Revisiting
NBC’s mockumentary show The Office (over-baked Yankee beans served on an archetypal
British toast) proved a huge respite in the weary lockup phase of a Covid-enforced
lockdown.
The ‘forty year old virgin’ Steve Carell AKA Michael Scott kept us glued to the screen amid the show’s myriad highs and lows. The series lost much charm with Scott’s intriguing exit, but Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) held fort admirably even in the post-Scott era, to keep us more than interested in the affairs of a sleepy Scranton, Pennsylvania branch of a progressively perishing paper company, bearing a name way more commanding than its value prop: The Dunder Mifflin Paper Company.
The management and the employees are no paper tigers though, almost each one blessed with limitless pluck to loom large on the small screen. The ensemble cast is comprised of first-rate actors, who add 3D life to their characters over and above what the script demands. Can we ever forget the supremely erratic-cum-endearing receptionist Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer), gluttonous and gullible Kevin Malone (Brain Baumgartner), the iceberg-like, enigmatic pocket dynamo Angela Martin (Angela Kinsey), encyclopaedic ever-gay accountant Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nunez), witty, winsome warehouse foreman Darryl Philbin (Craig Robinson), and the archaic and arcane HR redhead Toby Flenderson (Paul Lieberstein) , to name a few.
Yes, a few episodes
are downright trash, where the writers seemingly ran out of ideas: what with bottle-peeing,
bat hunting, crotch grabbing, and boob-fixation taking centre stage along with countless
Halloween and Xmas parties, courtesy the Party Planning Committee: the outcome
of the inimitable American penchant for uncalled-for dilution, as also an
insatiable appetite for utter nonsense in the name of broad humour, not to forget
the umpteen racist insinuations (Most digs at Indians, however, are perfectly justified,
given our emblematic desperation, nauseating ostentation, and overtly apologetic
behaviour as third-rate citizens of the US of A)
Consequently, the moot point of the office drudgery stands pathetically suspended in many instalments. The writers make the cardinal error of mindlessly ignoring the umpteen relevant aspects of an office environment. They could have easily injected sure-shot hilarious situations around customary corporate happenings like appraisal acrimonies, bell curve nonsense, poaching by competitors, industry seminars, vendor meets, change management, tech invasion and BPR challenges, and the like. That would have been so much more relatable and only fair to the acting prowess of Carell, Krasinski, Wilson, and Fischer, not to forget the absurdly underutilized CFO-turned-CEO David Wallace (Andy Buckley) To their credit, the makers did have office takeovers and downsizing included as themes, but the treatment was rather lackadaisical.
Why couldn't the writers comprehend that there was so much more to Jim than Pam’s lover-turned-husband, there was so much more to Pam as the starry-eyed receptionist, and there was so much more to Dwight than beet farms and underwear flashing? Instead, they chose to over-invest in the Andy and Erin affair (both are super actors but the overdose did hurt the show's larger cause) and bizarre Sabre management churns, fetching diminishing returns of course. Worse, B J Novak’s Ryan Howard and Mandy Kaling’s Kelly Kapoor, among the weakest links, seemed to float around inorganically, eclipsing regular members like Stanley and Meredith who were painfully denied plausible back stories.
Nevertheless, the series has enough material to condone the recurrent flaws and reckless indulgence. Pam’s outburst at the office night-out was out of this world (Jenna Fischer was super authentic in her tearful petition), so were Jim’s heartfelt courtship, Oscar’s dignified gay escapades, and Angela’s ‘homeless’ anguish. The Scott-Schrute visit, that ends up destroying an unsuspecting, small town family-owned small-sized paper firm was extraordinarily poignant. So was seeing Scott lose himself in one of his soulful sojourns, ending up in the Hall of Shame of a restaurant for hogging without paying for the bill.
The references to the
Edwardian era in the Finer Things Club episode, the Citizen Kane ‘Rosebud’ mention, the
‘who vs whom’ grammar debates, Andy's Am-I-gay predicament, Scott’s confusion over the medical parlance of ‘negatives’
and ‘positives’, Jim's 'Ultimate Guide to Throwing a Garden Party', Dwight’s Mose-run beet farm and gargantuan general knowledge (‘as also his pre-industrial
and mostly religious German’) was hearteningly enduring stuff. We sure found a new
home in this office!
Pencil Sketches: Paritosh Raikar