Parks and Recreation, is it going "reinvent" itself?

Perhaps “reinvent” isn’t the right word… but the finale episode of the last season gave us a glimpse of what’s to come. There were a few minutes at the end of the episode which took place 3 years later. This means that Leslie and Ben are taking care of triplets and a whole bunch of other stuff.

I really hope Craig, (Billy Eichner), is a regular.

What changes should be made, and what should stay the same?

FYI, according to this article from The AV Club, it’s going to pick up where it left off, in 2017 because

Amy Poehler just had two babies of her own and didn’t want to work with babies again. So the time jump means they skip ahead to being three years old.

It’s the last season, by the way.

That was kind of a snarky comment at the end of that article
“Oh, would that we all had such powers to declare we’d had our share of babies, and simply skip ahead to when they’re pleasant little people who can be easily pawned off on babysitters.”

It’s a good thing when you write and produce the show that you’re on you do have such powers. Just like the author of that article can choose not to do an article about a subject he’s doesn’t like (or is sick of).

Or maybe I just misread it.

Huh?

I agree

Best ‘Beavis’ voice: “What?”

Did you not agree that it was snarky (like I said, I may have misread it in my head) or did you not agree with what I said about Amy?

I think you might have misread it. The only snark I see is against babies.
The author of the article was making light of the fact that many parents wish they could skip the difficulty of the baby years and jump right to toddler time.
I’m looking forward to the last season. Parks and Rec is the best sitcom on television and I look forward to what the writers are able to do with this jump ahead in time. I imagine they will have fun with flashbacks, and leaving things unexplained for several episodes, until we see the origin of things in “2 Years Ago” snippets.

I am curious if the fact that Chris Pratt’s star is rising will help its ratings.

My prediction for the series finale.

Leslie get’s appointed Secretary of the Interior, then a few months later terrorists attack the State of the Union. :wink:

That’s the avclub’s niche: everyone covers pop cultures stories, but nobody’s quite as snarky about it as avclub (now that television without pity is kaput, that is).

Perhaps that’s why I barely noticed the snark.

Well, if nothing else, I’m looking forward to a glimpse of who wins the White House in 2016.

Yikes. I can’t stand the character. Slightly effeminate, constantly yelling guy nearly makes me stop watching the show altogether.
I am curious what Ben’s tuxedo foretells… maybe what we saw was inauguration night and Ben’s mayor now?

I had the feeling the last show was made in case they got canceled.

Yea, he’s not only the worst character in that sitcom, he’s got to be top ten for worst characters in any sitcom.

I didn’t think it was snarky. Just a “having kids is a lot of work” joke.

This wouldn’t be the first show to do “the skip” - some that come to mind:
I Love Lucy (Little Ricky skipped a few years)
The Cosby Show (Sondra’s twins jumped from 1 to 4)
Growing Pains (Kris jumped from newborn to 4 or so)
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (Carlton’s newborn brother suddenly became 3 or 4; they in-joked it by having Will act surprised when he saw him for the first time, then surprised again when the new actress that played Carlton’s mother appeared)
One show - I think it was Duet - had the main characters take some long (around the world?) trip that lasted two years to explain it away

The usual explanation is, it’s impossible to find kids to play anyone between newborn and pre-school age who look the correct age and can take stage direction.

I wonder if they’ll remember to make Ron’s stepdaughters three years older than before…

Except usually, only the baby suddenly gets older. I think most of those shows ignored the time shift for the rest of the cast. This show, on the other hand, is explicitly moving ahead three years. (And into the future!)

True, but I would be surprised if the primary reason was something other than skipping the first few years of the babies’ lives.

In this case, having everybody jump ahead three years has another advantage; they can establish themselves as being firmly in their new jobs rather than spending a chunk of the final season with “cutting their teeth” episodes.