What are we looking to find when we watch a television show? We like shows where we feel like we can relate to its characters and laugh at their blunders as if they are our own. The Office (2005), the American version of the 2001 BBC show bearing the same name, fulfills that yearning for character identification. The cast of characters on The Office meshes so well together that they provide an original humanity that is lacking elsewhere on television.
Michael Scott (Steve Carrel) is the district manager of Dunder Mifflin, the paper company located in Scranton, Pa. where The Office takes place. Michael is a cuckold who overestimates his ability to entertain people and often tries to do so with humor that is racist, sexist or just lacking in the plain old comedic elements necessary. Sometimes you might feel sorry for Michael Scott, but even though he is a dorky boss who never seems to do anything right, his character, who is the protagonist, makes The Office a worthwhile TV show to watch. “I guess the atmosphere that I've tried to create here is that I'm a friend first and a boss second, and probably an entertainer third,” said Michael in one of The Office’s first episodes.
By far, the most entertaining interaction to watch on The Office is between Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson). Jim will pull just about any prank on Dwight just to push the neurotic Lord of the Rings enthusiast’s buttons. On one episode Jim puts all of Dwight’s personal effects in a vending machine, including his wallet, and hands him a bag of nickels to pay his way out of the predicament. A very memorable prank which is the premise for the whole episode Dwight asks Jim to be in an alliance with him when the topic of downsizing in the company is brought up. Jim agrees but only to the delight of coercing Dwight to hide in a box in the warehouse where an alleged meeting never takes place and also to dye his hair so he can spy on another Dunder Mifflin branch. The ongoing torment catches up with Dwight and at the beginning of the third season Jim moves to the other branch for a little while, partially due to Dwight’s request and in part due to his own need to relocate, but returns to the Scranton branch before mid-season.
Another important aspect of the show is the underlying relationship between Jim and Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer). Pam has been engaged to Roy (David Denman), a warehouse employee at Dunder Mifflin who seems to lack something in the personality department, for three years without ever setting a wedding date. While Jim and Pam get along better than anyone in The Office and Jim has an obvious schoolboy crush on Pam, she denies any attraction to Jim until the last episode of the second season. This waiting for a crush to evolve is reminiscent of real life relationships.
The writing of The Office is clever and its hilarious dialogue is not like anything else you would hear on another television show. “Dwight Schrute: Someone forged medical information, and that's a felony. Jim Halpert: OK, Whoa, all right 'cause that's a pretty intense accusation. How do you know that they're fake? Dwight Schrute: [reading from a sheet] Uh, Leprosy, Flesh Eating Bacteria, Hot Dog Fingers, Government Created Killer Nano Robot Infection.” The Office can be categorized as a “mockumentary”, which is a style that parodies the seriousness of documentaries’ claim to capture to reality. Though overflowing with witty repartee, the conversations between its characters are casual and akin to the conversations we have with our coworkers. Employing a dialogue technique called stichomythia, one-liners back and forth that replicate realistic speech patterns, the characters on The Office also utilize asides, which are afterthoughts spoken directly to the cameras that tell what the characters are actually thinking about in any given situation. The interactions portrayed between the characters on The Office are multi-faceted unlike their counterparts of other current television shows. The Office succeeds by turning the seemingly monotonous setting of cubicle living into a fascinating television show about real characters who become your friends in a cathode ray.
Michael Scott (Steve Carrel) is the district manager of Dunder Mifflin, the paper company located in Scranton, Pa. where The Office takes place. Michael is a cuckold who overestimates his ability to entertain people and often tries to do so with humor that is racist, sexist or just lacking in the plain old comedic elements necessary. Sometimes you might feel sorry for Michael Scott, but even though he is a dorky boss who never seems to do anything right, his character, who is the protagonist, makes The Office a worthwhile TV show to watch. “I guess the atmosphere that I've tried to create here is that I'm a friend first and a boss second, and probably an entertainer third,” said Michael in one of The Office’s first episodes.
By far, the most entertaining interaction to watch on The Office is between Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson). Jim will pull just about any prank on Dwight just to push the neurotic Lord of the Rings enthusiast’s buttons. On one episode Jim puts all of Dwight’s personal effects in a vending machine, including his wallet, and hands him a bag of nickels to pay his way out of the predicament. A very memorable prank which is the premise for the whole episode Dwight asks Jim to be in an alliance with him when the topic of downsizing in the company is brought up. Jim agrees but only to the delight of coercing Dwight to hide in a box in the warehouse where an alleged meeting never takes place and also to dye his hair so he can spy on another Dunder Mifflin branch. The ongoing torment catches up with Dwight and at the beginning of the third season Jim moves to the other branch for a little while, partially due to Dwight’s request and in part due to his own need to relocate, but returns to the Scranton branch before mid-season.
Another important aspect of the show is the underlying relationship between Jim and Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer). Pam has been engaged to Roy (David Denman), a warehouse employee at Dunder Mifflin who seems to lack something in the personality department, for three years without ever setting a wedding date. While Jim and Pam get along better than anyone in The Office and Jim has an obvious schoolboy crush on Pam, she denies any attraction to Jim until the last episode of the second season. This waiting for a crush to evolve is reminiscent of real life relationships.
The writing of The Office is clever and its hilarious dialogue is not like anything else you would hear on another television show. “Dwight Schrute: Someone forged medical information, and that's a felony. Jim Halpert: OK, Whoa, all right 'cause that's a pretty intense accusation. How do you know that they're fake? Dwight Schrute: [reading from a sheet] Uh, Leprosy, Flesh Eating Bacteria, Hot Dog Fingers, Government Created Killer Nano Robot Infection.” The Office can be categorized as a “mockumentary”, which is a style that parodies the seriousness of documentaries’ claim to capture to reality. Though overflowing with witty repartee, the conversations between its characters are casual and akin to the conversations we have with our coworkers. Employing a dialogue technique called stichomythia, one-liners back and forth that replicate realistic speech patterns, the characters on The Office also utilize asides, which are afterthoughts spoken directly to the cameras that tell what the characters are actually thinking about in any given situation. The interactions portrayed between the characters on The Office are multi-faceted unlike their counterparts of other current television shows. The Office succeeds by turning the seemingly monotonous setting of cubicle living into a fascinating television show about real characters who become your friends in a cathode ray.
NBC page dedicated to their hit show, The Office. This site is loaded with clips, episode synopses, quotes games and extras: http://www.nbc.com/The_Office/
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