'Parks and Recreation' signs off, as sunny as ever.

AuthorStanley, Alessandra
PositionLiving

Byline: Alessandra Stanley

On the series finale of "Parks and Recreation,'' one of the show's more likable losers finally made good with a best-selling advice book titled "Failure: An American Success Story.''

That joke has a second bounce.

This NBC sitcom, which starred Amy Poehler as a dedicated civil servant and ardent feminist in Pawnee, Indiana, was never a ratings giant, but it had a well-deserved following. The little comedy that could lasted seven seasons and was very funny and sweet all the way to its Tuesday night end.

"Parks and Recreation'' was a celebration of workplace friendships and well-meaning underdogs that lived up to its promise: The series finale, which kept flashing forward, lovingly tied up loose ends without undoing the bond among the show's core characters.

And, in that way, it was the opposite of the recent series finale of "Two and a Half Men,'' an epilogue driven by bitter jokes about its errant former co-star, Charlie Sheen, whose very public battle in 2011 with the show's creators was so toxic that Sheen declined to make even a brief cameo at the end. A stand-in was hired for the final episode to play his dissipated character, Charlie, who hadn't died after all, as was previously assumed, but was nonetheless crushed by a falling piano.

If there were clashes behind the scenes of "Parks and Recreation,'' they never became public. It was easy to believe in the affection and camaraderie shared by the main characters.

Poehler's Leslie Knope was always an improbable sitcom heroine, a fiercely ambitious, hardworking, happy and, by Season 5, happily married city bureaucrat who actually wants to help people, and is pilloried for it. One of the running jokes of the series was how little the citizens and local media of Pawnee appreciate her: In Season 6, she lost her post on the City Council to a recall, and had to return to the city parks department.

In one of the show's final episodes, Leslie found herself targeted by both a local feminist association and a men's rights group during the congressional run of her husband (Adam Scott). "Men have had a very rough go of it for ... just recently,'' a protester shouted at a rally. "And it ends now.'' Leslie, as usual, was undeterred, later striking back by telling a group of protesters, "You're ridiculous, and men's rights is nothing.''

Poehler, an alumna of "Saturday Night Live'' and several movies, was already a star when the show began in 2009. But "Parks and Recreation''...

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