An unbelievable wedding... and I mean that in the negative, I assure you.

To: The Writers of NBC’s The Office
Re: Congratulations are in order!

Wow. I’m simply stunned. It’s a rare opportunity to see what you managed to achieve on television last night, and you managed to not only pull it off, but to do so with gusto. There I sat, watching in slack-jawed amazement, as the wedding episode of The Office danced across my television. And I mean that literally, by the way, because a good chunk of the show was devoted to the cast flailing around in a sad imitation of the Hollywood club scene. And yet even that was not the most excessive thing that happened in last night’s acme of awful episodes.

Did you mean to write a swansong for your series? That’s exactly what you accomplished. All of the excess, all of the indulgence, and all of the smarminess might have been acceptable for a final episode, where sentiments are meant to run high and comedy takes a back seat to tying up the plot. But no. This is only the fourth episode of the sixth season, and we’ll be back in The Office next week asking, “where do we go from here?” Chances are good that the answer is going to be awfully disappointing.

The episode began in the office, with a throwaway gag about Pam using her pregnancy to try to influence the behavior of others. The punchline was a chain-vomiting scene. I should have known then that this was not going to be one of the smart, edgy and human episodes I saw in the first and second seasons of your show, or even occasionally during the third. No. When you rely on bodily humor to get a cheap laugh, my own humors are aroused. Specifically, the bile in the back of my throat.

The episode then moved to the wedding, taking place for no particularly good reason in Niagra Falls. Yes, it’s been explained that the wedding was meant to be held there to prevent people in the office from coming. But you decided to write down a way for them all to be there anyway. Why go to all the trouble?  Were the cast and crew begging for a vacation to one of the tackiest tourist traps on Earth? That can’t be the case, because the only scenes involving the setting whatsoever involved Jim and Pam. The entire setting was wasted except for one painfully smarmy moment aboard a tour boat.

Do you understand what drama is? Do you understand that a few shaky camera shots of two characters getting secretly married on a boat just moments before their actual wedding is ridiculous? If you had spent episodes preparing us for a nightmare wedding where Pam had no control, and everyone else had edged her out to make it about them, then perhaps, just maybe, the scene would have made sense. But what sort of bride wants to spoil her wedding day by going under Niagra Falls, getting her dress and hair completely messed up, and then repeating a sham ceremony in a church? (Of course, Pam didn’t appear to have a wet dress or messed-up hair when she returned; it’s one of those details that showed this whole sequence hadn’t been thought out very well.)

And then Jim’s brothers and Pam’s bridesmaids decided to act out a Youtube video by having the entire cast dance down the aisle. The video is referenced several times, but never actually shown onscreen. There has never been a reference to it in the show before this, and the entire joke hinges on the audience being familiar with the reference. I have not seen the video for myself, and as far as I could tell, this entire scene was meant to replicate it, not parody it. That is not comedy. It’s not even entertainment. You’re getting paid to write a show that many people believe to be fresh and original. You’re very bold to steal someone else’s idea just because you think it’s funny for the cast to be awkwardly dancing onscreen. To do this without developing or serving the plot in any meaningful way is an even greater travesty.

You’ve also managed to work in a pregnancy arc this season, which is even more baffling. Countless comedies have been ruined by pregnancy arcs. The only comedy I can ever think of that successfully survived one was Malcolm In the Middle, and that was because that show did not view having children as a blessing, but as a trial to endure. It made sense for a baby to bring yet another layer of hardship into the lives of Hal and Lois.

What does Pam being pregnant have to do with anything? What is your end-game scenario here? Are you going to get all gooey and sentimental on us, as you did with the wedding episode? Are we going to have to put up with Pam being whiny and obnoxious and Jim having to balance work life and family life while Michael tries to insert himself into their relationship? The entire idea is just played out. I’m weary even writing it.

I don’t think you writers understand why people started watching this show in the first place. Back in the first and second seasons, when the show was good, The Office was about the mundane, day-to-day life of a meaningless job. The show was very much in the pattern of the British original, and it managed to walk the fine line between making the characters funny and making them tragic. I would argue that one of the finest episodes was the Halloween episode, where Michael struggled with firing an employee because he really, truly did not want to be the bad guy. There was a humanity about him, then; a Peter Principle victim who just wanted to be one of the sales people, and who enjoyed the title, but not the responsibility, of his position. You could actually relate to him, then.

