“Who is Justice Beaver?” -Dwight
I’ve defended The Office to a lot of non believers. When they’ve said the show has slipped the last few years, I was quick on the “they’re focusing on the story rather than telling jokes” defense. I think The Office’s strengths lie in it’s ability to tell multiple stories at once while letting supporting characters shine in limited screen time without muddying up the main plot. This episode however, got everything wrong. From start to finish this episode was dreadful. I might have laughed once or twice with the Dwight and Jim banter that I’ve loved for almost 7 season. Erin had some nice moments with the ants, but other than that, ouch.
My main problem with this episode was Todd Packer. I find his character intolerable. I’m not above silly blue humor, but his is just downright uncomfortable. Many characters made mention of just how much of a jerk he is and yet, more screen time. He also, brought out the worst in Kevin. I usually love Kevin’s naivety, but this just made me feel sad for him. To defend such an ogre was painful to watch. I know he’s part of the Michael Scott farewell tour. All the loose ends had to be tied up, but he really didn’t need to be the focus of the episode. We already saw last week in “Threat Level Midnight” that Michael Scott had a growing sense of self awareness, I didn’t need it again in the form of realizing Todd Packer is a jerk.
There were two main subplots at work in this episode. One I liked, Jim and Dwight’s quest to prank Packer, and one I felt wasn’t funny or interesting enough to occupy as much of the 22 minutes as it did, Pam and Andy’s computer feed. The Dwight and Jim prank story line was a type of throwback to the days of old. A lot of the charm in The Office comes from finding small exciting tasks to distract you from the mundane life of working in a cubicle. I very much enjoyed thinking about the amount of time Jim spent NOT working to create a list of 400 pranks to pull on Packer all while pranking Dwight himself. The more I see Dwight and Jim act as team, the more I like it. I hope to see more of their united front when the new boss rolls in. As for Pam and Andy, well I just don’t get a lot of pleasure in listening to Andy whine and take advantage of Erin. I did enjoy the scene where he purposely broke his computer. “Enable all cookies? Yes please.”
This makes two straight below average episodes of The Office in a row. The Michael Scott Farewell Tour is important, but I find that it’s getting in the way of telling a good story. Hopefully they’ve figured out how to keep the charm of the show and advance the plot while not losing a lot of viewers. If there are more episodes like this one, there won’t be a lot of believers left when the show becomes Michael Scott-less.
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