The End of the Office

I just finished watching “Date Night” with Steve Carrell and Tina Fey and I’m only slightly saddened to say that I really enjoyed it. Why “slightly saddened”? Because the more successful a film career that Carrell has, the greater the odds that he won’t renege from his decision to leave the cast of “The Office” after this coming season. And when Carrell leaves, I’m of the opinion that the show itself should end.

There was a time when I might have argued that if Carrell’s Michael Scott left Dunder Mifflin-Scranton for greener pastures (like a job at Corporate or a relationship with the former HR Rep Holly), the cast of characters that inhabited The Office was strong enough to carry on. Certainly there was the opportunity to make Jim and Pam’s romantic storyline, the bizarre love triangle of Angela-Andy-Dwight and the on-again, off-again flirtation between Ryan and Kelly interesting enough to keep viewers tuned in, to say nothing of the quirky characters of Stanley, Phyllis, Creed, Kevin, Oscar, Meredith and Toby and Darryl and the warehouse crew.

I would go so far as to argue that there was a point in Season 2 where Michael Scott was pretty far down on my list of reasons for enjoying the show (behind Jim/Pam, Dwight, and depending on the episode, Kevin and the Accountants and even the drollness of Stanley).

However, somewhere along the way, Jim and Pam seemed to stop being all that important to the show. I understand they fell in love, got married and even had a child but save for these “big episodes” of their wedding and the first half of the birth of their child, they seemed to be fading to the outskirts of the show.

Dwight and, more and more, Andy were helping to bring the funny, but really the Office stopped being about “An American Workplace” and became being “The Steve Carrel Semi-Comedy Half-Hour”. And while there’s no doubt Carrell was always the star of the show, the Office lost that sense that it was an ensemble cast, with everyone, from Jim to Creed to Meredith being able to steal the odd scene from time to time. Heck, during the last couple of seasons, Kelly and Ryan are featured more in webisodes and seem to be on camera just to make what I can only assume are in-jokes that none of the rest of us are getting.

And while Carrell, with the aid of his co-stars, certainly carried the show during the early seasons, when the show began to be as Michael Scott-oriented as it did from Season 4 on, it got less and less funny. Instead of Michael being the driving force that ushered the rest of the cast into humourous situations (The Dundees, Beach Day, etc) Michael seemed to be going it alone, with the rest of the cast just there to shake their heads and look uncomfortable, often mirroring what the audience was feeling at home.

And the problem now becomes just how big a void Carrell will leave when he departs the show at teh end of this season. There are rumours abounding as to who will replace Michael Scott as the Regional Manager of Dunder Mifflin, everyone from Ricky Gervais (who created and played a similar role on the original British version of the Office) to Jenna Fischer (who plays Pam). My vote is...

NO ONE!

I believe that in trying to replace Michael Scott will seem like little more than a stop-gap manoeuvre, a ploy by the producers to keep the show going when everyone will realize it should have ended with Carrell’s departure.

Not that anyone even remotely related to the show would ever read this blog, but if I could give them some advice, it would be to start writing towards the end of the Office, let Michael be happy with Holly, let Pam and Jim leave Dunder Mifflin for more rewarding careers and a happy family life, make Ryan realize that he’s in love with Kelly (but in a funny way), let Andy and Erin be the goofy but cute couple they can be, let Stanley retire, let the rest of the cast do whatever looks best for them...

...and let Dwight and Angela be together so they can become dictators of a small island off the coast of Africa.

(Okay, that last one might be hard to do..but you never know.)

Face the facts that somewhere after Jim told Pam he was in love with her, the Office jumped the shark. (I could add something about the consequences of such actions in real life that tries to be funny but comes off as bitter here, but those who know will understand and those who don’t won’t ask for an explanation.)

The Office will go down as one of the best sitcoms in modern television history...but it already has become known, even by fans, as uneven and past its prime. Don’t make things any harder by trying to hold on (“That’s what she said!”) after the lead leaves...as they said when Ric Flair retired from WWE... “Leave the memories alone!”

...

P.S.

YES! Totally managed to get a "That's what she said" reference in there!!!!