Parks and Recreation Will Be Powering Through Its Final Season In Record Time Next Month
TREAT YO'SELF.
Hello, you sweet beautiful talented tropical fish, and welcome to the most bittersweet news of your life. In case you didn’t already know, the upcoming season of Parks and Recreation will be the show’s last. And, unless Amy Poehler takes things to their logical conclusion and mounts a Presidential stand for office under the guise of Leslie Knope, in a couple of months Parks and Rec will be immortalised in nothing but a DVD box set you refuse to lend to your friends and an A+ set of all-purpose gifs.
But here’s a little something to ease your pain: to send out the show in style, the final 13 episodes will be screened in record time. NBC will be releasing two shows per week back-t0-back on Tuesday nights (Wednesday, for those playing in Aus). And, this magic will commence from next month — the first two episodes will air on January 13.
“In an effort to give it the send-off it deserves, we wanted to ‘eventize’ the final season to maximize the impact of these episodes, which really do take the show to a new level,” said NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt. And, though that statement is one mention of ‘synergy’ away from going full Newspeak, it’s definitely right.
Over the past five years, Parks and Rec has done the impossible: it’s won over millions of loyal fans with a show about an outspoken feminist in a small branch of local government. It’s launched careers, gifted us all with the much-needed phrase “Treat yo’self” and given Rob Lowe an outlet to treat the world to the ageless face he’s acquired from years of Chris Traeger-esque herbal supplements and gallons of unicorn blood.
This last season will see Leslie and friends working from the larger National Parks office established at the end of season six. She and Ben now have triplets, Ann and Chris are coming back and Jon Hamm is a thing. The final hour-long episode will air on February 24 in the US — which, somewhat cruelly, is actually my birthday. But before that, we’ll be treated to over five hours of Pawnee bliss in a six-week blitz. It’s not quite the same as the whole-season lock-ins that Netflix subject/treat us to, but it’s definitely a kind of efficiency Ron Swanson would be proud of.
