Parks and Recreation Final Season
Parks and Recreation ended last night.
That was hard to write.
For seven years, NBC’s little show about a group of Parks and Recreation employees in the small Midwestern town of Pawnee has been bringing a quiet sense of pure optimism and unrepentant goodness into our TV world.
Most comedies start off shaky, then find their footing for a few excellent seasons, usually between seasons 2 and 4. Then things start feeling a little stale, and the show begins the long descent into self-parody and, sometimes, pure awfulness. Parks and Recreation followed this trajectory at first (the first season is noticeably subpar, and seasons 2-4 are still the high point of the show) but then subverted it. Seasons 5-7 were still quite good. Maybe they weren’t as laugh-out-loud funny as the show at its height, but instead, the show transformed its focus to developing its characters into better people.
Pawnee, like the best TV locations, has become a unique, hilarious and distinctly Midwestern character in itself. Every good, altruistic thought of every American finds its way into the actions of its characters, even while every lazy, cruel or flat-out idiotic impulse is indulged by its citizens. People work together to make tiny improvements in the lives of the people around them; they put on concerts to honor the memory of a miniature horse (RIP Li’l Sebastian) and they help each other make important life decisions; yet, they also dissolve into petty, angry comments, live in a stew of political and social ignorance and drink cups of soda the size of small children.
Amid a TV landscape of awful, violent people, we were either rooting for or laughing at, Parks and Rec always served as an escape into something better — a world like our own with its foibles and annoyances, but filled with people who actually cared for one another, despite how many of them would never admit it.
We didn’t keep watching Parks and Recreation just because we felt some obligation to see what happened to its characters; we watched them because they’re funny, wonderful people who’ve changed over the course of the show. Can you remember way back to when Andy was an obnoxious loser? Or when Ron was genuinely mean to people? Or when Donna and Garry weren’t really important characters at all? The characters have truly evolved.
Parks and Recreation’s finale, “One Last Ride,” decided to continue the show’s trend of time-hopping by turning the entire episode into a kind of epilogue. After all, haven’t the last couple episodes really been the finale? Donna and her husband live an exciting life in Seattle; Craig is married to Ron’s hairdresser and is as irascible as ever; Andy and April continue being awesome people but are now awesome parents; Tom loses his entire empire and turns it into a bestselling book entitled Failure: An American Success Story; Garry lives a full life as the forever mayor of Pawnee; Ron ultimately works for the government doing what he loves the most — being in nature; Ben wins his congressional run; and Leslie? Of course she becomes governor of Indiana, and likely the president. Yes, it’s an absurdly unrealistic series of futures, with everyone’s lives ultimately fulfilling all they ever wanted, but there isn’t a show or a group of fictional people that deserves it more.
So we’ll miss you, Pawnee, even as you say farewell to us from the distant future of 2017. Thanks, Leslie, for showing us how truly good people can change their surroundings through sheer will and unrelenting optimism. Thanks, Ron, for your wise words of self-reliance and begrudging friendship. Thanks, Tom, for letting us treat ourselves every now and then. Thanks, Donna, for letting us be confident and assertive. Thanks, Ann, for showing how a good friend can bring out the best in everyone. Thanks, Chris, for being literally the best person we could ever imagine. Thanks, Andy and April, for providing us with young adults with the ideal relationship. Thanks to all the weird side characters and places and moments we’ll look back on fondly come 2017.
Thanks, Parks and Recreation, for being one of the best comedies of all time, featuring many hours of laughs and a couple of happy tears. We’ll miss you.
Oh, and Garry/Jerry/Larry/Terry? Thanks for nothing.
