In true season-finale tradition, there’s even a cliffhanger. He’s being honest because he knows the difference between those two moments, so how can telling the truth be wrong? Just when you thought his simpleton shtick was maybe starting to verge on the cartoonish. That he immediately botches it by coming clean about Ann’s kiss isn’t just sitcom high jinks, it’s perfectly in line with his character.
Which it seemed he may have when Ann kissed him in the hospital, until he and April kissed a few minutes later - their very real fumbling, plus Andy’s stunned, muffled gasp … this show just does the little things better than other shows do. The Andy and April stuff played out as it should have: He copped to having romantical feelings toward her, she reciprocated but said she couldn’t see him as long as he still had feelings for Ann. It would have been great to see Andy do kid-friendly versions of Mouse Rat tunes - “Pickle Hair” had promise - but he had to go and crash his brand-new crotch rocket and break his arm. But every creepy kids’ singer has a price, and that includes Raffi knockoffs with pasta-related fetishes, and whatever that price is, Ben matches it, saving the day and mercifully spoiling Leslie’s debut as Renata Ricotta. Meanwhile, Ben is made to do Chris’s dirty work and stop the ad hoc Freddy Spaghetti concert, which is moot, as Freddy Spaghetti has already booked another show at an Eagleton library, to Tom’s disgust. Not even being the locomotive in Chris’s massage train relaxes him enough to let that injustice stand - getting rid of government workers just got a little too real. Speaking of respect, when Ron is told by hatchet men Ben and the increasingly weird Chris that Leslie needs to be laid off, his shit-eating grin goes away and he defends her as passionately as he would any breakfast meat, and not just because she does 95 percent of his job. The dynamic between him and Leslie, which started off as an awkward romantic entanglement, shifted dramatically to one of genuine mutual respect. His final scene with Leslie, in which they exchange gifts - she gives him a roll of red tape, he gives her plans to a park that will likely never be built, sans shark tank and roller coaster - is so rich that it doesn’t even bother to try to be funny, and moreover, makes us feel like we’re gonna miss the laconic Mark, which was somewhat unexpected. Well, not everyone came to lend a hand: Mark Brendanaquits took one of the offered buyouts as well as a job with a construction firm, which actually felt perfectly sensible and organic to the story and not like some contract-related plot contrivance - sometimes the simplest answers are the simplest answers. (That gag’s still funny, by the way.) She sends up the Bat-Signal and everyone comes to lend a hand in this time of need, kinda like the Sterling Cooper gang reconvening to start their own agency from a hotel suite. With all of the town’s parks closed, Pawnee’s moms panic about having their kids housebound, so Leslie gets the band back together to stage the previously scheduled Freddy Spaghetti concert in the otherwise useless Lot 48. Ron, wearing that same delirious grin we saw last week when the budget crisis’s severity was made clear, is sitting in a near-abandoned City Hall.
To that end: The finale was as on point as any episode this year - smart, funny, crisply written, and poignant. Of course, the episode itself could not have known it would be commenting on its own fate when it was in production, so it should be judged on its own merits as entertainment.
We’re calling it: There are thematic similarities between the fictional TV show and its real-life circumstances. So, on the week it was announced that NBC, in its infinite, unimpeachable wisdom, was rewarding Parks and Recreation for its rise from respectable Office cousin to pitch-perfect Ur-sitcom by leaving it off the fall schedule, the sophomore season finale found the good people of the Pawnee parks department unceremoniously relieved of their duties for the foreseeable future.