Day 1: The Good and the Bad of "The Office"

I’ve been a fan of The Office since it was on the air with original episodes. One year back then, a former teaching partner of mine and I actually exchanged Office desk calendars and wall calendars for Christmas (I got the desk calendar, she got the wall calendar). The summer I adopted my dog, I spent hundreds of hours sitting in the living room watching reruns with him, just so he could learn to get used to my presence and become comfortable in his new home. I listen regularly to the Jenna Fischer/Angela Kinsey re-watch podcast. To this day, it would be the unusual week when I don’t see at least somewhere between five and ten episodes. 

Because of all this, I have strong opinions regarding many things about the show. It’s a great show, but it’s not perfect. Today I’m going to share what I believe to be both the high and low points from the whole series. Now, this is by no means a comprehensive list; I didn’t look up an episode guide and take notes or anything. This is just a compilation of my most immediate go-to opinions, the kind of things I’m ready to argue over with little provocation with anyone willing to go at it with me. 

Bad: Season 1 Michael

In season 1, they were trying too hard to make Michael Scott into an unlikeable Americanized David Brent character, his counterpart from the British version. It was a mistake. The hardest part about getting someone interested in watching The Office now is convincing them to have the stamina to make it through season 1 and that the whole show isn’t like that. Luckily it’s only six episodes. 

Really Bad: Seasons 8 and 9 Andy

Ed Helms had his success with “The Hangover” movies during his run on The Office, which led to him being positioned as a lead character after Steve Carell left the show. It didn’t work. Andy became extremely unlikeable. Ninety percent of the time he was on screen in the last two seasons was draining. His sailboat storyline, his search for fame, his taking over the manager position.… Sure, he had his good moments, but overall? Too much.

Super Bad: Athlead

The storyline at the end of the series with Jim getting a job in sports management in Philly and how it took a toll on Jim and Pam’s marriage? I never bought it. It felt like two of the stars getting a vanity storyline about their characters, and it didn’t work. 

Perfect: Holly

Holly is one of my favorite characters. She rescued Michael, who in his best moments wanted nothing more out of life but to be rescued by a woman who could love him as he was. 

Mildly Annoying: Cartoon Dwight

Anytime a show survives a long run, it runs the risk of the characters becoming exaggerated versions of who they once were earlier on. A perfect example of this was the show Cheers. In The Office, it happened noticeably to characters like Kevin, Meredith, and Kelly, but there were so much superfluous odd moments attached to Dwight and all of the Schrute family traditions he introduced that they seemed to be one-upping each other for basic weirdness.

Empty: Jim and Karen

Jim Halpert and Karen Fillippelli had absolutely no chemistry. There. I said it. 

Puzzling: Inconsistent Michael

Michael ran the risk of being cartoonish throughout the mid-years of the show. His character had a recognizable zone, but occasionally he would veer outside of that into a moment or a storyline that made him seem stupider or smarter or more naive or more competent than we had been told he was. Those moments worked sometimes, but too often they irked me. 

Hilarious: Creed

Darn near every moment Creed was on screen and most of the words he spoke were comedy gold. He gets extra credit for executing what was perhaps the most subtle and best “That’s what she said” of the whole show.

So Unnecessary: Andy and Angela

See “Jim and Karen” above, and increase that point by a factor of ten. It made Andy look stupid and Angela look unredeemable.

Perplexing: Ryan’s Non-Evolution

Characters are supposed to have a developing arc throughout a narrative. Ryan was redefined into some other version of a wild card almost every season, and after he got his corporate job they were all equally obnoxious. I can understand making a character obnoxious for comedic purposes. I just think in his case it was handled poorly.

Good: Clark and Plop

If The Office had continued with a cast centered around Dwight as a manager and characters like Clark, Pete, and Erin taking the place as the anchors, as I believe had been considered as a plan, I’d still be watching it. I thought those guys were some of the best things about the final seasons of the show.

Good: Broken-Hearted Jim

Anyone who has had to ever spend time in close proximity with someone they had feelings for but  but couldn’t act on them has to be able to relate to Jim in the early seasons. For better or worse, it clearly defined who he was and made the audience root for him.

Great: Jo Bennett

Back to what I said about Clark and Plop: If Jo Bennett had stayed on as the CEO in a new iteration of the show, it would have been great. She may be one of my favorite characters out of the whole series. The moment where she introduces herself to the camera crew in the space of a paragraph was one of the best moments of establishing a character I’ve ever seen in any medium.

Smile-Inducing: Jim and Dwight’s friendship

For all the time Jim and Dwight spent in a nemesis-driven relationship, I loved seeing them evolve into good friends in the final seasons. One of my favorite moments of the entire series was in Florida, after Jim had chased a predatory Cathy out of his hotel room and Dwight was hiding from a drunken Nellie. They were sitting together on the bed, just talking and watching TV while eating room service desert. Whenever that episode comes on during an all-day Comedy Central marathon, I’ll watch the whole thing just for that scene.

Great Moment: Ricky Gervais cameo

The moment when David Brent and Michael Scott met up by the elevator outside Dunder Mifflin and immediately recognized themselves in each other was perfect.

Good and Bad: Robert California

He was a positive and a negative for the show. There were things he did that were truly hilarious, especially the cadence of his dialogue (“Have they ever improved on the Oreo?”), but as a character he was sometimes too much, even in the company of the other characters on the show. Plus he always sounds like Ultron.

Really?: Date Mike

In the episode at Dave and Buster’s (or maybe some generic Dave and Buster’s equivalent), when Michael suddenly realized that Jim and Pam were setting him up with one of Pam’s friends, he morphed into a misogynistic creep he called Date Mike. It would have been in his character to have some dating plan at the ready, but to turn into the ultra douche canoe he was here didn’t fit for someone who had an innocent sweetness at the core of who he was.

Home Run: The Finale

Simply put, The Office had one of the best final episodes of any TV show.

So, what did I get wrong? Or what did I overlook?

After

 February was a horrible month this year. It was long, dark, depressing, and deathly polar, to say nothing about how school hadn’t exactly been a ride around the lake. Another February with the kind of stress this one brought and I think it could steal the title of My Least Favorite Month right out from under January.

The nightmarish weeks of deep freeze eventually came to an end though, and soon after it felt like the world began to open. The days warmed quickly. The remaining winter snow gradually faded. Each day brought a few more minutes of blessed sunshine into our lives. Spring and the mental cleanse it promised sat on the horizon, patiently waiting for us to catch up. All of these things together made it seem like maybe it wasn’t completely foolish to entertain the occasional feeling of optimism. 

As the world began to feel more open, society took steps toward opening again for real. President Biden announced that regardless of how many people thought his goal of 100 million doses of Covid vaccine administered during his first 100 days in office was over-reaching, it was achieved some forty days ahead of schedule. Even though the pandemic is far from over and people are still fighting the disease, the media has taken to keeping tallies of how many people have been vaccinated along with the number infected.

Of course all of this optimism comes with knowing there are still contagious new variants circulating through an American population with large pockets of ignorance and entitlement that was never as reasonably cautious as it should have been. The traveling for Spring Break throughout March, amplified by astonishingly irresponsible governors making poor decisions in those destination states, could turn up the heat on all of us again very quickly. 

But what if it doesn’t all go that way? What if, somehow, we’re actually on a Covid decline instead of a weighted pause between surges? What if all of the mitigation and the vaccinations makes not just a difference, but the difference? Could we actually find ourselves back in a world where a new normal will at least approximate the better aspects of the previous normal? 

We will someday, and what comes next when that happens? Will we slip back into the familiar roles and routines we had chosen or been assigned before the pandemic? Will returning to all of that after pausing life for over a year feel like nostalgia? A return to our familiar routines would certainly be a comfort, since the human brain is always seeking out recognizable patterns. But what if there were routines that weren’t working? 

I don’t think society will experience any immediate overall change, at least not anything positive, and I really don’t want to focus on that here anyway. When I think about what comes next, I mostly think about what it will be like to rejoin the world, personally. I have been extremely cautious this past year, and have isolated myself to a degree that I’m certain that many people, particularly the anti-mask crusaders struggling to navigate their personal realities, would ridicule. Right now the idea of taking even tentative steps back into the world leaves me feeling anxious.

One year of my life has gone into developing a proactive and defensive mindset of avoiding other people to minimize the potential they could pass the virus to me. However, the day will eventually come when I’m going to be all vaccinated up. When that happens, I’ll be protected as I can reasonably expect to be. You’d think I’d be pretty pumped up about re-entering society, and picking up where I left off.

I don’t know, though. Do I really want to pick up where I left off? Has there ever been a truer opportunity for people to re-evaluate the direction life is doing than after a time we’ve more or less forced to spend an entire year on the couch? That’s a perspective I keep struggling with. This has been time used up that I won’t get back. One year of my life is gone, out of how many years do I even have left? Ten? Thirty-seven? Five? No one knows.

So what is there to do about it? What parts of my life had evolved into routine, just to fill the empty spaces left by the absence of the things I wish I had, or had pursued, or had the courage to pursue, but instead I accepted the default ease of routine? Once this pause is over, I feel certain there will be a lot of things about life before that won’t be enough anymore.

I think about returning to school, and honestly, I feel like it’s going to be weird. I believe in some respects I’ve been seen as a leader in my building for some time, mostly because I’ve been teaching there since the middle of the Jurassic Period. I don’t know if that will be the same anymore. I don’t mind that so much, but it makes me speculate what will change in how my professional roles will be defined. The people who have worked together through this Covid year will have formed a unique bond because of that; this is an undeniable truth. As strong as that bond will be for all of them, I wasn’t there to be a part of it. There are literally people on our school staff that I’ve never met before. Whenever any of them refer to everything experienced during the Covid year, I’m always going to carry an asterisk related to that because I worked remotely. What will my role be now, for however many years there are left in my career?

So how do I take advantage of this perspective? It’s almost like Ebenezer Scrooge waking on Christmas morning and realizing he’s been gifted a second chance. One thing I know for sure is that once I feel safe enough to enter the world, I sure as hell don’t want to continue molding the couch and recliner cushions to form with my body, and as comfortable and warm as they are, I’m pretty much over sweatpants. What do I want different in my life if I still have the chance and the time and maybe even the motivation to change it? 

I’ve actually started a list on my phone’s Notes app of things I’ll want to do when I can. Some involve the normal, mundane things I’ve been deprived of doing to stay safe. I don’t think a return to the comfort of the familiar is necessarily a bad thing, as long as it isn’t defining. I’ve also listed some things I’d like to do that I think I’d enjoy, or would maybe bring new kinds of happiness to my life. I’ve even added a few things to do that might be considered “bucket list” items. I’ve always said I don’t really have a bucket list so much, but even a tangential proximity to facing mortality makes one realize there are aspects of life that could lead to regret without even trying to experience them. 

It feels like now, in this season just before we can all hopefully exit our bubbles again without worrying about existential threats, is the time to start putting together a conscious idea of what life can be in the after. Then it’s only a matter of waiting until nature determines it’s time to begin.

Pandemic Narrative Part 16: The Beginning of the End

I started writing these narratives back on March 14th, intending to give myself a way to trace how the pandemic changed the world around us throughout its duration. I wrote up a list of ten thoughts on that first post. It seems appropriate on this one, the last post of the year, that I should do the same.

1. Since I’ve included statistics in each pandemic narrative, I feel I should keep that going. Worldwide: 81.5 million cases; 1.78 million deaths. America: 19.4 million cases; 347,000 deaths. This means approximately one out of every one thousand Americans has died from this. If that count been the result of a war, I’m pretty sure that both politically and socially we would be much more united around the idea of working against it than we currently are. However, I’m now able to add a new statistic to the tally: So far, there have been 2.1 million vaccines given. A start.

2. I don’t like this about myself, but I’ll own it: I rarely start a new year with optimism. I think it’s fair to attribute this to losing my sister: When the new year rolls around I always carry at least a small suspicion that there’s going to be a day when I’ll be expecting everything to be normal, and life will put up a serve that resets it in a darker light, and everything will be about trying to survive and process the experiences that follow. Vaccine production aside, there’s still a pandemic going on, and there are still reasons for all of us to begin 2021 with active caution. On the plus side though, at least the most incompetent, self-centered, ignorant, and corrupt president in all of American history, whose foolishness is largely responsible for the predicament we’re in, will be out of office in a few weeks.

