Why I Love "The Office"

I know I’m about a month too late, but I just recently finished watching the series finale of “The Office.” It all started as a nostalgia project. I remembered watching it when I was younger, having lost interest somewhere around season 5. But I recalled how much I loved the pranks between Jim and Dwight and the love story of Jim and Pam, so I decided to give it another shot and re-watch the series in its entirety.

This time around the humor still held up the same for me, but the endeavor was not without its difficulties. Of course Michael Scott is supposed to be annoying. But I often found him downright unbearable. I never realized how much I hated him in the earliest seasons until this recent re-watching. To be honest, I also never really liked Pam all that much on her own, and I now got to revisit her annoying qualities all over again.

The difference for me came after I decided to stick through the rough patches of seasons 5 and 6, allowing all my previous annoyances with Michael and Pam to dissipate. Although my affection for him had been slowly building throughout the series, Season 7 and his departure made me realize that Steve Carell has made Michael Scott one of the most enduring (and endearing) TV characters, and one of my favorites ever. How could someone so unbelievably obnoxious stir up so many sympathetic emotions? It’s because Michael had a good heart, and he honestly was a people person. He just wanted to be liked—isn’t that what we all desire? In his grating way of trying so hard to be friends with people, he showed us a child-like vulnerability. Although he was completely oblivious sometimes, he always knew what his employees needed at their low points and he did his best to take care of the office when major problems arose. In a bizarre way, he was the best manager the branch ever had.

I love Jim and Pam because they’re really just average people–one of us. They’re not some glamorous or sophisticated couple we aspire to be. We see ourselves in them and root for them because of it. With the introduction of Jim’s new job in the final season, their relationship was put to the test in a very realistic way. We got to see a couple try to hold themselves together while trying not to give up on their dreams or sacrifice the great life they’ve built together. I actually love Pam now for being so strong throughout the whole ordeal, even when Jim couldn’t muster up the courage to tell her about some major decisions he’d made. The fact that they were soulmates while sitting so close to each other at work for so many years is amazing, and they will always be one of my favorite fictional couples.

The mockumentary format is truly the best. We really feel like we’re living the characters’ lives along  with them in the moment, and it’s a credit to the actors that you sometimes genuinely forget that it’s scripted. The stolen glances at the camera, the JIM FACE, the eye rolling, Creed’s randomness—it always feels like you’re in on the pranks, and you’re aware of the characters’ feelings in a way that traditional sitcoms don’t always allow. It also captured some great, intimate moments that revealed a lot about the characters, like when Michael was the only one who showed up to Pam’s art show and he bought her painting for the office, and the paternalistic relationship he developed with Erin. Such moments weren’t always part of the main action but were just sprinkled throughout, and the fact that the characters didn’t always know they were being filmed during certain moments showed us that we were getting a glimpse of their true personalities.

The last few seasons were admittedly substandard compared to the initial few. Yet, the last one tied the series together in the most perfect way and reminded me why I loved it in the first place; it’s back to being one of my favorite series ever. This is simply a show about people: how they interact, how they fight, how they fall in love. The love between Jim and Pam, the loneliness of Michael Scott, the desperate ambition of Dwight, and eventually his own relationship with Angela created the heart of the show that kept us watching for all these years. The show creates comedy and sympathy out of the little moments; although it has its share of grand gestures, it’s not focused on big action plot points. The lessons we observe are from the minutiae of daily life and seeing the characters working with the same group of people over many years. As Pam says in the finale, “There’s a lot of beauty in ordinary things. Isn’t that kind of the point?”