Tonight marks the last Parks and Recreation episode for Ann (Rashida Jones) and Chris (Rob Lowe), who are moving from Pawnee to Michigan to have their baby and start their new lives together. Jones and Lowe are both starring in new pilots, their characters have been written gracefully out of the show—it all seems very amicable and even logical, for a show headed into its seventh season and in need of new stories. People come and go, to every thing there is a season, etc. etc.

But what will we lose when we lose not just Ann and Leslie’s friendship, but Chris and Ben’s too? Ever since it found its footing in Season 2, Parks and Recreation has been one of the most earnest and thoughtful celebrations of friendship in pop culture. The show first started to become itself when Ann stopped thinking of Leslie as an annoying bureaucrat and embraced her as a friend; Season 2’s “Practice Date,” in which Ann helps Leslie work out her anxieties about a first date with gentle cop Dave (Louis C.K.), was an early demonstration of the show’s knack for being kind and devastatingly funny at the same time. (It starts around 2:52 below)

At the end of Season 2 came Chris and Ben, the state auditors who started off as a new set of antagonists for Leslie and evolved into another bedrock set of friends at the show’s center. The neat logic of Leslie pairing off with Ben and Ann pairing off with Chris masks just how beautifully complicated each character’s presence on the show could be; Ben brought a straight man’s arched eyebrow to the crazier scenes in a kinder way than Paul Schneider’s Mark Brendanawicz ever did, while Chris’s unbridled enthusiasm could be used for punchlines (“Stop pooping”), plot obstacles (Ron’s swivel desk), or television’s best catchphrase. Ben and Chris probably ought to have driven each other crazy. Instead, they’re a perfect team, and adorably excited about it.

By getting together, Ann and Chris found their Leslie and Ben equivalents in love; Ann can roll her eyes a bit at Chris the same way she does Leslie, and Chris can buck up Ann when she’s in a Ben-style slump. The perfection of that dynamic really came out last week, when Ann went to everyone else to complain about her pregnancy pains until Chris learned to say those two magic words: “That sucks.” Chris and Ann aren’t the central couple of the show (that’s Leslie and Ben), or the goofiest (April and Andy), or the weirdest (Jerry and his wife, played by Christie Brinkley), or even the most low-key (Ron and Diane, a.k.a. Xena Warrior Princess, a.k.a. Lucy Lawless). But Ann and Chris are the romantic embodiment of the friendship dynamic that Parks and Recreation has so deftly celebrated over the years, combining a cheerleader and a skeptic but allowing them both to be unfailingly kind, generous, and funny.

Ann and Chris are moving on to a great life together, and Jones and Lowe are moving on to high-profile TV shows; both have proven in the last few years how funny and endearing they can be playing characters who could easily have become dull alternatives to the other weirdos who live in Pawnee. But we’re going to miss Ann and Leslie getting drunk. We’re going to miss Chris’s finger guns and jogging in place. We’re going to miss Ann talking Leslie out of bad ideas, Chris convincing Ben to open himself up to people, and some of the strongest, most authentic friendships on television, period. Most of all, we’re going to miss watching Ann and Chris’s ridiculously attractive baby grow up. Here’s hoping for a visit sometime during sweeps week next season.