Entertainment
Ranking 'The Office's Best & Worst Moments, Because This Show Was An Important Part Of TV History
It may seem a tough job to rank The Office 's best and worst moments, but, as with any series that holds some semblance of importance in pop culture, it's necessary — and when it comes to The Office, you can't discount the importance of it on the slate of modern American television. Premiering midseason on March 24, 2005 (aka, 10 whole years ago), the dry, mockumentary sitcom introduced network TV to a new style and format. In fact, it's arguable that The Office ushered in a wave of inventive single-camera programming as a new sitcom standard, launched the career of Steve Carell, prompted a love affair between U.S. viewers and series of British origin, and, with the relationship between Jim and Pam, made as good a stab at anyone else at replacing Ross and Rachel.
Influence aside, The Office didn't always do everything right. Over its nine seasons on air (a good deal more than anyone on board likely expected to work with), the Greg Daniels creation showcased a few major slip-ups in terms of character, plot, and comedy on the whole.
But we remember The Office fondly, warts and all. So in celebration of our years spent at Dunder Mifflin, here's a look back at all the highs and lows of the special, game-changing sitcom.
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HIGH: Romance
The Office could light a fire under even the most tepid of potential couples. Somehow, the series got us to care fervently about the otherwise dull-as-dust Jim and Pam, about the pseudo-psychotic Dwight and Angela, and about the pathologically mismatched Andy and Erin. I don’t know how they did it, but we really wanted all of those people to get together.
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LOW: Relationships
Of course, once those pairs did get together, everything more or less went the way of your typical TV romance. Jim and Pam lost all conceivable intrigue, while Andy and Erin devolved into a maelstrom of dysfunction and dejection. (At least Phyllis and Bob seemed to have a good thing going!)
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HIGH: Holiday episodes
In particular, Halloween and (better still) Christmas. The Office’s more festive episodes usually brought about some of the series’ warmest and funniest moments, including Michael’s long-awaited validation of his friendship with Dwight, or Kelly’s ecstatic freakout over her Secret Santa gift of a Robert Pattinson poster.
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LOW: Season finales
After the first three (four if you got a kick out of Phyllis walking in on a newly rekindled Dwight and Angela), The Office’s season finales generally turned out rather lackluster, mostly for lack of anything exciting to set up in the season to come. Sure, Season 5’s final episode revealed that Pam was pregnant, but did anyone really consider this driving action?
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HIGH: Supporting characters who stayed supporting characters
The Office did a good job fairly early on of peppering in mentions of the personal quirks of the Dunder Mifflin staff: Meredith’s wild side, Angela’s priggishness, Creed’s senility. The good majority of the employees stuck largely to one or two defining quirks, never angling for bona fide story arcs or any real semblance of the spotlight.
This resistance to overuse made such characters’ comic material and occasional heightened attention (such as Meredith’s self-immolation, or Creed’s promotion to branch manager) all the more satisfying.
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MEDIUM: Supporting characters who became major characters
This one is hit or miss. Ellie Kemper’s ascension to a genuine character provided a breath of fresh air to the staling series, and Zach Woods’ evolution into a contentious (and pretentious) creep allowed for a good number of later-era gags. But Angela and Oscar’s love triangle with the former’s husband? Darryl’s humdrum “will they or won’t they” with Val? Mostly just dead air.
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LOW: Supporting characters who went off the deep end
As are most situation comedies, The Office is guilty of playing too hard on some of its supporting players’ quirks. The biggest culprits: Toby, who transformed from levelheaded milquetoast to desperate weirdo, and Kevin, whose level of intellectual acumen dropped from subpar to downright unfathomable.
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LOWER: Out-of-office characters
And even with so many members of the Dunder Mifflin staff struggling to command our attention, The Office insisted on roping in more: Charles Miner, Jo Bennett, Robert California, Nellie Bertram. There was even an IT guy we were expected to remember at one point!
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HIGH: The Stamford era
The extended arc that brought Jim over to Connecticut, and then Connecticut over to Scranton, is easily the show’s golden period. Tacit contrasts between the Stamford office’s work routine and that of the Scranton minefields,
LOW: The "Jim's the boss" era
And the absolute lowest plot point in the series’ history involved Jim taking a seat next to Michael as co-manager of Dunder Mifflin Scranton. Never before did a series’ hero become so instantly dislikable.
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HIGH: The believable
When The Office stuck to self-contained, simple stories—like a boss exhibiting racial insensitivity, coworkers goofing off in absence of their manager, or a toaster-prompted fire scare — the comedy was always its strongest.
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LOW: The unbelievable
However, the show often let its stories go a little berserk. Michael rallying Dwight and Andy to help him intimidate a suspected mafioso, or Dwight (as the building’s new landlord) holding basic resources for ransom each amounted to nonsense.
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HIGH: Michael Scott
From the pilot episode right up to his final moments saying goodbye to Dwight, Jim, and Pam, waveringly oblivious Michael Scott was without question the best thing to come out of The Office. Yes, Michael was just as susceptible to weak material as anyone else, but the distinguishing factor is that the character represented something: like Archie Bunker and Homer Simpson before him, Michael represented an the too familiar but ever changing idea of ignorance, and all the wonderful comedy and horrible tragedy that might stem therefrom.
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LOW: Almost everything after Michael Scott
No-brainer. They really should have capped the show at his send-off.
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