In honor of NBC Thursdays

 

Earlier today, NBC announced that it would be burning off the final 13 episodes of Parks and Recreation over the course of two weeks this winter, essentially dumping it off as fast as it possibly could so it could move onto something else. This is not particularly surprising. Parks and Rec has always been a low-rated show, and the fact that it made it to seven seasons is something of a miracle in and of itself.  But it's still not hard to feel a twinge of sadness at this news. Parks and Rec is the last of a very particular brand of comedy on NBC (or at least, the last left on NBC: Community now lives on the internet, where it has always truly belonged), and its unceremonious dumping signals a hard end to an era that sparked some of the greatest, most original comedies to ever air on television. Of course, it's an end that's been in the works for some time: since 2012, to be exact, when network head Bob Greenblatt announced that it would be phasing out its "narrow, sophisticated comedies" in favor of more "broad, wide audience" shows. That move hasn't really worked out: since then, only one NBC freshman comedy has made it to a second season (About a Boy), and that show looks likely to be cancelled before it sees a third. But the networks' direction is clear. Between the cancellation of Community in the spring, the punt of Tina Fey and Robert Carlock's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt to Netflix, and the race through the final season of Parks & Rec, NBC is obviously ready to close the chapter on that era in their history. It's cool - all eras have to come to an end, right? But it still seems take a moment to reflect back on just what a truly strange, unique, and all-around fantastic era this was for the network. It was an era that arguably shifted the direction of TV comedy in subtle but major ways, and most importantly, it was an era that gave us some truly fantastic comedy.

It all started in the mid-00s, when NBC was still recovering from losing Friends, Fraiser and Will & Grace, therefore sacrificing most of its cultural identity. TV comedy in general was going through a transitional period - this was the era of Arrested Development, the era where TV comedy was ready to go in strange new directions but the public wasn't yet willing to follow it. But in 2006, The Office started to experience a surprising sophomore surge (it had barely made it past its first season), as both critics and viewers became attached to the shows' mix of conventional and unconventional humor twisted with a fairly sizable helping of pathos. In many ways, The Office seems like the first show that used the off-beat, single-cam vibe and actually saw success with it, paving the way for nearly every beloved comedy that followed it. The success of The Office led to NBC picking up 30 Rock in the spring of 2006, hailed by SNL scribe Tina Fey and boasting a similarly "off-beat workplace sitcom" vibe. 30 Rock wound up pushing the format even further as it totally abandoned any idea of reality, constantly digging up the most bizarre, surreal, and outrageously hilarious jokes it could, pushing past traditional sitcom boundaries to become something that felt different. Then in 2009,
the line-up completed itself with the addition of Parks and Recreation and Community. As Parks and Rec settled into a bravely optimistic show that rejected cynicism and instead looked to build up its characters rather than tear them down, Community experimented with the very idea of what it meant to be a sitcom, constantly questioning itself and everything else on television as it told a strong emotional story about a bunch of unlikely friends sharing a bond. These four shows represented a mindset that both stuck to the tried and true sitcom formula while simultaneously tearing it down, analyzing what it was, and rejected the artificiality of it all. It was perhaps the most experimental night of comedy to ever air on network television, and it was exciting.

There was just one problem: other than The Office, none of these shows ever managed to become actual ratings hits. 30 Rock barely made it past its initial 13-episode order and continued to be low-rated through-out its run. Community and Parks and Recreation were nearly cancelled so many times that each show had at least four different episodes meant to serve as series finales. In any other era, none of these shows likely would've even seen a second season, nevermind a sixth or seventh season. But they were lucky enough to be on NBC in the late '00s/early '10s, a network in such disarray that a bunch of low-rated comedies seemed like a win compared to fiascos like The Jay Leno Show and The Cape and fuckin' Smash. So because of NBC's total failure, we got an era of network comedies that got to push the boundaries of what a network comedy could be - and we got shows that were able to do that for seasons and seasons.

So yes, that era is now over. But is it, really? The sensibilities of those NBC Thursday shows can be found today in cable comedies like Broad City, Review, Rick and Morty, and You're the Worst  - shows that continue to push the boundaries of where a television comedy can go. Who knows if these shows would've happened without the influence of 30 Rock and The Office and Community and Parks and Rec? These shows might not be on NBC anymore, but they live on. They live on in other shows, as well as on Netflix and Hulu and Yahoo and what have you. So we shouldn't cry when this era officially ends in February - instead, we should celebrate what it's accomplished. That's what Leslie Knope, Liz Lemon, Michael Scott, and Abed Nadir would want us to do, right?