Amy Poehler and an all-star sitcom cast stage a moving act of charity.
Parks and Recreationended in 2015s lost dream of 2017.
The final flash-forward season of NBCs mockumentary imagined a near-future America full of hard-won optimism and compromise.
NBC
Everyone got a happy ending: married with children, elected to ever-higher office, merely rich.
You sensed some melancholy in the series finales suggestion that anyone with ambition had to get out of Pawnee.
But the outlook was smiling and positive when the credits rolled on Feb. 24, 2015.
Eight days earlier, elsewhere on NBC,Donald Trumpwrapped another season ofThe Celebrity Apprentice.
The theme music is chipper as ever, and the circumstances have never been more dire.
None of this comes up on the special, for forgivable reasons.
ShowrunnerMichael Schurand several returningParksstaffers pack the script with grace notes and callbacks, plus check-ins from beloved Pawnee eccentrics.
They find creative routes through impossible obstacles.
Actors sheltering in different places play spouses in houses.
Various children are explained away (not successfully).
There are sparkly comic moments.
Ron (Offerman) has hunted a 12-year supply of venison jerky.
Poehler emcees a fictional variation of an at-home late-night show.
And her unflappable Leslie centralizes the most emotional moments.
This quarantine has seen many cast reunions, and FaceTime singalongs, and fair-to-middling attempts at actor-generated cinematography.
Im so thankful that everyone involved here makes the extra effort to slide back into character.
Somewhat unexpectedly given his franchise megastardom, Pratt gets the disturbing sequence.
Andy, as Johnny Karate, tells kids things will go back to normal.
It might not be a year, or 100 years, or 1,000 years.
It might never happen!
It will though what was normal, anyway?
The special is a fun-with-characters piece, not quite the sitcom-Wireof yore.
Everyone reallyisdoing their part: staying inside, staying healthy, washing their hands for the first time ever.
Maybe thats still too optimistic.
In a strange way, the sitcoms faux-documentary structure lends itself well to the videoconferencing conceit.
UnlikeThe Office,Parksnever even tried to explain why the characters interstitially broke the fourth wall.
It was just their hyperlinked riffing on the action, a chance for everyone to improv.
(Eventually, I started to think of the confessionals as thought balloons.)
In the special, all that talking to the camera has a new purpose.
Leslie and Ron have a lovely final conversation, they’re looking at us and at each other.
Ill call you tomorrow, Leslie promises.
Im sure you will, Ron says.
Theyre in this together.
