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

also wau Toby

Is Toby the Scranton Strangler though? I kind of wonder after this episode.

I could see that twist happening.

Justifying Michael's suspicion and hatred of him for all of those years.

Dwight's xmas character was a renamed Krampus (can't remember his name, Bel-something). He even had a Black Peter sidekick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belsnickel

Ah, I guess there's a whole world of lore out there.

Krampus not obscure enough.

Anybody else catch this last night? Another quality ep, Erin getting to shine.

Yeah, it's nice to watch this show again with some level of expectation.

catherine tate's monologue in this was great.

Bald Meredith!

"Shave her head!" Meredith

this week's giant ad for nespresso was pretty fucking woeful

Just reached season 5, still enjoying this show. Guess I'm starting to enter to the danger zone here, from what you said above, but it still seems pretty solid.

I've been mainlining this for the past week or so - getting towards the end of S3 (Phyllis has just got married) and think I might need a sizeable break from it before going back in.

I felt the same but we carried on anyway, and glad we did. Couple of overlong episodes at the start of S4, then it gets back to normal.

Hmm. Just watched the Roy meltdown and I'm pretty sure I need a break.

I missed a couple this season, so perhaps I'm wrong, but is this the first time we've seen documentary crew on the show?

Alos lol on them finally getting back to the Toby-Nellie thing.

I knew the documentary crew would be revealed at some point this season. Tonight was the night, I guess.

Also, Darryl taking the keys out of the ignition so Dwight couldn't leave. *cheers*

pretty good breaking of the fifth wall or whatever, i thought

that whole fight between Jim and Pam was pretty cliche, but Pam crying still got to me

It was predictable, and Jim was a bit extreme, but at the same time, I felt like it was pretty real.

Fight was only as cliche as fights between married folks are. Seemed familiar to me. Jenna Fischer's a terrific cryer, and the Office has been smart enough not to overuse that over the years.

Also the terrifying housewives of the Office fansites seem to have bad ears and are fighting over whether the documentary dude called Pam "Midge" (which he did) or not.

he did? i missed that

Yup. Rewound and checked.

Toby-Nellie was hilarious.

Toby is reaching epic levels of creepiness. *Shudder*

her face during the massage was great.

Great episode. Pam knocked it out of the park at the end. I really loved Darryl forcing Dwight to clean up.

The non-Andyness of the show recently was odd at first, but now it seems they are thriving without him.

Haven't bothered to find out, but why isn't Ed Helms around for these episodes? Hopefully they aren't making Hangover 4.

He was probably doing Hangover 3 when he actually left. Whether he's doing another film now or they're keeping him away for story reasons, it's working.

Last night we learned that the father of Jenna Fischer's child is a pretty lousy director.

the boom guy thing is handled really forcibly, like it's the result of 'oh shit how are we going to end this thing' rather than any intellectual or creative pursuit

also, pam shits me off more than any character I can think of this century – all those years of her growing confidence and jim backing her to realise her full potential, yet here we are in year nine and her magnum opus is a mural in the fucking warehouse

nobody grows in this thing, apart from andy who's (a) a ring-in, (b) not even growing in a believable way and (c) in bed for like the past four weeks

oh unless he left properly as per the discussion upthread, if so I fell asleep in whichever episode that was

Andy got into a boat with his brother Josh Groban and sailed to the Caribbean, where he decided to stay for an indeterminate amount of time

Is no one else seeing this Pam/Brian storyline as a counterpoint to the Jim storyline from last season where that woman in the office was aggressively pursuing him? It's being handled very clumsily aside from the tag with Jim talking about focusing on the people he cares about, meaning Darryl when it's his marriage he should be concerned about, but I think there's supposed to be a conscious echo there

i think you're onto something, but i was more reminded of Pam's original engagement to Roy when she met Jim

Yeah that's a good point, especially given that the show is winding up it would make sense that they would put that type of parallel to Pam's original romantic situation up

I just wish they hadn't done this with a magic handsome boom mic operator that we've never heard of before until he white-knighted his way onto the show for three episodes in a row

agreed; the best they could do was have that somewhat awkward line about "following someone for 8 years" to get close

yeah. this feel's super forced. i hope they handle it well.

and as tough as things are, one spat w/ Jim during a stressful time shouldn't have her running into the arms of a good looking guy who holds a microphone.

I thought they'd actually done a decent job showing the stress ramp up into a serious relationship problem, and Brian as a sympathetic person whose relationship to Pam we'd never seen before actually fit in well with other versions of this story I've seen on actual reality shows, where the person working on the show who starts a relationship with a cast member eventually gives up their job and becomes part of the show (the Dave/Kira relationship in RW:Seattle, Kandi/Todd on RHoAtlanta). The thing I didn't buy is the acceleration of the romantic temptation.

I totally thought the Jim Pam blow-up was realistic and I see it as a real problem...I just don't get the idea that we're supposed to believe she'd be running into someone else's arms over that. She did it before and I see that parallel, but Roy was an asshole and Jim worked it for years and years.

what am I doing here. I have work to do.

you and me both

Eh those last two eps were ok. Feels like it's getting more into convoluted territory once again. Jim moved out of the house w his wife and kid and got a second place? Either this is one of those startups that is massively successful and makes a profit from day one or selling paper part-time at DM is really paying the bills.

I really don't care about the boom operator. Feels like they are needlessly fabricating stories.

From what I understand, he and Darrell are splitting that little apartment, until they can get full-time jobs in Philadelphia and presumably move Pam and the kids.. Jim only found out this episode that he would only be paid part time at Dunder Mifflin now.