After an emotionally draining first two weeks of the final season of Parks and Rec , Leslie and Ron are back on good terms. The two were at odds for two years (that we skipped between Season 6 and Season 7) over Morning Star, a building complex that Ron built next to the Pawnee Commons. They smoothed over their issues (thankfully) but that didn't mean that the two former best friends were back on the same team. In fact, it took a huge privacy invasion to convince Ron to abandon Gryzzl and team up with Leslie.
When Leslie and Ben realized that Gryzzl had been data mining peoples' phones and computers, in hopes of learning every single thing about users, they thought they finally found the tech companies' Achilles heel. The two dressed up "incognito" to find out just what it was that Gryzzl was learning from its users — which was just about everything — and they thought that they had found the missing piece of illegal information to take Gryzzl out of the running for the land owned by Sweetums. Unfortunately, it turns out that Gryzzl had worked data mining into their contract — a clause Ben missed because he was so excited about the Star Wars movie to come out.
Ron, shockingly, didn't really care at first that Gryzzl was doing this. He mentioned that because it was a private company it wasn't as bothersome to him (you know his big beef is with the government). But all of that changed when Ron received a delivery to his house, from Gryzzl, for his 4-year-old son, John. This was a huge deal breaker for Ron as it was a huge invasion of his son's privacy. And just like that, Ron Swanson and Leslie Knope were back together again.
Unfortunately, Gryzzl was one step ahead (or 125 million steps ahead), because they upped their land offer to Sweetums to $125 million, which caused the deal to be done. Just like that, Leslie's dream of a national park in Pawnee was gone. But that doesn't mean her and Ron were done fighting for the land.
After finding an old, crumby piece of town that could potentially be hip enough to be Gryzzl's new headquarters. After a little cleanup, the two were able to make the "historic Pawnee" area seem desirable, leading to Gryzzl accepting the offer and donating the Sweetums land to the government. Yes, you read that correctly, Leslie Knope has secured a national park in Pawnee, Ind. And all is right with the world.
Images: Ben Cohen/NBC
