As you probably have heard by now, there's going to be some major shakes in the Parks and Recreation cast as we end the second season and go into the third.  Crazy enough, Rob Lowe and Adam Scott will be joining the show soon.

Unfortunately, that means the shows will have to remove some cast members to make some room and that includes series regular, Paul Schenider, who plays Mark.  In an interview with the LA Times, series creator Michael Schur discusses why the star is leaving:

When we first cast Paul, we told him that the idea would be Mark would leave and then ideally he would come back in a different capacity working for a different company. And then he would leave again and come back, and so on… It's not something you usually do on TV shows but we thought it was a good way to illustrate both the positive and negative aspects of working for a government. It was one of the first things we talked about with him.

So, in the end, it was a combination of us always knowing that the character would always leave some day, the timing of [Bright Star], and then sort of feeling like, well, the way the character's gone…we were all on the same page here and we decided to write the character out.

But the goal and the aim is to have him come back as soon as his schedule permits and as soon as the arcs we're writing call for it. We very much want him back and he has told us he very much wants to come back in the future.

Eric Hochberger is the programmer of TV Fanatic, so please forgive his mediocre writing. His programming is far better. Follow him on Twitter and/or email him. Just don't request threaded comments. They're coming.