Parks And Recreation Review: “Gryzzlbox/Save JJ’s” (Season 7, Episode 5&6)

Which all builds up to the big shift of the season: the solution to the Gryzzl vs. Parks debacle over the Sweetums land. Thanks to their tarnished public image, Gryzzl dumps a $125 million offer on Sweetums, who promptly accepts. As the Parks regroup from defeat in JJ’s Diner, Leslie bemoans the loss of the town’s old charm thanks to the increased attraction Gryzzl brought to Pawnee. “One place asked if I wanted kale in my milkshake,” she remarks, nearly tearing up at the thought. “My milkshake, you guys.”

After a disastrous protest, they attempt to look for a rentable building for JJ’s in “Beach View Terrace,” a dump of a district that Leslie more aptly refers to as “Medical Waste Buttsweat Grove.” That Buttsweat Grove helps solve all her problems, though. She proposes to Gryzzl that they build their campus in the run-down part of town, get goodwill from reviving the failing district, and donate the Sweetums land to the Parks Department to fully recover from the data mining scandal. They accept, and in a swift half-hour the season’s biggest story arc seemingly closes.

That is, not without a classic “Treat Yo Self 2017!!” and a posh trip to Beverly Hills where Tom and Donna dine on celebrity-owned sushi and take selfies in front of Usher’s Hollywood Walk-of-Fame Star, of course. Lots of callbacks to classic Parks and Recreation – Tom’s lasik for fingernails idea, the Treat Yo Self montage – defined the hour, but never restricted it. Nothing felt as important to the series as Leslie and Ron’s ten-hour lock-in from last week, but the second episode’s overall re-shuffling of what we’ve seen in the season so far – the Parks problem solved, April coming to terms with her job, Tom admitting his feelings for Lucy – leaves a wholly intriguing road ahead for the final episodes of the series.