Parks and Recreation writers initially created the extremely upbeat character of Chris Traeger, played by Rob Lowe, with the specific intention of killing him off after only a few episodes due to a rare blood disease.

A closer look

Parks and Recreation writers initially created the extremely upbeat character of Chris Traeger, played by Rob Lowe, with the specific intention of killing him off after only a few episodes due to a rare blood disease. The creators thought it would be a hilarious, incredibly dark joke to introduce the most aggressively healthy, relentlessly positive human being on the planet and then have him immediately drop dead. However, Lowe's performance was so incredibly charming and energetic that the network producers heavily pivoted, demanding the character stick around to become a permanent fixture of the Pawnee government. It is wonderful that a character whose entire personality revolved around taking dozens of daily vitamins and running marathons literally outran his own creatively mandated fictional death sentence through the sheer power of positive thinking