Board 8 > How satisfied were you with how S7 ended Parks & Recreation? [BEE W12]

(+) Yeah! (+)

For me personally, this was the easiest 4 so far! (Well, except for maybe Return of the King, but having 12 endings is kind of cheating.)

Everything about S7 was solid; I liked tightening up the schedule to just 13 episodes, and going with a three year time jump after announcing Leslie was going to have triplets (to skip the boring "we're so tired and also out of diapers" sitcom episodes we've seen so often) was a smart choice. It also set us up nicely to jump a further 30 years into the future by the end of the finale.

And then the finale itself? Literally perfect!

*massive spoilers below this line, stop reading*

Leslie deserved the Presidency (and to be Governor before that), after taking so much abuse it was great to see Garry succeeding Bill Murray as Mayor and being re-elected for 30+ years and living to 100 (even though they typo his name on his headstone). Ron heading up the National Park of course made sense, but it was great to see his character growth in also being the best man and Craig and Typhoon's wedding.

I liked where they went with all the smaller characters as well. Overall, I wouldn't change a thing!

Season 7 was downright awful. It feels like a cartoon or parody. One of the biggest final season declines in TV history, mostly because of how incredibly good the rest of the series was.

Parks and Rec was always a little bit silly but everything in that last season felt like a shark jump.

That's crazy to me. CRAZY!

Firstly because Parks & Rec was always a positive show about perseverance and the power of friendship. Yes there were always conflicts and disagreements, but by the end of the episode the core group would find common ground and compromise on an agreement that made Pawnee a better place. Given that, I'm surprised anyone wouldn't have expected a final season with some tension up front, leading to a sugary-sweet finale and final few episodes.

Secondly though it seems crazy just because it's the first I've ever heard of S7 disgust! I watched every episode day-of along with probably 8 friends and family, and we all liked the season and absolutely loved the finale. Professional critics called it one of the best TV send-offs, and general viewers were very pleased with the result as well, at least according to their votes on IMDB.
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S7 averaged an 8.4, meaning viewers thought it was the second best season overall (behind only S3). Episodes 1 and 3 were admittedly kind of clunkers, drawing some of the worst numbers since S1... but things quickly improved, with EP4 and the final three helping send the season trendline to the moon. And as you can see from the red line down the center, the overall show trend was, well... trendless! By user rating Parks & Rec was the most evenly constructed, consistently likable show ever.

All of the above being said, it does appear that more of B8 than I expected agrees with the disappointing assessment. We're going to leave this up one more day to collect some final votes before we move away from the sitcom world and back into books!

Just because I'm already on the site, let's go ahead and compare against last week.

The Office
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Cool, the ratings agree with my hot take from a week ago! S3 was the best (as everyone seems to agree), but the show maintained that 8.5 kind of average all the way into the middle of S6, when things finally started to slip. From there it got a little ugly (as the downward trendline shows), BUT the final three episodes were excellent and raised S9's overall stock well above S8.

parks and rec felt like an optimistic show about perseverance, the importance of doing small things, and loving the people and places around you

S7 made it seem like everyone had to do MORE to realize their dreams, which made it less appealing to me, personally.

that said i think the finale was pretty satisfactory and it was still parks and rec, so i gave it a 3. might be more like a 2 to 2.5 though.

Okay, now there's a criticism I could get behind. For six seasons we were told the most important thing was to keep your friends close and to change the world one day at a time by making your tiny part of it just a little bit better... so in S7 why did everyone have to split up and leave Pawnee and take over the world for the audience to feel like they were successful in life?

True, true. But I still liked seeing it!

I loved the finale. Possibly my favourite sitcom finale ever. What a great show.

Good though mostly an epilogue.

I feel season 6 of Community is a logical next step with the sitcom theme.

I was going to skip Community because I assumed it lost 70% of its B8 audience when it moved to Yahoo Screen (or whatever that was called). Now that it's available on Netflix though, maybe enough of us have been able to complete the journey...

Okay I've added it to the list!