Now, I have to confess, I started very late in the
series. In fact, I wasn’t a dedicated
viewer until after Steve Carrell left, so I started without any attachment to
the Michael Scott antics. And despite
what everybody else says, the show does not suffer for it. If anything, it proved that the show didn’t
depend on a single person but was great because everybody involved was great.
I have since seen almost every episode from the
beginning and am current with this whole Farewell Season. And it is succeeding in a major way. I can tell because of how bothered I am by
the current state of Jim and Pam’s marriage.
Jim and Pam’s romance was always the heart of the
show. The first three seasons were all
about getting them together despite their engagements and other
relationships. And then they got married
and had a kid (which was the best episode of the whole show, period) and then
they had another.
Since then, they’ve had some personal struggles but
no major challenges with each other or that both of them were facing. Now that Jim has gotten them into his mid-life
crisis and desire to get rich quick, their marriage and livelihood are in
trouble. This is a real situation that
does come up a lot in life, I totally understand where both are coming from and
I sure hope to see how the two of them get through it. How this resolves determines how The Office will be remembered for years
after it’s over.
The rest of my thoughts on the final season so far:
last season, Angela married the gay senator and had a child. Now, I’ve never liked Angela. She and Dwight had a Hot Lips Hoolihan and
Frank Burns relationship (although they hid it better than the M*A*S*H couple did) but long after their
breakup, where Hot Lips evolved into a strong, wonderful character, Angela has
stayed the same snippy, egotistical twit she was from the beginning. But it was nice to see her happy because she
has had so few opportunities.
This season, Oscar is having an affair with the
senator. This sucks because I’ve always
liked Oscar; he always handled Michael’s insanities with the most class, had the
most social graces of anybody in that office, and was always sort of an
underdog at work, which everybody loves.
Now I hope he is miserable and lonely the rest of his life. Now I want Angela to get a divorce, get
custody of the child and move out; nothing humanizes a character more than
having them be betrayed. (Of course,
some will say that she’s only getting her just desserts from the Dwight-Andy
triangle, but you know? the last sentence still stands. That was the moment that both Dwight and Andy
felt like people to me.)
I used to root for Andy and Erin being
together. That drove the last season
almost the way Jim and Pam’s romance did the first half of the show (though not
nearly as powerful.) Now, I want them to
split and the new intern to get Erin.
He’s screwed up their relationship way too much now.
Dwight has
developed about as far as he can go.
He’s still a dork but he’s a likeable dork now.
Nellie was a one-shot appearance during the “Boss
Interview” episode, but she was the second-most memorable one. Unlike Robert California, (who became the CEO
last season), she became more than her interview quirk. She’s honestly a better boss than Andy,
though without the title, and has integrated herself so well into The Office that I can’t imagine the show
without her anymore. This season she has
grown into the Mama Bear of these people and I hope that that develops even
more till the end of the show.
It’s kind of sad to see Mindy Kaling and B.J. Novak
to leave the show, (especially since Kaling’s new show is so boring), but their
characters had gone as far as they could go, and their departure was just a
repeat of the same tired joke.
Overall, I hope it ends with a bang. Nine seasons of air time puts them in the
same league of other sitcoms like Friends,
Everybody Love Raymond, Seinfeld, etc., and they deserve no less
a finale than any of those other shows did.
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