The Office running thread

Yeah, that made me laugh. What'd he say... "I can hint no harder."

 

My favorite part was Michael's toast.

Between the office replying to his "I'm not one for speeches" with a "Since when?" and Michaels capping it with "Tastes like a battery", I was rolling during that part.

"This is the toast!"

Oh, and count me in with the crowd that says a clips slow being counted as a new episode is bullshit.

 

I gotta tell you. I love David Wallace. I really, really hope they don't get rid of him. And that new guy is a sap and boring. But I loved Christian Slater and Kathy Bates being part of the new company!

 

How about the typical corporate nothingness of the new owner's feel-good video?

 

And Michael being so impressed with it.

 

The corporate video with Christian Slater, and Michael's reaction to it, was pretty much the only funny part of the episode, because it rings so true ("Parks and Recreation," coincidentally, went pretty much to the same exact well this week). Even though it was over the top, I guess I also found Jim walking in on the daycare guy on the toilet to be funny, because it's a real-life embarrassing situation everyone can relate to.

But for the most part, the show has completely lost its fastball. It had a good run. I think the "jump the shark" moment was when Jan went to Jamaica a few seasons back with Michael. That's when the reality they had created kind of started to come apart in service to sitcom story lines. Ryan was way better as the straight guy temp. It's not even the same character any more, which was the same thing with Jan.

The subtlety that made the show great is completely lost now. Nothing's uncomfortable because there's no limits to what Dwight or Michael will do, for example, for the writers to get a cheap laugh. Go back and watch seasons 2 and 3. It's incredible. Only occasionally do they hit those high notes these days. The episode in Canada, with Oscar and Andy bonding, comes to mind.

 

I'm still waiting to see where they go with Ryan teaming up with Dwight to bring down Jim.

 

The daycare toilet incident (and the conversation after) was straight from the Seinfeld playbook, and run flawlessly.

The OJ water bottle stuff from great ... loved seeing Wallace outside the corporate element ... Pam's scissors reaction was tremendous.

 

Just rewatched it. Had a much bigger laugh at Jim's reaction to the Sabre video.

"You've just been shown a nonsensical video. You've probably wondering, 'what's going on?'...Well, you're not alone."

 

Stick a fork in this series. It's done. Time to wrap it up. I know I complain about this a lot, but the Ryan character is completely different than the one from the early seasons. Might as well be a different character completely. The writers are just cheating for cheap laughs now.

 

"From your description, Florida sounds like a colorful, lawless swamp."

Indeed it is ...

 

I will point out that it was really cool that they had Marc Webb, of (500) Days of Summer and the upcoming Spider-Man trilogy, direct the episode. That's an excellent get.

I thought this episode was definitely better than the last, but I agree that Ryan's character is so out there that I don't see the point in him anymore.