After a seventh season that jumped forward in time to the year 2017, setting up innumerable jokes about a potential future where Elton John owns Chick-fil-A and the Cubs finally win the World Series, the NBC comedy wrapped up by looking forward as much as it looked back. Since its final season was essentially a story about the future, it is perhaps fitting so much of it revolved around a critique of tech culture, and how the sheer financial weight of companies like Facebook and Google bend the world around them in damaging ways that often contradict the sleek optimism of their products.

When we returned to Pawnee at the beginning of the seventh season, Gryzzl—the vowel-deficient Internet company Ben (Adam Scott) courted for free Wi-Fi (think Google Fiber)—had set up a corporate office in the small Indiana town. And although throughout the season Gryzzl lavished Pawnee's citizens with wireless Internet, smartphones, and holographic tablets, their presence also came with a price. The influx of tech cash sent real estate prices through the roof and threatened to strip out all the charm that made Leslie Knope call Pawnee "the greatest town in America." 

The flood of Gryzzl money also sets up the central conflict of the season, where Leslie (Amy Poehler) wants to turn 25 square miles of forest in the southern Indiana foothills into a national park—the same site where Gryzzl wants to build their new Midwest headquarters, offering a $90 million bid that she has no way to match.