OMD's Pop-culture corner: Parks and loss

With the final chapter closed on Parks and Recreation, now seems as good a time as any to talk at length about the show, which I fully expect to happen in the comments section below. One of the show's hallmarks was its stellar writing, of course, and as the show's co-creator was one of the founders of Fire Joe Morgan it makes a lot of sense that Parks would have its legions of fans here.

For anyone as into the minutae of who works behind the scenes on our favorite television shows as a small cross-section of the readership here is, there was more Parks and Recreation-related grieving done in the past week than the simple coping with losing a fictional cast of colorful characters.

It's been just over a week since the huge bummer of Harris Wittels's death.

Most of you probably don't know who Harris Wittels was, or at least didn't before last week. The comedy community and its nerdier of followers did, though. In addition to being the permastoned animal control worker, Harris, on Parks and Recreation, Harris Wittels was a staff writer on the show. He also wrote on Eastbound and Down and The Sarah Silverman Program. He was a brilliant stand-up, did sketch/improv work at UCB, co-hosted the Analyze Phish podcast with Scott Aukerman, and appearing numerous times on a slew of other comedy podcasts including Comedy Bang Bang, You Made it Weird with Pete Holmes, and WTF with Marc Maron.

Of course, I didn't know him. I'd guess none of us did. Those who did certainly had more to say, and it would mean more coming from them, so feel free to read Aziz's heartfelt goodbye, or listen to any of the number of podcasts (this Monday's Comedy Bang Bang would make sense).

I'm bummed, though. He was a funny man.