Parks and Recreation
It was the perfect farewell.
Parks and Recreation’s sixth season finale tied the activities in Pawnee, Indiana, into a tight bow, and the series has been renewed for a seventh and probably final season. In the episode’s final moments, the show jumped three years into the future, opening up numerous creative possibilities for the end of Parks and Recreation’s run. After a season full of departures and goodbyes, it makes sense for Parks and Recreation to avoid hitting the same notes in its final season; its time leap is a wise and important decision for comedic television.
Executive producer Michael Schur confirmed the show would be leaping into 2017 in the show’s seventh season.
“The natural rhythm of the show and the big creative jump we take at the end of this season certainly suggests that we’re moving in that direction,” Schur told Entertainment Weekly last week.
The concluding scenes of the finale featured Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope managing her new office with the National Parks Conservation Association and her triplets with husband Ben (Adam Scott), an incompetent Jon Hamm getting fired and Larry (née Jerry) with a new name: Terry.
The sixth season featured the departures of Rashida Jones’ Ann Perkins and Rob Lowe’s Chris Traeger. In addition, Leslie learned she was pregnant with triplets toward the end of the season, a sure sign Leslie’s personal and professional lives were coming together successfully. The finale added to this feeling of conclusiveness with Leslie’s Unity Concert, designed to finalize the merger between Pawnee and neighboring town Eagleton. The episode featured several triumphs — the integration of favorite guest stars, Ben getting Cones of Dunshire patented, Ron Swanson outing his jazz musician alter ego Duke Silver and musical performances by Ginuwine, The Decemberists, Letters to Cleo and, of course, the fictitious Mouse Rat. On top of that, Leslie met her idol Michelle Obama and made the choice to accept a job in Chicago.
It was a satisfying conclusion made complicated by the final twist: Leslie found a solution to stay in Pawnee, pitching that renting out a floor of City Hall would be cheaper and closer to the parks where she would be working.
“We may go back and see a couple of things here and there of what happened in the interim, but we’re not faking you out,” Schur told Entertainment Weekly. “This is a real shift for the show in terms of when it takes place.”
By skipping three years, Parks and Recreation will be cutting out a great deal of progression in Pawnee, such as Leslie’s pregnancy, her and Ben’s handling of triplet babies, the success of Tom’s Bistro and how Larry’s name got changed to Terry. However, this is a welcome outcome — pregnancy and babies are well-worn territory on sitcoms, and dedicating the show’s final season to this subject would have felt stale. Season six gave Ann a number of pregnancy storylines, so creating new ones for Leslie could have been difficult or unimaginative.
Now, the show’s final installment has endless possibilities. What have Pawnee’s finest been up to since 2014? Will there be flashbacks? Can a new setting provide more comedy for the show? The jump to the future guarantees the last season of Parks and Recreation will continue to surprise — a rarity when most shows tend to peter out toward the end.
Schur, a former writer on The Office, appears to be avoiding the mistakes of that show’s conclusion. While The Office dragged on a few seasons after the departure of Steve Carell’s Michael Scott — the undeniable star of the show — Parks and Recreation has a deadline in mind and a twist that will keep viewers hooked until the end.
Parks and Recreation thrives on the unexpected. The show’s proposals and weddings often occurred randomly and in the middle of seasons, instead of during finales and episodes with major hype like other sitcoms. It’s no coincidence the high points of season six came from shocking and progressive moments — the Pawnee/Eagleton merger, Leslie’s recall election, Ann and Chris departing and the revelation that Leslie was having triplets.
I’d like to see a Parks and Recreation in 2017 and the show’s previous innovation strongly suggests it will succeed toward the end and take advantage of a creative premise.
Viewers will have to wait until the fall to see how it pans out. Until then, we’re left to ponder the infinite potential storylines behind Larry’s name change.
