Tag Archives: Jim & Pam

The Office: Labor Pains

Back in October The Office invited us to Pam and Jim’s wedding, an hour-long special event that had been hyped on NBC and in our hearts, and against unlikely odds that episode actually mostly succeeded.  It wasn’t a runaway success, but considering the expectations and the level of difficulty, it was generally a victory.  That episode was really the first part of a Pam/Jim seminal event season, with the bookend to their wedding being the birth of their first child.  However, since the wedding The Office has kind of skid off the tracks.  So then with last night’s episode, another hour-long affair, I was hoping that this would be the moment that they right the ship.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.  And whereas the wedding was a modest achievement, this felt like an unsettling disappointment.  What should have been a special, moving episode, and a return to form, turned out to be a case study of the show’s recent flaws.  Everything that has been frustrating as of late was front and center in “The Delivery.”

Read on: Who are these people and what have they done with Dunder Mifflin Scranton?

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Filed under Analysis, Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam, Must See TV

Dear ‘The Office:’ You’re Making it Harder and Harder to Keep Defending You

First reaction to last night’s “episode:”

What the fuck was that?

A clip show? Really? Really???

Perhaps I would not have be so indignant if the episode had was a celebration of a milestone number of episodes. Or if it arrived in conjunction with another episode wholly comprised of wholly original content.

But for this excuse of an episode to arrive after a 5 week hiatus is rather insulting. I feel used, played, betrayed. And if they were going to start 2010 with a retrospective, why not do it last week when all the other Thursday night sitcoms returned with new episodes? Instead, The Office totally sat out the week, let 30 Rock turn in two new episodes, and still phoned it in this lackluster effort this week. So while 3/4 of NBC’s Thursday night lineup is already two weeks into their 2010, mostly firing on all cylinders, The Office hasn’t even really left the bench. What I posited about “Secret Santa” last week, that the writers were probably burned out and needed an extended rest seems even more accurate now. I can only hope that this extra week allows them to come back even stronger next time (and now they need to deliver even more than they needed to this week).

Read on: What makes this so egregious, clip shows through history, and a glimmer of hope…

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Filed under Analysis, Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam, Growing Pains, Must See TV, Saved by the Bell