Look at Michael now. He’s a child and a buffoon — a character who most people dread seeing onscreen and who always predictably acts against his own best interests. He started to get a little of his humanity back briefly in the fifth season when he went off to start his own paper company, but you writers had to get carried away with that story arc and find an implausible way to bring him back so things could be more or less the same as before. You seem to think Michael Scott is the heart and soul of the show. He’s not. He gets too much screen time and isn’t entertaining. In short bursts, yes. But as the sympathetic character? That’s supposed to be Jim.

Ah, and Jim, how far you have fallen. Jim was likable in the first couple of seasons, much like Tim in the UK original. Jim was an underachiever who was stuck on a girl he couldn’t have. We can relate to that. When Jim moved on, he was successful. When he came back, things just couldn’t be. We sensed that they might always have to settle for being friends as they made other compromises in life.

And then, you writers had to mess it up by putting Jim and Pam together. The unrequited love between them was fulfilled, and the show suddenly got a lot less interesting. You teased us with maybe pulling them apart again — and you could have! — but then Pam made the safe choice and quit school and returned to Scranton, and to Jim, pretty much ruining any chance she really had of evolving into a more interesting character. You tried to compensate by focusing on Michael’s relationships, but who really wanted to see those played out? Who really wanted to see the smart, stable, independent woman in Jan turned in to a crazy control freak who eventually vanished off the show entirely?

For a show that is supposed to be a mockumentary, you have been very bad about keeping a strong level of continuity with side plots. Last night’s episode was a great example: Pam’s mother has appeared in the show before, and she was a friendly, likable character who was Pam’s best friend. Not only did the actress change for this episode, but so did the character. Pam’s new mother seems like a repressed WASP who was dumb enough to sleep with Michael despite being likely to know all of the terrible things Pam had told her about him. Pam’s father, too, seems to be different from how he’s been described before. There was no point in including either character; both simply brought attention to the lack of attention to the established “reality” of the show.

My final complaint has to do with Andy Bernard. The Office has always had a great ensemble cast, and Ed Helms as Andy seemed like a natural fit. But wow, has he been wasted. Here is a character who came in as a scheming “yes-man,” who could serve as an interesting foil to Dwight and who could stir up dissension in the office. Instead, he’s been used for a series of gags that I think are meant to be zany, but which come across as gratuitous. Andy used to be smart and interesting in his frat boy persona. Now, he’s just a hard-luck background character who endures pain and punishment for no good reason. Last night’s ill-advised scene with him somehow hemorrhaging his scrotum by doing the splits on top of his car keys was bizarre, unrealistic, and failed to serve the plot at all. Why would Pam have to drive him to the hospital? Why wouldn’t they call an ambulance? How could Andy have possibly been able to attend a wedding the next day? Are you really that weak of writers that you can’t think through these questions before you have a gag filmed, edited and included in the final cut of the episode?

I would like to close by encouraging you all to re-watch the British original and see how far you have deviated from the proven template you started with. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and brilliant writers, and they crafted a show that refused to indulge itself. When The Office ended its second series with Tim striking out with Dawn and David Brent getting fired, Gervais and Merchant took a huge risk, and they left the audience wanting more so badly that they had to put together an encore Christmas Special to tie up all the loose ends and bring some closure to the characters. Even then, Tim had a wonderful monologue about how his life would go on, and how we were just seeing a snapshot of his life. It was a stunning conclusion; a fictional character reminding us that the story would go on even if we weren’t able to watch it for ourselves.

Where is that sort of edge in the American version? It’s long since gone dull. I suggest you sharpen the plot by retooling the characters, avoiding the easy humor, and bringing Michael back down to Earth. The show can still be saved; Scrubs managed to make itself good again in its eighth season. But you’ve got to work at it. Otherwise, I expect we’ll see The Office on the chopping block in the next year or two when the ratings start to drop as more and more viewers tune out.

Speaking of which, I’ll be watching Community, which is one of the best comedies I’ve seen in years. I’m hoping 30 Rock can keep its edge this year, too. But I think I’ll be skipping The Office from now on. Parks and Recreation is getting better, but I’ll let you know now — it’s already pretty stale. I doubt you can save it in time.

Sincerely,

Sean J. Jordan

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.

1) Tone down Dwight. Dwight Schrute began as an American version of the original’s Gareth Keenan, but he came into his own quickly as the writers found a unique voice for him. Dwight is at his best when he’s a sychophant, taking every word of his boss seriously and treating every workplace situation as a chance to improve himself in the eyes of Michael. He is also interesting when his meglomania gets the best of him and he tries to make a power grab. That second element makes him human; we realize, as viewers, that he only adores Michael because he has a fierce respect for the chain of command. When Michael is removed from a position of power, Dwight is all too happy to make changes.

