So I just got done watching the much-anticipated return of The Office on NBC. This is the first new episode of the show since the WGA Strike, and I, like everyone else, had high hopes.
Sadly… it kinda sucked.
This new episode finds all of the major players of the Scranton branch at Michael Scott’s house for a dinner party. It’s couples-only, so just Jim/Pam and Andy/Angela are there with Michael and Jan (at first). Since we’ve last seen them, Jan and Michael seem to have gone even deeper into the Heart of Darkness. They’re completely insane, with Jan especially taking the cake for most outrageous. But really, what’s presented here in terms of their relationship isn’t really very new; instead, they’re just taking jokes of Jan’s dominance and Michael’s wackiness to absurd extremes.
The biggest, most immediate issue with this return episode was that it took place almost entirely out of the office. That means that aside from a brief cameo in the beginning, some of the show’s funnier supporting characters are M.I.A. Even Dwight doesn’t show up in full force until the very end of the episode. What we’re left with is Andy repeating the word “Tuna” a lot, and Jim making his befuddled “WTF” face.
That isn’t to say there weren’t a few funny moments in this episode, because there certainly were (I seem to remember a joke about afterbirth that made me chuckle). Rather than a return to form from last year, this new episode reminded me of the few aspects of the show that I disliked lately—mainly, the need for a reboot. “The Office” needs to reign things in a bit, cut down on all the romantic triangles and get back to work. This may have just been a leftover idea from the pre-strike days, so I’m holding out hope that the rest of this season will be better.
6 comments ↓
The only thing worse is the coma crap on Earl.
What? Sucked? Oh man! The wife and I laughed ourselves silly last night. Admittedly, this season taken as a whole is not quite as strong as the past one so far, but I dug the dinner party.
I thought last night’s episode was pretty funny. The part where Jim almost abandoned Pam at the party was hilarious.
I agree. I’m really sick of the show being out of the office. What used to be so funny about the show was how miserable it was to work in an office but they made the best of it. I loved all the practicle jokes on dwight and now dwight is barely in the show. Pam’s character seems completely different now too. It’s just not the same and not in a good way. It’s like a different show.And it makes me sad. I looooove the show. I watch the dvd’s all the time.
Though I wouldn’t go quite as far in my criticism of the episode, it was a bit of a backslide. It felt a lot more like the uncomfortable early season four episodes (Michael hitting Meredith with his car, Michael driving a different car into a lake) than it did highlights like the office-produced TV ad episode. Here’s hoping this is simply a set-up leading to more good-natured goofiness and less domestic abuse. That said, I loved the Hunter CD end montage.
Like Erich, I don’t know if I would go *quite* that far, but it was definitely a comedown. I’ve had trouble with Jan’s bizarre behavior since whenever it started (season 2 or 3?). She’s getting way over the top and hard to believe. I agree with Holly that the show needs to be back in the Office, where there are better comic situations and more characters for the leads to play off of. That way we don’t get a whole episode that basically wastes John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer’s characters.
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