The Office Season 8: It Kinda Seems Like the Left Side is the Side to Be On

in fact david, jan, robert california and kathy bates all being off their trolleys has enabled some serious deux ex machina

'how do we explain this ridiculous situation? let's make the ceo a basket case! that solves everything!'

well, that part is actually kinda true to life

best episode since 'goodbye michael'

i was pretty happy with this one. also lol at the steve carell malarkey mentioned earlier, only to show him in the episode preview for next week

wish last week was the last with andy...would've been a good way to go out, bummed to have this totally depressing coda.

And it looked like they showed Steve Carell in the interview thing, so maybe not in the actual episode.

Steve Carell made an appearance at their city-wide "wrap party" in Scranton last week, which it appears they're going to show some part of in the recap show prior to the episode. I don't think he's in the actual final episode, though.

bummed to have this totally depressing coda.

Yeah, exactly what I was thinking. When they started the whole acapella thing, I thought they were going to give him a sort of successful "out", maybe end it with him making the cut at the audition level and leaving his future somewhat hopeful. I didn't think I cared as much about his character, but it was a bummer way to end. Maybe he'll be redeemed in the "six months later" thing.

presumably he'll have hooked up with Wompler

They should have just had Dwight run the office instead of Andy.

actually i like that they ended the saga with Dwight and Jim as blissful manager and assistant manager, wouldn't surprise me if that was one of their long-term endgoals

xxp ohhhhh right she was one of the woman from Best Friends Forever

Maybe he'll be redeemed in the "six months later" thing.

― i kant believe it's not buffon (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Saturday, 11 May 2013 01:06 (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'd stick money on that tbh

They should have just had Dwight run the office instead of Andy.

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, 11 May 2013 01:18 (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that works as a sort of lol we have one episode conceit, but for an unknown number of years it would probably have changed the dynamic of the show way too much

btw interesting how they just dropped the brian thing (presumably they got feedback early enough to be able to do something about it). incorporating the documentary crew the way they did this week (compiling footage for pam) was at least a billion times better

So dude came back, I hear.

Just for a bit part.

...That's what she said!

In all seriousness, I thought Erin's arch was a sweet leftfield surprise.

yeah, great that erin got a good ending in all this

michael's cameo was perfectly executed: get him in for something important; give him a couple of lines (obv carell is rusty as michael now); let the show wrap up its current stories without him

i thought it was annoying that erin's birth parents decided to spring that on her during the televised panel. would it have been that hard to discretely contact her before the fact?

they were weird

Yeah appearances of long lost parents like that in shows usually are built to make you suspicious of their true motives.

Though the episode overall was basically a clip show where nobody felt like acting.

And the scene where Andy ran into the huge crowd of fans waiting in the other room would have been way more effective if the camera followed him around the corner to reveal the crowd. Just a thought.

I'd like to think Erin's parents saw her on the doc, and then tried to reach her through PBS, and then the docs producers persuaded them to reintroduce themselves at the panel to spice up the eventual bonus feature.

i liked the kinda-cheesy casting of Ed Begley Jr. and Joan Cusack. they seem like such generic hippy rom-com parents

Best part of that scene was how everyone else in the panel and the audience realized what was happening before she did.

yeah, that erin's a dopey sweetheart

Also loved Pete's bit about he's still not famous or anything, but now all his friends call him "Plop" so that's great.

Though the episode overall was basically a clip show where nobody felt like acting.

― Evan, Friday, 17 May 2013 23:41 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes! in that respect it was hard to tell the difference between the talking heads in the retrospective clip show thing and the actual final episode

<3 erin, xpost. but yeah, overall this episode was lame and unsurprising. i felt happy for andy in the end, getting a job in the admissions office at cornell. i didn't even know i cared about that character but this was the only emotional response i had to this episode.

i didn't have much emotional attachment at all. it all happened, there were things, people did stuff, they all did their final speeches, the end. only time i actually felt nice about it all was in that group photo in the warehouse with greg daniels &c., but even that was awkward.

They added 15 minutes to it, but imo they could've cut out 15 minutes of Dwight and Angela's wedding and it would've been perfectly okay with me. I guess they needed that so Michael could have his cameo, Nellie could get her baby, and Ryan and Kelly could flee together.

the baby thing was depressing to me. isn't it traumatic for babies' primary caregivers to keep changing?

i mean functionally it all ~worked~, and everyone did the sorts of things you would expect them all to be doing, but the execution felt a bit by-the-numbers

xp yeah, the baby thing was in character for ryan, slightly dissonant for kelly, and just completely wtf for nellie (because we still don't know who she is; she might as well be an extra for all the difference it makes)

actually no i take that back, perfectly in character for kelly

losing the wedding also meant losing the string band version of "Sweet Child of Mine", so NO.

It was very Dwight that his first reaction to the limo stopping and seeing a man with a bazooka standing in a field was to assume that Jim had turned on him.

yeah that was good. the part with dwight and the stripper was stupid and forced though. i don't know what they could have done better with this episode... this season was a mess. the early seasons of the office still contain many of my favorite moments in television history though.

otoh, the fact that Angela's stripper was Meredith's son and the only person not weirded out by that being Meredith was p awesome.

yeah that was great. i think it could have been better executed because it was undermined/cut short by the ridiculous mose kidnapping plotline, but i shouldn't complain bc it was still funny

The wedding was good, come on. The hair metal and the entire Kelly/Ryan scene was A++++ for their characters. "It's a combination of Drew and Blake".

"She went out to get a battery for her E-Cigarette..."

And come on, the "you came" "that's what she said" was expected, but perfect.

Definitely, but Michael desperately needed just a few more actual lines. Or some more 1 on 1 sneak ups like he did with Dwight.

i suspect michael was only there to appease the audience. the show is in no way about him any more.

sort of like when hitchcock started doing his lol cameos right at the start of films so the audience would stop looking for him and just enjoy the movie

yeah, we found out all we needed to know about the rest of his life from Pam.

He's so happy that he's got a family plan!

We watched the finale tonight. I'm so glad I jumped ship when I did.

when did you? I think I stopped watching after the 2009 season

Maybe it was the beginning of this season? When it was revealed that James Spader was gone and Andy was the new boss?