Once upon a time, NBC had a comedy lineup that looked a little something like this: Community, 30 Rock, The Office, Parks and Recreation. That’s a murderer’s row of sitcoms that were consistently brilliant. Each one of these shows will end up in the comedy museum of all-time greats. They will influence an entire generation of fans and writers. Mission accomplished? Not for NBC. Since the ratings behemoth Friends went off the air in 2004, NBC has tried and failed to recreate the magic of Jennifer Anniston gallivanting in Manhattan. Instead, they accidentally green-lit a handful of low-rated, critically acclaimed gems with incredibly loyal fan bases. Each show made money, but not enough to satisfy NBC, the network that once ruled the world. Tomorrow night, Parks and Recreation will air its series finale, and the NBC comedy empire will come to an end.

NBC’s dedication to create a comedy “hit” has resulted in a long line of one-season blunders. Rather than try and build something that would at the very least command some respect, NBC aimed low (“Not low enough,” Chuck Lorre said, laughing atop his pile of money.) The premises for these shows are abysmal. It’s confounding that anyone thought it would make a good television show. To name a few, in alphabetical order: 1600 Penn (“What if a dysfunctional family…” a young, hopeful writer said. “Lived in the White House?”), Animal Practice (“It’s like Scrubs, but with a monkey!”), Bad Judge (“What if there was a hard partying, tough-as-nails judge…that was a GIRL?!”), Free Agents (“What if two PR executives divorce something something Hank Azaria?”). You get the idea.

Look, networks fuck up all the time. They order terrible pilots to series. It’s been this way for a very long time. But NBC’s dedication to consistent failure has a lot to do with their quest for ratings – their desire to create a “hit” on the scale of The Big Bang Theory, or perhaps make it 1997 again through science or magic [1]. But in the fractured landscape of television viewing, hits are becoming increasingly rare. It’s become impossible to predict [2] what will become a ratings giant. The best you can hope for is a lineup that NBC had; the one seen above. The low rated[3] misfit shows breaking the mold for what single-camera comedy could be after Arrested Development set sail.

For what it’s worth, NBC (usually) gave it their best for each show under their wing. At every opportunity, they could have cancelled these shows (and they often came close to doing so pretty much every season), but were wise enough to keep them on the air. The Office, the closest thing to a Must See TV ratings juggernaut, went on for nine seasons[4]. 30 Rock, the brainchild of Tina Fey and her madcap writers, called it quits after seven seasons. It survived by being a critical darling, nominated for Best Comedy Series for every season it was eligible at the Emmys. It would win its first three seasons, along with a bunch of other Emmys. Community, the most neglected of the bunch for pushing the limit on what you get away with on a sitcom, got axed last season, but was picked up by Yahoo! Screen. It never got the Emmy love that 30 Rock, Parks and The Office consistently grabbed. What it did do was build a cult of fans so loyal it would help the show get to ninety-seven episodes – an absurd amount for a show that once spent twenty-two minutes around a study table playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Which leaves us with Parks and Recreation, which bows out tomorrow night. I defend NBC because here’s a show that’s about as bland on paper as every other sitcom dud they’ve produced in the past ten years (“What if Amy Poehler starred in a knockoff of The Office? And there’s parks and recreation and stuff like that?”) They produced six episodes for the first season. All six of them are pure crap. Seriously, go on Netflix/steal your friend’s Netflix account and watch any one of the first six episodes. You’ll find a tonally inconsistent mess that often feels like a train wreck in slow motion. A waste of potential. I remember watching the pilot for this show years and years ago and dismissing it. I didn’t even bother with the second episode. I jumped ship immediately and never came back. A lot of sitcoms struggle in their first few episodes, trying to find out what works and what doesn’t work. This, however, seemed like a complete disaster. At any point during this process, NBC wouldn’t have been yelled at for canceling it and moving on to the next one. But it was renewed. And that’s when Parks and Recreation as we know it was born.

