What has happened to The Office? Season eight is in full swing. I'm not the type of fan who wishes the series had ended with the departure of Steve Carrell, but season eight might have me changing my mind. Remember the Pilot, season one? At the time, characters lacked development. But it was the Pilot episode, and it serves as the basis for what sets The Office apart from any other situation comedy of its generation: realistic characters responding to realistic situations portrayed through documentary style camera work. Throw in Steve Carrell and Rainn Wilson, and you've got yourself a prime time, NBC, award winning comedy. The format we remember from the Pilot, however, has been replaced. The Office is heading toward a tragic destination, and Dunder Mifflin may never recover. The narrative is messy, undefined and predictable and the characters are nearly impossible to invest in. All the strengths that were built up in seasons one through five are gone, and we are left with nothing but a prime time television series, gasping for air and belching up pasta like Michael Scott on his last mile of the Michael Scott's Dunder Mifflin Meredith Palmer Memorial Celebrity Rabies Awareness Fun Run Pro-Am Race for the Cure.
Remember in season five when Pam is at the Pratt Institute in New York? Ryan, who has taken the receptionist role in Pam's absence, tells the camera in a talking head interview that he often catches Jim staring at the receptionist desk. The audience gets a laugh, but Ryan continues, saying it is nothing compared to the way Michael stares at him. The camera pans from Ryan, who is looking awkwardly at Jim, to Michael's office window, where we see through the venetian blinds Michael looking directly at Ryan. When he notices the camera, he turns away from the window and walks slowly back to his desk.
A documentary crew captured this scene. In season eight, that crew of scrambling cinematographers has been replaced by the 180 degree rule of continuity editing. The documentary allowed the characters to interact with each other in a way that was real. We weren't watching characters in an office. We were watching our parents. We were watching our friends. We were watching ourselves.
The documentary format gave the audience an emotional connection with the characters. In season three we watched as a camera zoomed in on a crying Pam, distraught by her failed engagement and hopeless devotion to Jim. She didn't know the camera was watching, which makes the scene that much more real. The audience is invested. Perhaps the best example of this tool could be when Michael recounts his feelings after learning about the death of his former boss. He says, "I lost Ed Truck, and it feels like somebody took my heart and dropped it into a bucket of boiling tears. And at the same time, somebody else is hitting my soul in the crotch, with a frozen sledge hammer. And then a third guy walks in and starts punching me in the grief bone, and I'm crying , and nobody can hear me, because I'm terribly terribly, terribly alone." The camera begins to zoom in close up to his face. We are laughing as he talks about frozen sledge hammers, but at the end of his confession, we see someone real, someone we can relate to and someone we care about.
Season eight of The Office is funny. But the characters are holograms of their previous selves. You can't touch them or feel them. You can only see them. The show relies on gimmicks. Kevin has always been the ironically dull-witted accountant, but the writers never made a conscious effort to portray him as such. In season eight, rather than allowing character attributes to rise naturally to the surface, the writers make a big splash. For instance, in the episode "Tallahassee," Jim finds Stanley sneaking rum into his soda during a workshop meeting. In The Office of my childhood, the camera would have located Stanley and zoomed in on him pouring rum into his glass, subsequently panning to Jim as he gives his wide-eyed smirk and shoulder shrug. However, in this episode Jim walks up to Stanley and says "Are you drinking Rum?" Stanley nods and adds a not so funny punch line relating to his being fat, black, lazy, or not interesting in his work. The old office assumed these traits would shine through. Now all the little surprises and laughs that come along with the shifty camera work and realistic portrayals of office life are gone.
Throughout season eight, the story has been driven by characters. This doesn't work for The Office. Michael Scott was a victim of the narrative, and that was hilarious. Now we are watching a show in which the narrative is a victim of the characters. The story has no direction. Dwight wants to become the Vice President of a division of Sabre in Tallahassee? Not the Dwight I know. I enjoyed watching the tension in Scranton between Dwight and Andy, as it was once Dwight’s dream to manage the Scranton branch. Why the sudden change in ambition? The show doesn't tell us. Why does Erin suddenly want to move to Tallahassee? Her only reason is to get away from Andy. Their tragically awkward relationship has been played with by the writers since her debut in Season 5, and the worst part about her sudden disappearance to Florida is that it is resolved just as suddenly as it began. Andy goes to Florida and gets the girl. What about his girlfriend? What about Erin's need for space? We aren't told. There are tensions at play in the eighth season that have immense potential. But the writers resolve these tensions too easily, leaving us with a bunch of characters who I don't really care about anymore and a show entirely stripped of narrative.
Many critics of the most recent season of The Office say that without Michael Scott, the show has no legs. Or no head. Or maybe no body at all. I don't agree. Television shows rely on narrative and style. Do I miss Michael Scott? More than anything. Do I get frustrated when Ed Helm's appears as a softer version of Steve Carrell's character? Yes. Do I get cringes when Pam asserts herself as the queen of the office, when her character's humor has always relied on her subtle confidence? Yes. Do I turn the television off when I have to sit through a five minute scene of Kevin ordering Girl Scout Cookies? Yes. The minute I found out Toby was selling cookies at the office, I knew how the rest of those five minutes would turn out. The people in the office are no longer people. They are caricatures. They are gimmicks. They are predictable memories of what used to be comedy. Has The Office outlasted its existence as a premiere example of a mockumentary television series? I don't think it has. But when I feel like I could write better jokes than whoever is sitting behind that desk on 30 Rockefeller Plaza, it begs the question of whether or not this show should still be on the air. I feel like I don't even know the characters anymore.
No comments:
Post a Comment