Pasadena, Calif. City Hall, which doubles as City Hall on Parks and Recreation. (Photo by Benjamin R. Freed)

Parks and Recreation, NBC’s sitcom about local bureaucrats gone haywire, begins its fifth season on Thursday. And, as you’ll recall, one of the highlights of our hot, dreary summer, was the week that part of the show’s cast and crew spent in Washington filming scenes for the first few episodes of the new season.

Today we get our first look at what the representatives of the fictional town of Pawnee, Ind. did on their D.C. vacation.

At the end of Parks and Recreation‘s last season, Leslie Knope, the tireless parks official played by Amy Poehler, had just been elected to the city council while her boyfriend, Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott), was picked up by a congressional campaign based in Washington. The season premiere brought Poehler and Scott, along with fellow series regulars Aubrey Plaza and Chris Pratt, to Washington, where they rubbed elbows with, among others three members of the U.S. Senate.

In the clip released by NBC today and first posted by Entertainment Weekly, we see Leslie Knope meet Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who are hobnobbing at some fancy fundraiser.

Poehler, whose character fills her office with portraits of female leaders like Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright, gets choked up introducing herself to the legislators. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) also filmed a scene while Parks and Recreation was in town.