A post about the Office

I am probably the most vocal critic of the American Office in the world (Proove me wrong, I dare you). I love nothing more (not even breathing) than to pick apart each episode to find every possible flaw and logical and emotional disconnect that I can find in order to fuel my argument that the American Office is the most overrated show of all time, ever (except for MASH). It is a show that has forsaken its simple, but compelling premise of making insightful, subtle comedy about the tedium of working in an office into something that is about a laugh track away of being a Two and a Half Men lead in. The Office has become a bad show.

Or at least that's what I thought.

Then I saw an episode entitled "The Banker". This episode might be the single greatest work of comedy writing ever shown on television. Before the Christmas break, the gang at the Office were in a bit of trouble. Dunder Mifflin, which is a company traded on the New York Stock Exchange (Maybe you've heard of it?), but doesn't have a functional web site, was in for a big shake up. The corporate big-wigs were all getting fired and the future looked uncertain for our favorite Scranton workaholics. Office fans were full of questions heading into this weeks episode and the Office addressed all those questions with two simple, but powerful words: Clip. Show.

Were you wondering who was going to take David Wallace's position as the new CFO? Well, let me answer that question by showing clips of people saying "That's what she said".

Were you concerned about how Pam and Jim's baby is doing? Perhaps some footage of Jim playing basketball from the first season will allay your fears.

Is the Office going to continue to be better than the last two seasons, but nowhere near as good as the first three seasons? I think you'll find what you're looking for in these scenes of Michael hitting shelves with a fork lift.

I thought that we, as a society, were done with clip shows, especially in our sitcoms, especially in our sitcoms that are supposed to be one of the best shows on television (I don't know anyone who actually thinks this. I think The Office is becoming like the Simpsons; something that is beyond critical scorn, a television institution that is just watched and admired unquestioningly, despite how ridiculously bad it gets. Although, fortunately, The Office hasn't yet approached the level of mediocrity that the Simpsons has sunk to). I don't know why, but for some reason the idea of The Office doing a clip so is especially ludicrous to me. I think this is because in essence, the show is kind of clip show anyway. It's a highlight real of all the funny stuff that happens that day in the office. They don't need the excuse of an episode devoted to showing the "best of" every episode before it to make reference to previous episodes. When Michael says, "that reminds me of the time I wrecked my car", they cut to him wrecking his car. This kind of thing happens in every episode. Usually it's footage specific to that episode, but still, the concept is nothing new. However, because they rarely make references to things that happen in previous episodes (except for plot relevant stuff) and even rarer do they actually show footage from earlier episodes, the act of having an episode where they do nothing but show footage from old episodes is not only a break in the shows normal format, but incredibly lame.

In summation, clip shows are lazy and stupid and I'm glad the Office is starting to suck again, because it justifies my completely irrational hatred of it (which I think is just a reaction to it's popularity versus the popularity of the British version, which is far superior in almost every way, and I'm not just saying that because I'm an Anglophile, and also my general dislike of everything that is nearly universally liked).

Next time I'll talk about a book I just read called "The Time Traveler's Wife". Here's an excerpt:

"I thought that"

See you next time.