The Office running thread

I will say I loved Andy's framed newspapers.

I guess the side jokes are still great, but what they do with Dwight and Michael bring the show down.

 

I watched it again, this time with the wife, and upon further review, enjoyed it much more the second time around. Still doesn't come close to the wedding episode, but I chuckled a lot more this time.

 

Hilarious, but my favorite open was when Michael burned his foot on the George Foreman Grill.

 

Then stop watching. God freaking lord.

 

Wants to discuss comedy with Waylon:

 

But that's the show they created. The jokes worked within the context of that show. "The Office" was a different show that found comedy in realistic, relatable every day mundane situations. Then it got a wide audience and decided it had to get sillier and sillier to please them, apparently. And now it's not quite the same show. When Dwight starts throwing cross bows and axes out a car window, when Ryan plots against Jim with Dwight and starts wearing clothes as if he's trying out to be the keyboardist in Vampire Weekend, when a collection of slackers and clock watchers choreographs an elaborate, multi-part line dance down the aisle at their co-workers' wedding, then that's not the show they created.

 

Because I don't agree with every single direction the writers take it? That's a little drastic, don't you think?

I said I liked a lot of the child birth plot because it was classic "Office," i.e. finding humor in a realistic context. It was the first time I've ever seen a sitcom not rush a woman to the hospital upon the first contraction. And anyone who has ever had a child understands the pressure from the nursing staff to begin breast feeding immediately.

My issue is that they've taken too many of the characters off the deep end. They saw how popular Michael Scott and Dwight were, and miscalculated that if they gave the audience more, more, more crazy antics, out of more, more, more characters, the show would be better.

Well, maybe they didn't miscalculate if the idea was to broaden the appeal. Clearly people love slapstick. I just personally wish this show hadn't sold out to this degree, that's all.

 

I just get tired of how EVERY SINGLE tv show thread on this board degenerates into people saying "It's really lost its fastball."

I can't imagine spending the kind of time you have bitching about a TV show that I actually apparently still liked enough to watch every week.

 

I can't imagine getting that bent out of shape about someone else making some salient points about the direction the writers have taken a television sitcom. It's not like I'm just griping broadly about it. I have specific issues with certain aspects of the show, and I think they are legitimate issues. I'm not a slapstick fan. Some people are. Go watch a few "Season 2" and "Season 3" episodes of "The Office." Then watch a Season 6 episode. Not even close.

Am I required to love every single aspect of every single show that I watch? I liked the child birth stuff, as I've reiterated. It was realistic. It seems like they're trying to serve two masters right now - the people who enjoy the mundane comedy of real life (i.e. brand new father Jim thinking you could squeeze milk out of breasts like doing a pectoral exercise), and the people who enjoy over-the-top slap stick (i.e. Michael driving a car into a lake or Dwight kicking a bridesmaid in the head during a completely unrealistic line dance at a wedding).

 

Salient points? Maybe in you opinion, but when people disagree with your opinion, you immediately say they are wrong.

For example, when Dwight threw the axe out of his car, I thought it was a classic Dwight moment. It's who he has been since early on in the show. Remember when he hid weapons all around the office in case he needed to defend himself, and he ended up using the pepper spray on Roy when he was going to punch Jim for kissing Pam?

How about Ryan plotting against Jim. Nope, not a new concept. He "plotted" with Toby when he was at corporate because Jim went to his boss about Ryan's ideas for the web site. He called Jim in and told him he needed to quit wasting time. Then when Jim started doing well again, he found other reasons to criticize him ... like when he made a big sale, Ryan immediately asked if he'd put it on the web site. Plus, Ryan went to corporate, an environment sure to change anyone. That's called character progression.

 

Dwight hid the weapons in Season 4, which is the season in which the show's decline really started in earnest. In fact, that episode, "Survivor Man," was one of the first in which I recall rolling my eyes about the absurdity of it. And that included, in particular, the sequence in which Dwight hid all the weapons. Pure slapstick for a cheap laugh and one of the moments in which the Dwight character began to turn into a parody of himself.

The pepper spray bit I bought. Completely realistic that someone like Dwight would have a pepper spray or Mace container at his desk. But not a cross bow. And not tossing an cache of weapons out of his car in front of a police officer.

And you're correct. Ryan has always had it in for Jim a little bit, dating back to Jim seeming to get every single girl (Katie, Karen, Pam). His collusion with Toby as corporate manager was believable. He was being a jerk within the system, and it was true to his character as a self-aware straight man with an asshole streak.

