Human Giant with Aziz Ansari, played a charity leader in "Kaboom". In that same episode, comedian and voice actor H. Jon Benjamin played a Pawnee lawyer. Michael Gross, best known for his role as Steven Keaton from Family Ties, appeared in "Summer Catalog" as a former parks department director who loves marijuana. Detlef Schrempf, a retired basketball player who played for the Indiana Pacers, portrayed himself in "Telethon". Natalie Morales appeared in the last two episodes of the season as Lucy, a bartender who becomes Tom's girlfriend. Writing and filming Following season one, Parks and Recreation was originally renewed for a half season-worth of episodes, but was picked up for a full season in late October 2009. Greg Daniels said since the Parks and Recreation characters had now been established in the second season, the writers were able to write more specifically for the actors. Daniels said he believed this allowed the characters to become more balanced, rather than simply an accumulation of flaws, as they sometimes appeared in the first season. The writing staff also made an effort to be more topical with the second-season episodes. For example, the episode "Pawnee Zoo" included social commentary about same-sex marriage. Likewise, "The Stakeout" included a parody of the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, a black Harvard University professor who was arrested after police mistakenly thought he was breaking into his own home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a sex scandal involving a Pawnee councilman in "Practice Date" mirrored the real-life 2009 scandal of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who publicly admitted to a long-term extramarital affair with an Argentinian woman. The writers made several other changes going from season one to season two, including making the scripts more focused around the entire cast rather than just Leslie. They also tried to make Leslie appear more intelligent in the second season after receiving audience feedback that she appeared "ditzy", which Michael Schur said was never their intention. Schur said, "In the end, we just felt that Amy is an enormously likable presence on screen, so as the season went on we just tried to create situations where that would shine through." During the episode "Kaboom", a major subplot was resolved when the large construction pit that Leslie had long sought to turn into a park was filled with dirt and turned into a lot. The pit was first established in the premiere episode