If Parks were real life, there’s no way Leslie’s dream job would have also allowed her to stay in her dream town. It feels like friends are always moving away, doesn’t it? Lured from one transient city to another with the promise of, I don’t know, grad school or cheaper rent or whatever Google is giving out to new hires these days. You don’t get to take all of your favorite colleagues with you every time you switch jobs you don’t just go up a flight of stairs and find yourself in your new office.
In real life, you do have to leave one great thing behind to move on to the next greater thing. Parks might not be a fantasy in the Game of Thronesian sense of the word, but it does have this element of adult wish-fulfillment to it that makes Pawnee this beautiful alternate reality. It was like watching Walt and Jesse in the superlab after the RV got crushed. Is that weird? I’m so glad they made this choice (also relieved you know how I feel about pregnancy plot lines), and yet it made me realize just how attached I was to the way things were, how lived-in that space felt. I know this sounds a little strange, but at the end of the episode, even though we had only been away from old Parks for a few minutes, I was already feeling nostalgic for the Parks we used to know. Except Parks still has a victory lap to do. Wave to the kids, smile at the working mom, blow a kiss to the happy couple, and it’s over. The scene reminded me, in tone and pace, of the last few minutes of the 30 Rock series finale: a quick look at everyone all a bit more grown-up. Parks hit reset by hitting fast-forward, and I am feeling as hopeful and eager for the seventh season as I could possibly be. Jon Hamm, always a welcome presence, makes a brief appearance as an incompetent staffer before getting fired. Ben has traded his Batsuit for a Bruce Wayne tux for some as-yet-revealed formal event. We feel at once disoriented - where is the sweet, slow Parks Department we used to know? - and at home, with Larry-now-Terry dropping files on the floor and April and Andy playing aunt and uncle to the Knope-Wyatt triplets (two boys, one girl). Leslie is Sorkin-power-walking through her new, now-bustling office.
With a beautiful zoom-in-zoom-out shot of a framed photo of the gang, we jump ahead three years in time. I want to start at the end: what a stellar last three minutes.
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