But if you don't understand that there is a huge difference between finding ways to make an underling's life hell and participating in a "diabolical plot" with a co-worker you have always considered to be a total doofus, including an idea to replicate the plot of the movie "Saw," then there's probably not much I can do to convince you otherwise.

It's not "character progression." It's cheating by the writers. I understand and have acknowledged that some people enjoy slapstick, over-the-top humor. But I wish people would acknowledge that this is what this is now, rather than trying to swear that the characters are true to their earlier incarnations. I completely buy Michael hosting a "Dundee" award show at Chili's or trying to crash women's day at the office or thinking his birthday is more important than a co-worker's cancer screen. I don't buy Michael and Dwight holding a pizza boy hostage, or Dwight believing that a Ben Franklin impersonator is the real Ben Franklin.

 

I've sung the praises of The Office a lot over the years on this board, and wagged my finger Dikembe Mutombo-style at people who whined that they didn't like it that much anymore because it wasn't as funny as it once way, but I'm going to speak up in at least partial agreement with Waylon here. The Office definitely has drifted somewhat in tone, especially the last few years, but if it hadn't done that, we wouldn't be working on the seventh season at this point. It would have been canceled after two seasons. (Maybe even one. NBC flirted with axing it after one season.) I think it still tries to strike a balance of slap-stick and subtlety -- with a dose of social commentary thrown in, since it's really more of a dark comedy -- but the scale has tipped a bit too much toward slap stick in recent seasons. I think losing Micahel Shur hurt this show a lot, and you can see how much he influenced the tone of the series in the first four seasons when you watch Parks and Rec, which is a great show that has really come into its own the past season.

The transformation of Ryan's character doesn't bother me at all. I know a lot of people who evolved into giant douchebags post-college. And the wedding thing didn't bother me at all either. As discussed on the original thread, that episode fit in with who the characters were because Michael has always viewed love through a lens of pop culture. (And if you go back and watch it, the scenes weren't choreographed beyond what anyone could pick up in a few viewings of that YouTube video. The only people who took it to another level were Dwight and Pam's sister, which made sense since you can totally imagine Dwight insisting it be "Done right, damn it!" if he was going to participate.) That episode worked within the universe The Office had established, with most of the co-workers needing their own moment in the sun at this major event they'd all been emotionally invested in. The look on Steve Carrell's face at the end, an expression of genuine joy, I thought helped ground the whole thing.

But ... Dwight's wackiness is constantly too much for me. I love Rainn Wilson, but the episode where he spent the entire time at David Wallace's house testing the structural soundness of the place was, for me, the JTS moment for that character. I actually laughed at him throwing swords and axes out of his car. That was funny. Dwight has always been a hard character to write for because the line between "funny" and "absurd and unrealistic" is pretty thin with him. Giving a speech line Benito Mossolini? Spying on Oscar when he takes a sick day (and missing that he's gay)? Both in the second season.

But Dwight destroying Jim and Pam's kitchen was too much for me this week.

Here is the issue Waylon: You and I (and others) want an Office that's not commercially possible. Once the show worked its way through the banalities and absurdities of office life -- which was probably about three seasons -- it had to broaden its appeal. And to be honest, while I think your point is legitimate, it's probably not a pure as you remember it. Ever "Jim and Pam play a prank on Dwight" cold open is slapsticky, and most of those happened in the first two seasons before Jim left for Hartford. Michael grilling his foot in "The Injury" is slapsticky and ridiculous, and it's one of the funnier eps of Season 2.

I think the show has evolved about as well as it could have, all things considered. They actually allowed Jim and Pam to stay together and have a happy relationship without he usually "break-up, get-back-together" bullshit that every sitcom previously had done to death. And I think Carell and Wilson can still shine in subtle moments when given the right material, as evidenced by "Business Trip" last season and "Prince Family Paper." There are still smart, subtle moments in every episode, but yes, it has become a broader-based comedy and there is no shame in lamenting what it once was. But that kind of writing is really difficult to sustain, both critically and commercially, especially now where we process and analyze everything at warp speed. I remember feeling like the final two seasons of Seinfeld were absolutely painful, in part because Jason Alexander (with obvious help from the writers) played George so over the top, it was embarrassing. I fear that may happen with Dwight and Michael. But I'll watch to the end either way.

The baby-switch was my favorite part of this episode, other than Oscar saying they should bring a Thesaurus to the hospital.