Who the hell is this guy?
I know it’s the biggest football game of the year and you would assume all posts would be centered around that. But then tonight (Thursday) happened and my irritation boiled over to a point that I needed to make a quick rant about the hour long Office-a-thon on Thursday night. I have been watching the Office for years now, and while I didn’t watch every episode the very second it came out, I have now to this point seen every episode of every season. I saw the show hit spots where you wondered how they could keep it going, only to have it bounce back and come up with new ways to keep pulling you back in (Jim moving away from Scranton and the intro of Karen Fillipelli, one of my more favorite stretches of episodes just because she is awesome).
Then Michael Scott (Steve Carrell) left the show, and I immediately began to worry that the show should just end with Michael giving his one final “that’s what she said,” and riding into the sunset. But it didn’t. Oh man……it didn’t. And since that exit we have been left with a downward spiral of surprisingly abysmal fill-ins for Carrell from typically funny guys like Will Ferrell and James Spader. The Office kind of got Eric Foreman’d with the loss of Michael Scott (stay with me here). Michael Scott may not have been everyone’s favorite character on the office (the cult following around Dwight Schrute, the pranksters of Jim and Pam being the more popular choices), but because he became so identifiable with the show, the loss of the character put the show so far back it never really recovered. (This why I called it getting Eric Foreman’d. Foreman, Topher Grace in real life, was probably EVERYONE’S least favorite character of the cast on That 70′s show. He was whiny, annoying, and most of his jokes stem off the other “funnier” characters. But as soon as he left the show, That 70′s Show went from golden material to shit overnight.) The Office turned into the awkward situation where it was one of the last cash cows standing on a network that had a string of miserable failures. NBC COULDN’T let The Office stop running, even though it so desperately needed to, and those of us who are Office loyalists will stick with it until the end. (which is exactly why NBC keeps it on the air. We will continue watching to see it end, putting ourselves through 30 minutes of eye rolling every Thursday night.)
Which brings us to where we are now, the show that should have ended two years ago that still has a couple laugh out loud moments during the episodes but for the most part is pulling out a bunch of crappy gimmicks to try to keep story lines going for 24 episodes (can you believe we still have 11 more to go? Good Lord!). After last season’s dud, when I saw they were coming back I was worried. When I saw it was for 24 episodes, I was very worried, as I was hoping they would at least get the message and make it 13 episodes or something. The last couple episodes have confirmed my deepest worries, as the writers have turned to the biggest eye-roll story line of all, which is bringing the camera crew into the episodes. The mockumentary/confessional style was pretty much piloted and perfected by The Office, and it continues to be wildly successful on TV shows across the map (Modern Family, Parks and Rec, etc.). NEVER, not ever, once, have I been watching one of these shows and thought, “hm, I wonder who is filming this and what their story is?” The one on one confessionals that have been such a pivotal part of the show have always just served as an essential way to get inside the character heads and give them a moment on their own to shine. If you want to know, I often forget until I start to think back on it that this was supposed to be some kind of documentary on a small market paper company.
But wait, hold on, what? The first episode kicks off by having these camera men talk to Pam and Jim during a confessional? What camera men? And then….wait, hold on, one of them jumps into a scene mid way through the season to comfort a downtrodden Pam? Okay, but that’s where it’s going to end at least. It was a gimmick, not one I approve of, but one that made a very real moment (people get in arguments just like that, especially when away from each other, ALL the time, so it was believable) and add a little more “realism” to it (even though I thought it accomplished the opposite). But hold the fuck on, you’re telling me they’re going to continue going with this shit? This coincidentally extremely handsome camera man is going to playfully flirt with Pam by bopping her with the boom mic then be her knight in shining armor to save her from a crazed warehouse worker? This is such an aggravating choice by the writers I’m having trouble really putting into words how wrong I think it is. So I’ll just list off the problems/questions/dumbness this plot gimmick has brought to mind.
1. Hold on….you really want me to believe that dudes have for real been following these people around in Scranton, Pennsylvania at a small-time paper company for NINE YEARS?
2. Who the hell is funding this thing? Even the billionaires who own NBC would never continue to green-light a nine year documentary on a bunch of weirdos who really don’t ever change.
3. So, do these people in The Office eventually get to watch this documentary like we do? Because they will be really embarrassed at how dumb they look.
4. Why haven’t outsiders been asking questions when interacting with the Dunder Mifflin people if there’s a camera crew following them around? And if they explained this is part of a documentary, why would so many strange situations continue to happen to them with outsiders?
5. Wait, which one of these creepy mother fuckers was sitting in the front seat of people’s cars with them interviewing them in the mornings?
6. Philly’s kind of a far drive to follow Jim and Darryl around don’t you think? Or any of the other ludicrous destinations these people must have gone to?
7. Actually, there are hundreds more of these. So let’s just stop with this one. You want me to believe that Pam, who has been the solid ROCK of this show (along with Jim, but Pam may be even more stable) is going to get into some potential romantic tension with the boom mic guy that none of us have seen until the final 13 episodes. Give me a break, it’s ridiculously unbelievable.
And I’m a sucker. I’m loyal to my shows, even if they sort of jump the shark towards the end. I want to see an ending to this story about these characters I have come to know, but that doesn’t mean I can’t bitch about the shitty quality and the fact that it should have ended two years ago along the way. There are those so caught up in The Office kool-aid and are so loyal to it that they refuse to see that the show has been on a steady decline and recently took a giant leap from a cliff. Who knows, maybe the writers save it and make it very engaging to finish off, but I just have my doubts. I just want some closure to this show. Jim’s company makes it, Pam moves to Philly with him and accepts a little change, Erin gets with the new guy (another thing to face is this show awkwardly got better as soon as Ed Helms left), Dwight keeps being Dwight and probably ends up back with Angela, etc. Just put this show and its viewers out of their misery already. Please NBC.
