ben became a state auditor to prove he could be responsible and restart his political career. Later, at the Parks Department budget meeting, Chris and Ben reveal Pawnee's budget crisis was far worse than previously thought and that the Pawnee government will have to be shut down until further notice, horrifying Leslie and delighting Ron.
Tropes
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: When Ann gets wasted, she begins drunkenly throwing herself at both Andy and Chris, the latter of whom she passionately makes out with.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Ben bankrupted his hometown, got impeached, and the worst part was that his parents grounded him after that.
- Age-Gap Algebra: Andy asks Tom what the minimum age a girl would have to be for him to go out with her without it being creepy. Tom cites the "half your age plus seven" rule, which, in the 29-year-old Andy's case, would be 21 years and six months, causing Andy some consternation when he realizes this technically puts April, who just turned 21, in the "too young" range. Tom reassures him that it's not that bad but unfortunately, Andy decides that if Tom says it's okay, then it probably isn't.
- Call-Back: Ron tells a pair of citizens passing by that the divorce court is on the fourth floor, as it was already established in "Tom's Divorce".
- Cheshire Cat Grin: Ron does this when Ben tells him and Leslie that Pawnee's budget crisis is so bad the government needs to shut down.
- Comically Missing the Point: Andy writes a song for April, and he says the song is named after a girl with the name of a month. He names the song "November".
- Damned By a Fool's Praise: Andy would normally be the fool in this sort of joke, but in this case, it's actually Tom. Tom assures Andy that he's not too old for April, but Andy realizes if Tom says something isn't creepy, there's a good chance it's very creepy.
- Deadpan Snarker: Lucy, a bartender at the Snakehole Lounge, plays off jokes with Tom about him trying and failing to reach out to as many hot girls as possible at the bar. Tom comes to like her for that and they start going out.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: Although it's (mostly) Played for Laughs, Ann tells Mark their relationship wasn't as good as he thought it was (certainly not enough for her to consider marriage) and the only reason why he thought it was so great was because he had never been in a committed relationship so long before.
- Dumbass Has a Point: Andy is correct when he points out Tom is not really someone to take advice from, even though Tom himself is right that the six months April is missing on the "minimum dating age" is not as big a deal as her being at least couple of years younger than it.
- Forbidden Fruit: Inverted. April is no longer interested in drinking now that she's old enough to do it legally.
- Freudian Excuse: Part of Ben's initially cold attitude stems from him still feeling the sting of embarrassment and failure from his time as a teenage mayor.
- Funny Background Event: While Leslie shares her first impression of Chris in a talking head, he and Ben are starting a conversation with Jerry in the background. Jerry extends his hand to Chris for a handshake, and Chris points at him instead, puzzling him as he did Ron. Still holding out his hand, Jerry ends up turning towards Ben, who immediately ends the awkwardness by shaking it.
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Donna. April is even impressed when she drinks two shots simultaneously.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: When Ben first appears, he's very blunt and has no qualms about slashing the Parks Department budget. However, once he and Leslie grab a drink, it turns out he's not a bad guy and his attitude mostly stems from his insecurities from his failed run as a mayor and desire to come across as more mature and responsible.
- Jerkass Has a Point: After Leslie lashes out at Ben for his blunt approach to cutting the budget and how he can approach it so coldly, Ben replies that it's because he's not to blame for the city's financial problems and he's just there to fix the mess the local government has created.
- Life Isn't Fair: Ann invokes this during a drunken rant to the camera - she hates the fact that once Andy finally matured a bit, got a job, and became a bit more responsible, another girl is getting romantically close to him while she just ended her unsatisfying relationship with Mark.Ann: (slurring) I loved Andy. Loved him. Loved Andy. He was a totally helpless baby when we met. I dated him for three years. Now, he's an adult with a job and some other girl is going to reap the rewards of my hard work? That's bullshit!
- My Greatest Failure: Ben refers to his time as mayor of his hometown as this since he was only 18 at the time and drowned the city in debt due to a very unwise spending decision.
- Nice Guy: Chris is so positive and so nice, it's almost ridiculous. Leslie even describes him as intense.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Drunk, envious of Andy going for another girl once he got his life in a better situation and she herself breaking up with Mark, Ann goes into karaoke and drunkenly kisses Chris, whom she had just met.
- Pet the Dog: Subverted - Leslie attempts to say something nice about Jerry to convince Ben he's an essential employee, but it is pointless when Ron starts laughing at what she mentioned.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The episode was made while several American cities were undergoing budgetary crises, necessitating cuts.
- Ship Tease: The episode starts the tease between Chris and Ann, and also between Leslie and Ben. The episode is also full of it between Andy and April.
- Stealing the Credit: Of a sort with Ann, who goes on a bitter drunken rant in a talking head claiming that Andy's newly developed maturity is the result of her "hard work" and thinks it's "bullshit" that April is "reaping the rewards", never mind it was Ann's coddling of Andy and treating him like a "totally helpless baby" that kept him so immature and a leech on her in the first place.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Ben and Leslie, and it becomes the base for their future Odd Friendship and later on, romance.
- What Did I Do Last Night?: Ann believes she made out with someone but doesn't remember who it was. Turns out, it was Chris.
- Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Andy seeks Tom's advice about dating April and how much of an age gap is too wide to be appropriate. After crunching the numbers, Tom says that it would be okay for Andy to date April, which initially excites Andy, only for him to very quickly realize that Tom's approval is not something he should want.
