3/29/2023 0 Comments Andy bernard![]() ![]() We watched him grow from goofy everyman, to hopeless romantic, to dashing, ideal husband, even when Pam doesn't realize how good she's got it. The women attending the panel nearly all swoon over Jim, who over the course of the series was painted as an infallible Adonis. But it also allowed the show's writers to address audiences' grievances about what had unfolded throughout the course of the series, and especially in those last few, subpar seasons. ![]() The clever plot device enabled writers to fast forward to everyone's happy(ish) endings-Erin finds her birthmother (Joan Cusack!), Andy is finally a viral video star (on less than ideal terms), Dwight and Angela are getting married. The finale was framed by the wedding, but more important was a reunion panel to discuss the documentary about Dunder Mifflin that filmed over the previous nine years and finally aired on PBS. Traditional, yes, but with unexpected genius. Can a sitcom's finale be more traditional than being a wedding episode? The discussion panel was a clever plot device that allowed the show's writers to address audiences' grievances, especially about those last few, subpar seasons. There were montages to remind us of how much characters have grown. Old favorites came back-hello, Mindy Kaling, BJ Novak, that stripper from the "Ben Franklin" episode, and, yes, even Steve Carell. Yet at the same time, it was a pleasingly traditional finale. A character fakes his death and no one much notices. There was a creepy scene in which Meredith reunited with, and then danced with, her stripper son. The episode opened with the harsh firings of two beloved characters. The Office finale, true to form, was the same. So The Office was always an unlikely concoction of weird and traditional elements. And in the middle of all this insanity, there was this achingly realistic Jim and Pam romance. The show's sitcom-y office hijinx came punctuated with instantly quotable one-liners. The people around him, too, made you care about them even as you laughed at them. But he was, as we want our heroes to be, easy to root for, and somehow worked as the lead. Michael Scott was the kind of character who is so unusual and buffoonish that he would typically be the second-tier supporting character. What The Office did so brilliantly in those early years was marry its odd new concept and tone with the standard expectations of a sitcom. Its documentary style was, at the time, untested.īut it had something big going for it: being really funny. It was this offbeat, sarcastic, unique thing starting up in the middle of an early-millennium crisis when some critics had declared sitcoms " dead." Steve Carell was an unproven lead. The single-camera comedy with a weird mockumentary format launched in a post- Friends, post- Everybody Loves Raymond time when comedies were still supposed to have laugh tracks, jokes were supposed to be understood by both young and old audiences, and new series were supposed to be led by stars. The Office never should've worked in the first place. I would just go to work every day, the weather was beautiful, and I had this nice kind of Zen time in my car between work and home.The Office's Great, Fatal Insight: Monotony Can Be Funny and started work on Офіс (2005), it was so pleasant. I think that had a lot to do with the fact that I was traveling every week, almost, and I was just in and out of the city constantly. All the hardships of city life start to outweigh the convenience and fun of city life. It's gonna stink, it's so hot in the summer". And then, my last couple years, I was traveling so much for those The Daily Show (1996) field segments that I really got kind of beaten down, and for the first time, I would land at LaGuardia and get this heavy feeling like, "Ugh, I have to deal with New York City again. And I kind of got into that center-of-the-universe mindset. There were definitely times when I thought, "I will never leave this place". I lived in New York for 10 years, I loved it, I never second-guessed it. (2009 - On living in L.A.) I'm kind of embarrassed by how quickly I adjusted to L.A.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |