[News] So, I’ve fallen off the wagon…

I was doing a good job of keeping this blog updated, and then suddenly… BAM! I got busy working on some press materials for Army Ant and I lost my focus. Ah well.

I’ll be adding up some articles today from earlier this week. Most got started, but never finished.

While you’re waiting on those, check out http://www.codeofthewild.com, and you’ll see what I’ve been working on.

[Television Thursday] Why “The Office” Has Peaked… and How the Show Can Get Its Edge Back

The Office is a great show... but it really peaked around the fourth season.

It’s a shame when a favorite show starts to go downhill, and I’ve watched more than a few good comedies go down the drain. I watched the slow decline of The Simpsons from genius to banality, and I watched Scrubs go from a sharp sense of humor to a dull set of goofy gags. (Though I will say that in its new eighth season on a different network, Scrubs has reclaimed a lot of its bite.) I watched the promising My Name is Earl go from being a quirky comedy to a ho-hum farce.

I’d always hoped that the same thing wouldn’t happen to The Office, which was one of my favorite shows when it originally aired on the BBC, and which had a wonderful transition to American TV thanks to Greg Daniels. The British version was full of snark and bite; its purpose was to build up a villanous doofus who was not so unlike a real boss and then to watch him self-destruct. At the same time, viewers were built up to expect that the only two likable characters in the show, Tim and Dawn, would wind up together, only to be slapped in the face with reality at the end. The subsequent Christmas special, which tied up all the loose ends and redeemed the characters, was produced as a means of giving the fans the happy ending that they demanded, even though it went against the spirit of the show somewhat. The BBC show has some real moments of genius, finding comedy in long pauses and awkward behavior. That’s one of the reasons it caught on so quickly and remains popular today.

The American version, on the other hand, was forced to trade a lot of its bite for goof, and the result has been a show that began on firm footing, but that’s been slipping a lot over the last few seasons. It’s not too late for the show to eschew some of its goofiness and get back to being relevant, and Scrubs has proven that you can reboot a series properly when you have  the right motivation to do so. In the case of The Office, the best thing the producers could do would be to remember what made the show so popular in the first place… and make adjustments now before the ratings start to slip and NBC sends out a cancellation notice.

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