TV Review: Parks and Recreation "One Last Ride"

TV’s warmest sitcom ends with a look toward a bright future.

Review by Brandon Wolfe

Like many of the great sitcoms, Parks and Recreation had an inauspicious start. Debuting as the new project from the creators of NBC’s The Office, Parks and Rec utilized that series’ mockumentary format in service of examining another collection of kooks in a workplace environment, this time state government rather than a paper company. And in those early days, it was extremely easy to dismiss the show as a needless rehash of a better series that the very same people had already made. Even its protagonist, dedicated public servant Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), initially seemed little more than a female version of Steve Carell’s hapless boob of a middle manager, Michael Scott. Throughout its brief first season, Parks and Rec struggled to carve out its own identity, to make its estimable components amount to more than a limp repackaging of something of which we were already getting a steady diet. It was a challenge the series didn’t seem like it would, or could, meet.

Until it did. Straight off the bat in its second season, Parks and Recreation was a show reborn, filled with newfound purpose and a fresh identity. Leslie went from being a bumbling borderline-incompetent to the most insanely driven, hyper-capable government employee imaginable, a woman so enthusiastic and laser-focused on her goals that she was more a force of nature than a worker bee. The show also began building out its supporting cast beyond the mere placeholders they were in that first season. Leslie’s supervisor, gruff man’s man Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) went from Leslie’s brusque office opponent to a loyal friend, despite the vast gulf separating their personality types and viewpoints. Disaffected intern April Ludgate (Aubrey Plaza) began displaying the prickly eccentricity that would come to define her. Oafish man-child Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt) began to show off the gigantic heart beneath his recklessly foolish exterior. Egocentric swagger-junkie Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari) became…well, Tom didn’t really change all that much. Background players like ultra-confident Donna Meagle (Retta) and office whipping boy Jerry Gergich (Jim O’Heir) began emerging into vivid supporting players.

Another major strength that Parks and Recreation began developing was in its world-building for the characters’ hometown of Pawnee, Indiana. Not since The Simpsons has a television show created such a wide-ranging, living, breathing community. We got to know dozens upon dozens of the wackjobs that populated Pawnee, a nutty collection of yokels seemingly only united by their collective desire to thwart Leslie Knope’s good intentions at every turn, turning a blind eye to the fact that every fiber of her being was constantly devoted to the betterment of the town she loves. Many series establish communities populated with an array of recurring characters, but Parks and Recreation made Pawnee a fully realized little pocket universe, filled with a full arsenal of quirks and idiosyncrasies.

Parks and Recreation constantly grew and evolved, finding numerous ways to reshape its characters as they went along and deepening their relationships with one another. The unlikely friendship between Leslie and Ron, two people who might as well come from different planets, became the fulcrum of the series, building a touching bond of mutual respect. At the end of Season 2, accountant Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) was dropped into Leslie’s world as an adversary, but quickly became her nerdy soulmate and eventually her devoted husband. Perhaps most effectively of all was the relationship the series forged between April and Andy, two characters who had little to do with each other at first before winding up as the most oddly perfect couple on television, two people whose stubborn refusal to accept and embrace the adult world made them the perfect symbiosis of stunted maturity. Witnessing their union from flirtation to marriage, growing while never quite changing, was profoundly poignant in a manner than television romances scarcely achieve.

Parks and Recreation persevered throughout its run, staving off the staleness and missteps that often assail long-running sitcoms and withstanding the constant mismanagement by its network. NBC subjected the series to random time slot changes, needless hiatuses and the constant threat of cancellation. The show maintained a level of consistency that even some of the true-blue television classics couldn’t pull off. There is the sense that the series is leaving the airwaves at the exact right time, bowing out at full strength and denying us the inevitable stale and repetitive later years. Many shows like to claim that they’re going out while still on top. Parks and Rec is the rare show genuinely doing that.

The series finale, “One Last Ride,” adopts the structure made famous by the final episode of HBO’s Six Feet Under, which zoomed forward in time to show us the death of each character. But Parks and Rec, being possibly the most sunshiny, optimistic show on the air, looks to the brighter side of its characters’ futures. The episode shifts to different points in each character’s eventual timeline, landing on pivotal moments where they each meet their potential. Andy and April fight off a bit of their long-standing immaturity by starting a family (albeit on their own singular terms). Tom becomes a successful author, writing a self-help book that allows readers to determine their personality type based upon each of the main characters (essentially making it a Buzzfeed “Which Parks and Recreation Character Are You?” quiz in book form). Donna becomes a successful realtor. Jerry blissfully spends the rest of his days as Pawnee’s permanent mayor. Ron, as a gift from Leslie, is given the task over overseeing the national park that Leslie spent a chunk of the final season preserving. Most importantly of all, Leslie finally realizes her dream of becoming the governor of Indiana (and possibly eventually the President of the United States, as hinted by a scene set at Jerry’s funeral in the far future).

However, what the characters wind up individually achieving later in their lives isn’t the true aim of “One Last Ride” so much as their time spent together. The present day of the episode is the last day the characters all spend together in Pawnee before departing on different career paths, and the key moment in the future that we flash toward is their eventual reunion at the Parks Department at the point in time that Leslie decides to embark on her gubernatorial destiny. And the takeaway is that these characters mean the world to each other, and that no matter what life throws at them or what wondrous opportunities lay ahead, nothing is more important to them than simply being in the same room together. It’s a warm and fuzzy final mission statement, and on a lesser show it could have easily come across as sickeningly maudlin, but Parks and Recreation has always proudly worn its big ol’ heart right there on its sleeve. The show’s incessant resistance to cynicism never wavered, and made the show something wholly unique in our increasingly callous, snark-filled times.

And now Parks and Recreation is gone and will be deeply missed. It’s become a cliché to state that it feels like saying goodbye to friends when a television series ends, but rarely has that sentiment ever felt truer than it does in this case. For six years, we were a part of this welcoming little universe and it hurts to be cut off from it. Parks and Recreation was a joyous symbol of all that is right and good in the world. To put it in terms only Pawneeans could fully appreciate, it was our Li’l Sebastian, and its loss will be felt for a long, long time.

Discuss this review with fellow SJF fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @SandwichJohnFilms, and follow author Brandon Wolfe at @BrandonTheWolfe.