He never grew wise or gained perspective or learned to dress in anything other than saggy olive-green suits. He’s living in New York, “with six roommates!”-they have to give him a month’s notice before abandoning him, he notes bitterly. Then there was Toby, a loser till the end, and the only one to answer “Yes” when asked if his life seemed unimportant after the cameras went off. When the two ditched Kelly’s pediatrician husband, and left baby Drake for Nellie to adopt (or, at least, illegally kidnap to Poland), it felt like the show’s roots showing through, a refreshing drop of nasty in all the nice. “You gave your baby an allergic reaction just to talk to me?” she said in delight, and they began making out. First, there was the awesomely dark resolution of the relationship between Kelly and Ryan, two super-solipsists eternally convinced that each was the star of the show. But because Andy was on the finale of a sitcom, they became “the good old days.”Īmid so much love and growth, the episode’s two sour notes were oddly refreshing. Real maturity might mean accepting the sadder truth, that this had been a very difficult time. But, more importantly, he wasn’t, in fact, loved by his colleagues, who became his embittered employees-they’d hated and resented him. His relationship with Erin soured then he was forced to watch her fall in love in front of him. What I couldn’t buy was his nostalgia: unlike Jim and Pam, his years at the paper company were almost pure misery. He could handle hecklers he got his dream job. Miraculously, instead of fuelling his grandiosity, it knocked him into a healthy humility. Andy got an even more intense dose of reality fame than the one supplied by PBS: his weepy singing audition became a viral meme. The only thing I didn’t entirely buy was one speech: the final monologue of Andy Bernard. There was a rock-solid “That’s what she said,” the wonderfully silly marriage customs of the Schrutes (“But why are the graves so shallow?”), and many small grace notes, like the brief shot of Phyllis looking fondly at Erin, whom she’d once thought might be the daughter she gave up for adoption. “You guys are getting filmed more than we ever were.” Google,” said Dwight, in a speech that sounded satirical but was really just an accurate assessment of the facts. “With today’s modern surveillance technology, we are in a constant state of being watched, whether it’s our government or the government of other countries, a.k.a. Maybe this was because the new “Office” took place in an environment where the public life was no longer a novelty.
Angela’s season-long “Pilgrim’s Progress” of mortification had left no scars. Jim and Pam made a scrapbook of their love. In what amounted to a rebuttal to the British “Office,” the American show’s finale insisted that nine years under the PBS cameras had had entirely positive effects. And I was fascinated by how the conclusion seemed to reflect back on its own genre. I loved seeing every love triangle (the show’s specialty) solved like a math problem. (O.K., maybe on “Mad About You,” but not nearly as effectively.)Īnd yet: I laughed, I cried, I kvelled, I nodded along, I ignored doubts, I admired zingers, I marvelled at the restrained use of flashbacks.
In the final season, the show once again accomplished something fresh by placing realistic pressures on Jim and Pam’s marriage, something that had never been done successfully on a sitcom. jokes, but generally falling into disarray. Instead, it struggled on for two more years, throwing James Spader spaghetti at various plot walls, trying and failing to make Andy Bernard into more than Michael 2, hosting some decent plots and some O.K. If the show had ended two years ago, when Michael managed-in large part by modelling himself on Jim-to form an authentic relationship with a woman, and to build the family he’d always longed for, it would have been a small, humane marvel. Over the years, the American “Office” wove together two great arcs: the Jim/Pam romance and the Pinocchio-like transformation of the petty tyrant Michael Scott.
0 kommentar(er)
