What Critics Thought of the Parks and Recreation Finale [SPOILERS]
After seven seasons, NBC’s Parks and Recreation ended its run with this week’s final episode, “One Last Ride: Part 1.” Here’s what the critics had to say about Parks and Rec‘s last run. [Warning: Some quotes may contain spoilers.]
As far as final episodes go, Parks and Recreation negotiated the perfect balance between closure and uncertainty. Although each character got his or her own conclusion, the finale was primarily a love letter to Leslie Knope and a testament to the infinite ways, big and small, in which she opened her life to everyone around her.
This wasn’t a premise that could run forever, because almost no premise is set up to do that, but the same things that let Parks And Recreation burn so brightly in its heyday are also what allowed the show to finish so strong.
Matthew Gilbert, Boston Globe:
It was all very sweet and light — at moments too sweet and light, perhaps, particularly some of the Ron-Leslie sentimentality. But the finale was always firmly in keeping with the show’s — and Leslie’s — overall tone of cockeyed optimism.
Unlike the frothing, mean-spirited close of CBS’ Two and a Half Men last week, Poehler has too much respect for her audience and her characters for any dirty tricks.
Jeff Jensen, Entertainment Weekly:
It honored the characters, actors, and the fans in the inspired, inventive ways that both played to what we expect from TV finales and challenged conventions, all while being Parks to the core.
The syrupy “One Last Ride” handed out dreams like Oprah at the auto dealership — “You get exactly what you want! And you get exactly what you want!” It’s a small mercy that cowriters Schur and Poehler managed to restrain themselves from showing Leslie as president in the year 2048. Instead, they just strongly implied it.
On the whole, this was a gorgeous, touching and, on occasion, very funny way for Parks to say goodbye to all its characters, and to us.
Parks and Recreation was never really about politics. Instead, it was about the vital nature of public service done well and for the right reasons. Never was this better defined then in Leslie Knope’s closing speech during the Season 7 finale, when she said her first profession “was all about small, incremental change every day.”
David Hinckley, New York Daily News:
It provides a satisfying and clever resolution for its characters.
Vinnie Mancuso, New York Observer:
Last night, Parks & Rec went and ended, forever. And I felt… feelings? Like real life ones. I don’t even think I was this sad as I was when that camera spiraled away over Walter White, or the screen cut to black on Tony Soprano’s face.
Alessandra Stanley, New York Times:
Even at the end, [Aubrey Plaza] didn’t entirely lose her mean streak.
There aren’t many shows that could get away with so many big final victories, with so much happiness for everyone that it sloshed over the rim of the show’s world and felt even more like augmented reality than it usually does. But what distinguished the brand of happiness the writers delivered in this final pass was that it was specific to the characters and true to who they were. This was wish fulfillment as character exploration.
Let’s get this out of the way: Parks and Recreation‘s finale was great. There was a certain predictability to the episode, if not an inevitability, but that didn’t change the fact that “One Last Ride” offered the entire audience a big warm hug to end the show on.
What makes the end of Parks so special is that it arguably went out at the top of its game, and inarguably on its own terms.
It’s such a sweet show because it exists exactly in the midst of such things and its characters try to rise above the muck and their own natures anyway, even when they don’t succeed. The finale had no hint of that muck. Luckily, there are 123 other episodes of this great series to balance it out.
As expected, the culmination of the show’s six-year, seven-season and 125-episode run went for the heartstrings — even more so than the laughs — but seemed to hit all the right notes.
Gail Pennington, St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
Three hankies, at least, were necessary as NBC’s Parks and Recreation signed off Tuesday night with a touching look into the future of the Pawnee, Ind., gang.
James Poniewozik, TIME Magazine:
While Parks gives its characters happy endings, they don’t inhabit a perfect world. Like the 2017 of the rest of the final season, “One Last Ride” is set in a kind of comedy dystopia: there are eight corporations left, the country has run out of beef, and schools don’t teach math.
If there was one flash-forward that embodied the spirit of Parks and Rec and Leslie’s power more than any other, it was Ron’s future.
Narsimha Chintaluri, TV Fanatic:
After a trying process of coming to terms with moving on, the emotional whiplash of Parks and Recreation Season 7 Episode 12 draws to a fulfilling close. Unlike other fan-favorite sitcoms that have recently come to an end (*cough* How I Met Your Mother *cough*), Parks and Rec sticks the landing in more ways than one.
An optimistic show with an optimistic heroine, so let’s be optimistic and hope that Leslie someday gets to be the Commander-in-Chief. Let’s even go a step further and hope that Leslie does such a great job, they eventually carve her face into the side of a mountain at the national park she established Mount Rushmore-style. We’re totally putting that in our dream journal.
As interesting as it is to see how much these people and this town have blossomed under Leslie’s unflagging efforts to improve them, it’s gratifying to see how far Leslie herself has come.
Parks ultimately plays it coy, letting viewers imagine their own happy ending. It’s not the last moment of the episode, but it’s a sublime parting gift. And one that ensures Parks will enjoy an afterlife that extends long past its final broadcast.
Luciana Villalba, The Young Folks:
Now that it’s over, I can’t imagine another show bringing so much sunniness and optimism to the TV screen, and I think of those people who never got a chance to laugh with the show.
Were you happy with the ending? Let us know in the comments section below!
