When good TV goes bad: how Parks and Recreation got sickly sweet

A sitcom about local government employees in the fictional city of Pawnee, Indiana, Parks and Recreation started with more of a whimper than a bang. It was created by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, who both worked on the American version of The Office, and in its six-episode first season, the central character, deputy department director Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) was just another ambitious but barely competent boss. In season two, however, she was rewritten to be confident, capable and optimistic in the face of adversity, from never-ending town meetings to the department’s threatened closure. Her enthusiasm was infectious.

She was flanked by a team of eccentrics, from a pre-Jurassic Chris Pratt as Andy, the kind of colleague who Googles your symptoms when you’re ill and tells you it might be “network connectivity problems”, to her boss Ron (Nick Offerman), a back-to-the-land libertarian with a cynical take on everything (“There’s only one thing I hate more than lying: skimmed milk. Which is water that’s lying about being milk”). After the show added Adam Scott and Rob Lowe as auditors Ben and Chris, who arrived to help with the budget crisis, the chemistry really clicked, and seasons two to five were as good as sitcom gets, featuring characters who made us laugh and in whose lives we felt invested.

Leslie and Ben’s slow-blossoming romance and impromptu wedding were a joy but, at its heart, the show was about friendship. Leslie was close to all her colleagues, especially Ron, whom she won over through force of personality, and devoted to her best friend Ann (Rashida Jones), a nurse and health department agent. “We need to remember what’s important in life,” she once announced. “Friends, waffles, work. Or waffles, friends, work. Doesn’t matter, but work is third.”

That’s why it was so disappointing that the show’s hour-long finale abandoned both the idea that there are many types of fulfilling relationships and any pretence of a story in favour of skipping ahead to several points in the future to reassure us that every character got married and lived a conventional family life.

Yet it all could have been wrapped up so differently. When season six ended, Leslie and Ben had just had triplets, Leslie had been promoted to regional director of the National Parks Service of the Midwest (and moved the job to Pawnee so she could keep her team), and Michelle Obama had dropped by. The show could not have gone out on more of a high.

However, the show had to come back for a shark-jumping seventh series, retreading old ground and trying viewers’ patience. One episode, in which Leslie locked herself and Ron into an office so they could resolve an argument, was almost as good as the old times. But it didn’t outweigh all the filler, including an inexplicable Bill Murray cameo and that bloated finale, which also suggested Leslie would one day be president.

Parks and Recreation was always a little syrupy, but by the end it could have dissolved teeth. No wonder it left a bad taste in the mouth.