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The Parks & Recreation Cast Got Together One Last Time On ‘Late Night With Seth Meyers’ Last Night
If you missed Parks & Recreation’s final episode last night, then you missed the heartfelt conclusion to one of the best comedies to ever be on television. Series finales, as a whole, are pretty much impossible to judge. Some shows let you create your own conclusions, and some like to tie everything together at the end. The final Parks & Rec was a little of both. They periodically jumped to the future, assuring us that the fates of each characters will consist of happiness and fulfillment. During Gary’s flash forward, Leslie and Ben are shown with secret service agents, which creator Michael Schur explained was his “Soprano’s fade to black moment”. Did Leslie become President? Did Ben? That’s up to the viewer to decide. All in all, it was a great end to an even better series, and I’ll be sad to see it go. Luckily for fans of the series, the entire main cast was on Late Night With Seth Meyers, and they gathered one final time and sang ‘Bye, Bye Lil’ Sebastian’ to close out the show. It was glorious, and Gary and April making out finally explains why she was so mean to him for all these years.
– Ryan
My Heart Gently Weeps: The Series Finale Of ‘Parks & Recreation’ Is Tonight
I’m not ready! The only thing more cruel than one of your favorite shows ending is that same show having an abbreviated final season, which is exactly what happened to Parks & Recreation. During the final season NBC has been airing two episodes a week, and the series finale tonight is an hour long, so I can’t help but feel rushed as I’m trying to say goodbye to my favorite people from Pawnee, Indiana. Parks & Rec premiered at a perfect time for me, as The Office was winding down and I wasn’t sure if another comedy in the style of The Office would be able to take it’s place. Then along came Leslie, Ron, Ann and the rest of the Parks department to fill that void, and fill it they did, as Parks eventually became one of the best comedies on television. What separated Parks & Rec from other great comedies was how deep their roster was; Leslie and her crew were the mainstays, but the recurring characters like Ron’s wives, Councilman Jamm and other politicians, plus the addition of Ben and Chris gave the show so many funny and interesting characters that it was impossible to have a bad episode. Parks & Recreation will be missed, and I’ll be eating waffles for dinner in honor of the great Leslie Knope tonight.
– Ryan
‘Leslie & Ron’ Proves Once Again Why Parks & Recreation Is One Of The Greatest Shows On TV
SPOILER ALERT
Last nights Parks & Rec was an hour long block, and the story from the first half continued into the second half, but the second half, titled ‘Leslie & Ron’, was one of the best episodes of the entire series. If you’re not caught up on the new season yet, season 7 opens up in 2017, and Ron and Leslie are no longer friends. The main gripe between the two is something called ‘Morningstar’, and we don’t find out what this is until later in this episode. Morningstar is an apartment complex that was built by Ron’s company, and in the process of building the apartments, he knocked down Ann’s old house, which held a special place in Leslie’s heart. The rest of the cast, upset that Ron and Leslie can’t come to a mutual understanding, lock them in the Parks office until they figure out their issues. This is where the episode became great. We’re so accustomed to Parks & Rec being funny, that we forget this is one of the greatest casts of all time, and the relationships they’ve created over the series are what really drives the show. Nick Offerman and Amy Poehler are incredible in this episode, as are all the creative ways Leslie uses to get Ron to talk things out (dripping water on his mustache, covering him in post it notes). My second favorite thing about Parks and Rec is how much attention they pay to small details. In this episode alone, Leslie sings along (without knowing the words) to Jerry/Larry/Terry’s pick for their summer BBQ cd, ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ by Billy Joel. Who is Jerry/Larry/Terry’s wife in the show? Billy Joel’s real life ex wife, Christie Brinkley. At one point Leslie and Ron plead for a janitor to unlock the door for them, but he’s blasting his headphone and can’t hear them. The song he’s listening to, ‘Man, I Feel Like A Woman’ is the same song he was listening to in the episode that Lil’ Sebastian passed away. Later in the episode, Leslie shows Ron the picture of them two with Lil’ Sebastian, and he finally decides to tell Leslie the truth. This scene is one of the more emotional in the whole series. Ron, who up to this point in the episode wouldn’t even admit he and Leslie were friends (he calls them work proximity associates) admits that he left the Parks department and built Morningstar because he missed Leslie and the rest of the gang. At one point, he actually went to ask Leslie for a government job (GASP), asked her out to lunch, only to get stood up because Leslie was so busy. They were all moving on to bigger and better things; everything around Ron was changing, and he didn’t know how to handle the change. An admission on this scale for Ron Swanson was enormous, and it finally cleared the air between he and Leslie. They end the episode drunk, Leslie singing Billy Joel, Ron playing the saxophone, and for a brief moment, order is restored in the Parks & Rec universe. If you enjoy Parks & Rec, or just good television, you owe it to yourself to watch this episode. The only question I had after watching this episode was who was watching Ben and Leslie’s children while all this was going on!?
– Ryan