3. I honestly feel like I’m one of the few people left on Earth who still bothers to live with any precautions. Cars pass my house all day long like they always have. On the rare days I go to Target for a curbside pickup, all of the parking lots are full. I have filled my car's gas tank twice since March. Granted, I have no metric for what the outside world is like, other than the way the selfish, headstrong few will broadly paint social media with proclamations of their bold stands against anything they’ve been asked to do in the name of public health. Feeling like I’m one of the 0.0004% of the population still striving to adhere to anything but the bare minimum of staying safe is disheartening. It only compounds the isolation. Even if it’s mostly imagined, it feels just as real when you don’t have any evidence in front of you to prove it’s wrong.

4. What will it be like when the world begins to once again take the shape of something recognized as normal, whenever that might happen? How long until the world is safe again? How difficult will that transition be, to rejoin the world? Being an introvert has helped tremendously as far as the isolation goes, but introverts are not, by nature, antisocial. I don’t mind wearing masks, but my God, I can think of maybe five times in the past nine months I’ve even touched another person. 

5. There’s no way this isn’t taking a mental toll on me beyond what I immediately recognize. Many people who’ve known me have heard me say how I feel like I drop off the face of the Earth for someone else unless I’m directly in their line of sight. That’s never been more real now, feeling tucked away like stored human surplus that society has found a way to manage without.

6. I also feel a sense of wasted time, which is probably a reflexive response since I’m always so ready to be self-critical. I haven’t baked any bread or learned any new languages online. I haven’t read a fraction of the books I could have, or caught up on classic movies or developed a yoga routine or painted any rooms or learned the ukulele. But then I remember the time I put into revising a new book, and how difficult that was, and I’m quite proud of the accomplishment. I feel this one could be my best shot at publication, at least as far as middle grade goes. I still think it’s a weird story, but it’s thought-provoking, it’s original, it’s fairly well-written (if I’m allowed to think that about my own story), and I’m anxious for more people in the world to know about it, even if in the immediate that only amounts to a handful.

7. If I were to go back to school and earn another degree, just to pursue an interest, I think I’d study sociology. Because of that, I’ve often wondered exactly what the tipping point was for America, when we went from agreeing to shelter in place and behave in ways meant to preserve the greater good, then shifted over to so much more of a “Well, I’m not sick/This is a free country, don’t take away my rights” ethos. The idea of “we’re all in this together” that was so prevalent back in the spring has worn away to nothing but a faded platitude. I fear that perspective, as well as the reactions to it, will make it much harder for our society to recover and reunite. I’m afraid things will continue to get worse before we see any significant social healing.

8. How much longer is this going to go on? The vaccine is here. When will I be able to get it? When will the rest of my family be eligible? Which one will it be? What will be the circumstances of its availability? Everything about this is still new; there’s no way to see past the next turn in the road when no one has ever traveled the road before. 

9. Do I really want life to go back to what it was before once the world comes back together? Honestly, not in every way. I’m not sure if this is a reaction to the beginning of a new year, but I feel like the pandemic is still going to be around long enough to use this as a transformational time. How could I take steps, even tentative ones, that would develop over time to replace the things in my life I’m dissatisfied about? How much of that thinking is my own motivation, or coming from subtle pressures of what society has to say about what I should be, or what other people in my life expect of me? God knows how many years I have left. Ten? Twenty? Twenty-five? Six? There’s no telling. What do I want that time to be like? What would make it the best, the happiest, version of a life I could build around myself? Has there ever been a more appropriate time for that kind of self-examination? I keep falling back to the idea of where my priorities should be, and why (or if) the things I've held as important are necessarily things that should even be considered priorities. 

10. Like I said, I rarely start the year with optimism. However, there’s always that flicker of hope that refuses to die. We all have dreams and aspirations. We all have anxieties we’d like to banish from our lives. Could 2021 be the year when things drift to the positive, and things will go our way? Will we be gifted with small pieces of individual balance to reward us for what we’ve endured? 

I suppose we’ll start to discover that in a few more days.