Sunday, December 14, 2008

The Office Mid-Season Report

With one-half of the fifth season of The Office done, here are my thoughts:

1.  Best Scene: Oscar and Andy in the Winnipeg bar.  Oscar, drunk, urges Andy to call Angela to find out "who do you think you are?!"  To his surprise Andy actually does.  Also, Andy tries to hook Oscar up with dudes.  Hilarious.  Uncomfortable.  Classic Office.

2.  Best Storyline: Jan and the baby shower.  I am beginning to think that they may have had this episode too soon and could have extended this out a little bit.  Jan has the baby without telling Michael, Michael throws a strange shower for "Ass Tred", Michael figures out that he has no connection to the baby, Jan forbids him from dating Holly, Michael finally gets the balls to stand up to Jan.  Incredibly awkward and great ending.

Runner Up - Angela, Dwight & Andy love triangle.  At first, I wanted Angela and Dwight to get together.  Andy was the clear bad guy.  However, they have humanized him with the Canada trip and the newest Christmas episode.  Ultimately, I think that Angela and Dwight are going to get together, but I am worried about how ugly it will get for Andy.  I cheer for Andy now (crazy what one drunken phone call will do to a guy). 

3.  Worst Storyline: Bringing Ryan back.  I know it was through a temp agency, but who in their right mind would rehire an employee who cooked the books.  They could have saved this mistake because Michael would rehire Ryan if corporate had no knowledge of it.  But it appears that they did since David Wallace came to the Scranton branch and made no mention of it.  On top of it, Ryan is annoying, and not in a good way like most of the other characters.  Finally, unless I missed something, he just disappeared in the last three episodes.

4.  Character I am Getting Tired of: Pam.  Is it just me, or is she more annoying this year?  The sad part about it is that she has hardly been on screen.

5.  Requests:
 
a. Bring back Holly.  Michael finally had something good happen to him, and it was awesome to see their respective awkwardnesses play off of each other.

b. The flashback episode.  As many of you have heard me say this before, the perfect flashback episode would be Jim's first day.  Pam is not annoying.  Jim falls in love with her.  Michael, Dwight and Packer are his fellow salesmen, and Ed Truck is the regional manager.  I think that they could do a half-season worth of episodes in flashback mode.

c. Bring back Karen as Ryan and Jan's replacement at corporate.

d. More Oscar and Andy becoming best friends.

1 comment:

Matt said...

Very nice half season wrap up. I agree we need Holly back, it was nice to see things actually go right for Michael (it was like the episode a while back where Michael goes on a sales call and closes the thing and and we see he really probably was a good salesman). I didn't think she would be around even as long as she was though since that lady (I can't think of her name right now) has a pretty decent acting career to return to.

Hopefully at least she'll make some cameos. I agree that Ryan did not need to return & even though I like Toby and feel sorry for him at times I'm not sure if his character needed to come back either.

I agree we need more of the "others guys" that was one thing I didn't like about Michael/Holly was it was not leaving enough time for the others.

In closing I don't know if you watch the deleted scenes on NBC.com but speaking of the baby shower episode, here is the best outtake of the season so far:

http://www.nbc.com/The_Office/video/clips/baby-shower-clip-two/771802/

Also if you didn't watch the new webisode check it out while you're there.