Sometime during the third season, a friend told me it was the best sitcom on television, and I laughed in his face. The joke was on me. I re-watched some of the first season and my reaction was the same, and I stand by the fact that pretty much nothing about it really works. But by the beginning of its second season, the show was growing in leaps and bounds. The tone changed, becoming a more fast-paced hybrid of The Office and 30 Rock with the emotional core of the former still at the center. They called an audible on the character direction of Leslie Knope, going from dumb, naive and positive to smart, dedicated and positive – a crucial difference. They figured out what to do with the incredible supporting cast. Andy and April are fleshed out. Tom gets a personality. Ron Fucking Swanson. Mark Brendanawicz (holy shit, remember him?) is the weak spot but leaves by the end of the second season and is replaced by Chris Traeger (Rob Lowe) and Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott.) The third season is one of the best sitcom seasons ever. And the train kept rolling for another four seasons.

It ends tomorrow night. After a wonky sixth season that was on the risk of jumping the shark, the seventh and final season, only thirteen episodes, have been a celebration. It echoes 30 Rock, which literally had the same trajectory, with a sixth season suggesting steam was low and a seventh season that brings it on home with episodes as good as anything the show has ever produced. When Parks finishes tomorrow, I will be thankful it got to run for seven seasons. It could have been killed in its infancy, but was allowed to keep going. But NBC once again dropped the ball on the only thing it had going for them. They burned off this season with two episodes per night – basically, to make room for The Voice. You’d think that NBC might want to throw a commercial or two during the Super Bowl for a show that happens to feature some dude that was in two of the biggest Hollywood blockbusters of 2014 (hint, his name is Chris Pratt, the future’s inevitable Indiana Jones and, God willing, the star of a Burt Macklin movie.) But (k)nope. “Fuck it,” NBC said. “Let’s just let the old guard die quickly so we can air more pilots. Maybe someone will think it’s a re-run of Frasier.”

What comes next for NBC, I do not know. There’s not a single sitcom currently airing worth a damn. In fact, there are only five sitcoms on the NBC slate [5][6]. Parks is about to end. About a Boy is already cancelled. Marry Me is on the brink of cancellation. Undateable and Welcome to Sweden will air second seasons sometime this year. And after that, a new crop of mediocre pilots will arrive. None of them will be any good, because NBC has practically given up on comedy. They’re chasing a golden age that is no longer there. It’s a once-great network that now has nothing to work with. One of these days, they may start to miss having something rather than nothing.

P.S. This may be tangential, but it’s worth noting that Harris Wittels, an executive producer of Parks and Recreation, died this week of an apparent overdose. He was one of my favorite comedy writers. I had the pleasure of meeting him briefly once, and he couldn’t have been kinder. Check out the episodes of Parks and Eastbound & Down that he wrote. Check out his Twitter feed, his Vine account, Harris’ Foam Corner on Comedy Bang! Bang!. All of it is sublime. His loss is a huge blow to everyone who loves comedy. This dude was just getting started. Please check out Aziz Ansari’s dedication to him. It’s worth the read. It contains a story about Harris that ends with quite possibly one of the funniest jokes I’ve ever seen in my entire life (it’s the e-mail one. For the love of God, check it out.) I miss him already. RIP.http://www.azizisbored.tumblr.com/post/111613105129

[1] http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/i/2011/01/00/nbc-chart.jpg

[2] Proof of this is Empire, currently airing its freshman season on FOX. While it’s not a comedy, it’s a musical drama from Lee Daniels starring that black guy that kind of looks like Cuba Gooding Jr. if you squint hard enough. It’s really soapy and tries too hard to be provocative. I have zero idea why it’s so huge. It’s the first primetime broadcast in the past twenty-three years to experience a growth in ratings (fifteen million and rising, though this will eventually fall and plateau to something around eight to ten million.)

[3] It should be noted that while these shows were low rated, they survived because the 18-49 demographic was always superior to other shows airing in the same timeslot, even while it was getting outmatched in total viewers. In other words, young people watched the show, young people have money, young people buy things, old executives are happy.

[4] Two more than it should have after Steve Carrel left, but that’s neither here nor there.

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programs_broadcast_by_NBC

[6] NBC actually had six sitcoms, but the most promising one, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, created by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock (!!) was sold to Netflix for a myriad of reasons. This could make an entire article in and of itself about how pilots work and are scheduled, but to make your life easier, NBC sold it because their hands are tied by a lack of success. Robert Greenblatt, NBC’s entertainment chair wrote to The New York Times in a feature regarding the subject: “Nothing would have made us happier than to have Tina’s next show after 30 Rock, but I also would rather see it go to Netflix than put her in a position to not succeed due to our limitations at the moment.”