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Saying Goodbye to 'The Office'

Annie Lloyd |
May 16, 2013 | 10:21 p.m. PDT

Staff Reporter

(NBC)
(NBC)

Thursday night’s series finale of “The Office” marked the end of an era for NBC. For the past nine seasons the show has helped to anchor the network’s Thursday night comedy block, bringing in enough viewers during its prime to be considered a bona fide success. It popularized the mockumetary format and made cringe humor laugh-out-loud hilarious. With ratings down across all networks, and NBC’s recent inability to create a new successful sitcom, letting go of “The Office” means letting go of the network’s last remnant of widespread comedic success. It’s only fitting then for the characters within the show to take a similar final look at the series.  

The finale, appropriately titled “Finale,” confronts the idea of reality. While realism shouldn’t be a factor to determine the creative quality of a show, it’s been the key component to the successful parts of “The Office”. I don’t just mean a believable plot, though. A plot’s greatness directly comes from the strength of the characters within it. These factors are what set the most recent seasons of the show so far below the preceding ones. Starting around season six “The Office” started eschewing the grounded characteristics of its cast (with certain episode exceptions, of course). Characters like Andy became shadows of their former selves (and in his case, a poor shadow of another former character as well) when the plot started diverging into nonsensical and unfunny buyouts, relationships, and three-month long boat trips. As a result, the series finale ended up far more bittersweet than it should have been. During the jumbo hour and fifteen minute-long episode I laughed, I cried, I yelped. The bitter contrast? It emphasized how rarely in the past few years an episode of “The Office” has made me this happy. As a result, the on-point character moments and plot developments felt so out of place it took me awhile to realize I could, and I should, believe and support most of what was happening. “The Office” had retooled its reality to one of complete nonsense. I could barely recognize the good occurring on my television. In a show strongly concerned with portraying the “real” life of these characters, any reality had become unbelievable. 

The decision to set the episode one year past last week’s excellent “A.A.R.M” ended up providing a solid foundation for the final stories. Time in “The Office” generally moves pretty slowly, so the one-year jump allowed for some exposition (of course Manager Dwight would ignore any loyalty and recognize Kevin’s severe incompetence) but not a whole lot of change. The only disappointing character story was Andy’s, but his recent experiences doomed him from the start. No amount of Cornell commencement speeches can make up for his dreadfully failed pursuits into acting and a capella competitions from the past few episodes. Plain and simply, there’s no way that audition video would have gotten so viral.

With all the characters’ current lives established, the main concern becomes the documentary reunion panel and Dwight’s marriage to Angela. The cast’s participation in the Q&A at the panel makes “The Office” blur the line between reality and fiction to the strongest degree all season. When Meredith mentions how she got her PhD, and when all the women fawn over Jim and chastise Pam, the show makes an interesting statement on the fallacy of recreative storytelling. Everyone’s perception of these characters, even within the real life of the show itself, directly results from what the writers, directors, and editors choose to display. The “reality” on screen is actually a new reality separate from the content that makes it up. The characters’ comments on the PBS documentary serve as meta-commentary on the nature of “The Office.” It’s saying: Yes, we know what you’re seeing may not be the truth. But if the characters within it form an affecting connection for the viewer, who cares?

This episode’s ability to recreate those connections that have recently faltered makes it an oasis of comfort within Dunder Mifflin’s world. From Dwight’s obliviousness to the stripper’s true intentions, to Pam’s concern about owing Jim something stemming from her series-long insecurities, to Kevin’s misinterpretation of what makes a person gay, “Finale” hits many great chords. The most perfect moment of the whole episode comes from Steve Carell’s last hoorah as Michael Scott. When he describes seeing everyone as "like all my kids grew up and married each other. It's every parent's dream," he explains everyone’s only desire. We all just want to see the characters grow. Or at least, since growing is a tediously long process in “The Office,” we just want to see the characters as their truest selves. Thankfully the finale provides us as much. It also provides us with an excellent round of “Spot the Famous Guest Star,” an almost obligatory sitcom force nowadays.

Reach Staff Reporter Annie Lloyd here. Follow Staff Reporter Annie Lloyd on Twitter here.



 

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