Dwight is also an excellent target of office pranks, since he takes everything so seriously. But the temptation to overplay Dwight’s seriousness has resulted in some really over-the-top antics. One example occurred in the third season, when Dwight attended a party at the CFO’s house, only to get locked into a sideplot where he was inspecting the place for structural damage.  Another occurred in an episode where Dwight tricked his former girlfriend into marrying him. And in the recent hour-long episode following the Super Bowl, Dwight staged a fire to play “gotcha” with a staff that had not been paying attention to his fire safety procedures. Later in the episode, Dwight became annoyed with a CPR trainer and used his knife to cut the face off the doll, offering a hideous impression of Hannibal Lecter that was, to put it plainly, bizarre.

Dwight is one of the most memorable characters on the show, and it’s a shame to see that the writers don’t know where the line is in how they should use him. To paraphrase the character, “The writers should ask themselves, would an idiot do that? If so, Dwight should not do that thing.”

2) Give Andy some better scenes. Andrew Bernard is a character introduced in the third season from the Stamford branch. He’s a great character, too – a frat boy who is slightly smarter than most of his co-workers, but who irritates everyone with his personality, poor sense of humor and anger issues. Andy started off as one of the best additions to the show, but the writers have relegated him into “B-story” and “C-story” scenes as of late, turning him into somewhat of a hard luck doofus who’s always getting himself into awkward situations while everyone else ignores him. Andy is at his best when he’s trying to compete with Dwight and when he’s annoying his co-workers by trying to scheme his way into being friends with them. He’s also very funny when he is the target of a prank where he can’t let something simple go. Andy is not funny when he’s a pariah or dealing with some weird subplot, like having sensitive nipples, getting knocked into the river in an inflatable sumo suit, or trying to plan a wedding that everyone knows isn’t going to happen.

3) Bring Michael back down to Earth. Michael is the dumbest character in the office, and he does some absolutely stupid things. But where Michael is at his best is when he is deluded enough to think that the terrible things he’s doing are for the good of the office. Where Michael is at his worst is when he is involved in a romantic subplot, where he is inviting people to his house, where he is giving inane motivational speeches, or pretty much anything else that takes him out of the office and into the real world.

I would argue that one of the best Michael episodes was in season 2, where it’s Halloween and Michael has waited until the last minute to fire someone. Michael tries every trick and stall he can think of, and he even goes through the painful experience of trying to fire an employee and then finding himself taking it back and firing someone else instead. Michael goes home, feeling awful about what he’s had to do, and he takes some consolation in the trick-or-treaters who come to his house, because he realizes that there is a life outside his office.

That is The Office at its best. Michael’s antics have to have a purpose, and they have to be the actions not of someone who is genuinely dumb, but rather, someone who is simply incompetent and deluded.

Phyllis’s wedding showed Michael at his worst, as did the episode where he drove his car into a river because he was blindly trusting technology, as did the episode where Michael and Holly staged a fundraiser to replace stolen items and Michael promised everyone that he would sell off his (nonexistent) Bruce Springsteen tickets. When Michael is played so over-the-top that he cannot understand any consequences for his actions, he stops being funny and starts being irritating. And while irritation is part of the humor of the show, it’s a poor substitute for smartly written comedy.

4) Get rid of Ryan. I realize that BJ Novak is one of the writers and producers on the show, and that his character is going to be involved in the story somewhat. But Ryan is really one of the show’s biggest excesses. Sure, it’s funny when he’s a temp and Michael continually makes unconscious advances towards him. Sure, it’s funny that Ryan winds up in an office relationship he hates and that he’s constantly getting dragged into drama he doesn’t want any part of. But the entire subplot in the fourth season about him being an executive was a wasted effort that was rarely funny, and having Michael hire him back on was indulgent, to say the least. Ryan’s rarely funny, and when he does tell jokes, they’re barely worth a chuckle.

5) Narrow the scope – The show is called The Office, but lately, very little of the plots have had to do with the workplace. The show is blessed with a great ensemble cast and some good writers.  There’s no reason the show can’t narrow its focus back down to the monotony of working together instead of trying to see what crazy plot Michael or Dwight can get involved in this week. As Tim explains in the end of the BBC version, the office is a tragic place, because it’s somewhere that we spend a lot of time, with people that we don’t always know very well or even like, and yet it becomes so much of our life. Some of us (like myself) are blessed with office environments where we have little drama and everyone gets along. But most are more like Dunder Mifflin than we care to admit. So, the writers should focus not on breaking out of that environment, but rather, in focusing primarily upon it.