6x13 Anniversaries

[8.7/10] Man, how many almost finales has Parks had over the years? This was a good one though, one that marks a bookend for a major part of the show, and one of its instigating incidents, while packing in enough emotion and possibility that it works both as a potential final chapter for the series and as a bridge to what comes next.

In many ways, this is Parks going over its greatest hits in twenty-two minutes to add enough reminders and nods to make this a satisfying sendoff. Leslie and Ann teaming up through an elaborate bureaucratic system to get what they want is one of those ur-stories that Parks comes back to again and again, and doing it in miniature here, to leave time for everyone to say goodbye, work well. It’s especially nice that the plot obstacle is to get the key to the “Pawnee Commons” that first brought Leslie and Ann together so that they can break ground, adding some poetry.

On the other side of the episode, Chris getting all of the guys really nice and thoughtful gifts, with them then scrambling to get him something anywhere near as thoughtful is a good errand to keep the male members of the team occupied and doing funny and/or heartfelt stuff. The empty “buddy box” -- made by Ron with the guys’ initials burned into it -- makes for a nice future-looking token of their appreciation and it’s a nice way to tie a bow on the buddy-relationships among the guys we’ve seen in the bachelor party episode, among others.

There’s also a lot of fun random stuff on the edges of the episode. Leslie throwing thirty parties at once is such a Leslie way to pay tribute to her departing friend. The quick goodbyes are typically funny, from Donna telling Chris she thinks he’s hot and April predicting Chris’s speech before he says it, to Andy remembering that he and Ann used to live together and date, to Tom’s final gift to Ann being deleting her from his phone. And as always, Ron is a treasure, with his stoic “I enjoyed parts of our time together” reducing Ann to tears and repeatedly insisting that he shook Chris’s hand twice and anything more would be overly sentimental.

But the episode nails the big goodbyes too. Ann telling April that she loves her and Andy together and will miss her, and April responding with a mumbled “I love you” that Ann doesn’t make her repeat is great. Chris and Ben, one of the stealthily best relationships on the show, gets a good sendoff with Chris telling Ben he’s his best friend. And the biggie, Leslie and Ann, works like gangbusters, with the two locking arms and reminiscing on the bench. Poehler and Jones are particularly good in the actual goodbye, with Leslie’s tearful calm really selling the enormity of the moment.

Of course, we get a crane shot and the gang resolving to go eat breakfast. Life goes on after all. I’m glad that this wasn’t Parks’s finale, but it would have been a nice note for the show to go out on, offering earned farewells among some of the show’s major characters, but showing the group going on with their work and lives nonetheless.