“The Office” remains one of the funniest sitcoms on television, but has it featured a post-strike slump?
The first episode back, “Dinner Party,” had funny moments but didn’t quite hang with classic “Office” of the past. It did, however, set up the next week’s “The Chairmodel,” in which Dwight attempts to track down a model that Michael sees in a catalog and finds attractive.
I felt like things got back in stride with “Night Out,” where Michael and Dwight are back at their inappropriate best. Meanwhile, Jim makes a Michael-like move, locking everyone into the office lot late at night. Kelly’s retort to Ryan’s call for questions at an office meeting was probably the highlight of the show, the best of the post-strike episodes. Last week’s “Did I Stutter?” featured a Michael-Stanley power struggle, which felt a little out of character for Stanley. Still, the return of Darryl’s ridiculous advice to Michael about “the streets” made for a funny scene. Ryan and Toby ganging up on Jim added some dramatic tension — but do I need dramatic tension from “The Office”?
Check out “Night Out,” the high point of the recent “Office.”
(EDIT: I have made this a link instead of an embed, as, at the moment, Hulu embeds make my blog look wonky on Firefox.)
– Matt Price
May 5th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
I’m not going to disagree, I think it’s just that The Office has it’s cycles of being ridiculous and poignant. The dinner party was pretty fantastic, but I thought the chair episode was lacking… until the end, with the Pam/Jim uber-romantic scene, which left me breathless. Which Jim has been mining for the past two weeks, and to a great degree. This led to Toby’s always-awkward moment with Pam, which was hilariously tragic. (I think that’s the theme of the office: Hilariously tragic or tragically hilarious. And that’s the cycle.)
And Michael and Stanley’s episode, last week, was a great character moment for both. Particularly when they finally confronted one another, and Michael said, “I’m your boss, you can’t talk to me like that.” Michael, for the briefest of moments, grew up and Stanley acknowledged it.
Now, I will agree on the post-strike-ness, but not just on The Office. Take any show, and if you look at the last episodes to air pre-strike, when they were cobbled together without the show-runners, writers, and creative execs… they are pretty awful. It shows how important the creative forces are. And the first episodes back, are, likewise a bit stiff. Some shows, like Brothers and Sisters and Grey’s Anatomy, did the wise thing and leapt ahead a few weeks/months in their timelines to reflect the strike.
There’s no arguing how much of an effect the strike had, not just on the quality of shows, but on the viewing, too. There’s a few shows I watched pre-strike that I’ve now let build up on the DVR because I simply don’t care enough about them post-strike. And if I don’t care, then what’s that say to the rest of America who is tuning out and turning off shows they no longer care about?