2013 has
been a tough one for me on the TV front so far. Sure, the midseason premieres
birthed a handful of promising new shows, like Hannibal, The Americans
and BBC America’s Orphan Black, that
I might enjoy once I actually get around to checking them out, but the
casualties have far outweighed the new recruits. In addition to Fringe
and 30
Rock ending in January, ABC unsurprisingly canceled Happy Endings, whose virtues I extolled
in my
last blog post, and two of the other shows I recently discovered – The Hour and Enlightened – were also given the boot. That’s not even counting
shows I don’t watch, like Dexter and Breaking Bad, which are both airing
their final seasons over this summer. Yet, arguably no show’s impending absence
will be more deeply felt by more people than The Office. After an astounding nine seasons, the NBC workplace
comedy mainstay, the show that broke new ground for American sitcoms with its
single-camera, mockumentary approach and paved the way for such hits as Parks and Recreation, Modern Family and perhaps even 30 Rock, is at last going off the air
forever with a one hour series finale at 9 P.M. tonight.
Unlike with the ends of Fringe and 30 Rock or the cancellations of those other shows, the close of The Office doesn’t particularly sadden
me; in fact, it feels more like a relief, like when you finally leave your
dead-end job so you can set off and do what you really want to do with your life. Let’s be real here: it’s been a
good long while since The Office was
actually, genuinely worth watching. At its best, the show was hilarious and
relatable with moments of real poignancy to balance out the sometimes almost
painful awkwardness, but somewhere around season 5, it took a nosedive into
mediocrity and, like most TV shows, especially sitcoms, that last for more than
a few seasons, gradually turned into a tired shadow of its former self. Still,
while it’s no longer at its best and probably should’ve ended much sooner, The Office was a hallmark of modern
television, and when the doors of Dunder Mifflin close for one last time
tonight, it will feel like the end of an era.
Looking back at the beginning of
the show, it’s hard to believe it managed nine seasons. Following the dry,
deadpan humor of its British predecessor, the pilot is virtually unwatchable
thanks in large part to a cringe-worthy moment where Michael jokingly fires
Pam, and it wasn’t until the second season, when the show broke further away
from the British version, that it discovered its own voice and began to soar.
And what a second season it was. Nearly every episode from the season opener, “The
Dundies”, to “Casino Night”, the memorable finale, was absolute gold as the
show found its heart and soul with the will-they-won’t-they romance between
John Krasinski’s Jim Halpert and Jenna Fischer’s Pam Beesly and Steve Carell, previously known for his
work on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,
emerged as the comedic backbone with his now-iconic performance as Michael
Scott.
Damn you, Emmys. Damn you all to hell.
As funny as The Office could be, it often worked best when it was able to mine
moments of incredible intimacy between the characters for real emotional
resonance, when it made us feel as though we were following their actual
day-to-day lives. In contrast to the 30
Rock joke machine or something like Community,
which revolved around genre experimentation and subverting pop culture tropes, The Office derived all its humor from
the characters at its center and the often mundane situations they found
themselves in. Thanks to a talented but decidedly unglamorous cast, audiences
could connect to Michael, Jim, Pam and co. because we can see ourselves – or at
least someone we know – in them. Though later seasons saw many characters
become more broad and less realistic, even minor characters like Kelly, Creed
or Toby seemed like people you might bump into on the street, and this
down-to-earth familiarity made it all the more easy to sympathize with and
care about them. We cringed and laughed at Michael’s antics not because he was
a cartoonish, bumbling idiot, but because, while he was often selfish, ignorant
and insensitive, his actions and mistakes came from a place that we can all identify
with: the desire to be liked, to feel wanted and appreciated, and the need to
feel worthwhile. What’s more, as hilariously, horrifyingly wrong as he could
be, he could frequently surprise both us and the other characters with his
heart, enthusiasm and modest ideals, as seen in such episodes as “Local Ad”, “Grief
Counseling” and “Business School”. Where most movies and TV shows indulge in
excess and obsess over the wealthy and famous, at its best, The Office celebrated the little
pleasures, challenges, disappointments, wonders, heartaches and triumphs of
everyday life. It reminded us that this can be enough.
And so, we come to the end of
nine years of Michael improvising and “That’s what she said” jokes, of Dwight showing
off his love of beets and martial arts “prowess”, of Jim and Pam flirting and
pranking Dwight, of Angela scowling in exasperation and Oscar making
smarter-than-thou quips, of Creed’s creepy yet amusing throwaway lines. The
past few episodes of this current season have tapped into our sense of
nostalgia with heart-tugging montages of Andy singing Sarah McLachlan’s “I Will
Remember You” and Pam reminiscing about falling in love with Jim. If the finale
continues in this vein, the show might end on a good note after all. Plus,
despite the entire cast’s emphatic assertions that Steve Carell won’t be there,
I get the sense that we might not have seen the last of our old friend, Michael
Scott.
So, cue that Scrantones opening credits
sequence one last time, grab a box of tissues and get ready to say adieu to
the employees of America’s favorite paper company. The
future is looking very bright indeed.
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