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

best episode in several years. where did they suddenly pull that from? so many amazing moments i don't know where to start.

There was a huge cast party in Scranton last night, proceeds to local charity, and Steve Carrell showed up.

Except for the stupid Jim/Pam discord, I think the last season and a half has actually been pretty high quality. I don't think pulling off one episode of this caliber came from nowhere.

yes but it's head and shoulders above everything, especially in some really well done character dilemma moments

(by that i mean which way a character will behave under a particularly unusual circumstance)

okay now that the iron is off i can elaborate without burning down the place. the three moments that really jumped out at me were:

1. having andy jump the firing gun by volunteering to resign, and then having to respond to basically the whole office telling him to stay, while he knew he actually didn't have that choice. obv that was resolved fairly quickly by him being offered the sales position, but a couple of scenes (where various office members were telling him how dumb he was being) were absolutely thrilling to watch.

2. dwight wanting to tell the office he was the new manager, but david asking to be the one to announce it then being distracted by a phone call, and dwight genuinely struggling about whether he should wait or just blurt it.

3. oscar offering angela a temporary place to stay. with all their recent history completely understood, and angela's constitution being so fragile at that moment, she could have reacted in so many ways (the reaction she chose made me tear up fwiw)

there was other great stuff too (jim & pam genuinely hugging dwight in congratulation; angela opening up about dwight; erin hoping (and failing) to go on a double date with jim & pam; pretty much every line kevin had), but the three points above really gave those characters a chance to shine.

also, this episode didn't feel like a double at all—so very tightly written and edited that 'er indoors and i didn't even notice how long it was.

the only thing that spoiled this episode was andy actually crapping on david's car. silly.

but a couple of scenes (where various office members were telling him how dumb he was being) were absolutely thrilling to watch.

I can see this, but I felt like the ep almost lost me bcz it went into that mode where everybody had to reiterate over and over again how unsuited Andy was for show business, which was done to such a degree that it began to feel a bit forced. Which is why I ended up liking the emotional climax centering around him covering Sarah McLachlan, something that would normally make me cringe: because it threw all of that into sharp relief.

I think now that the Andy character has been resolved, it can be said that the writers did a real good job with his character. He was a tremendous flake, but the show was full of tremendous flakes, and it probably wasn't an easy task to differentiate him from Michael Scott. But I think the writers did a good job of doing that and keeping his character internally consistent, and using his flakiness to kind of play with some of the show's other plot formulae (ie setting up Andy/Erin along the same lines as Jim/Pam or Michael/Holly, then having Andy completely fuck it up...)

I half agree with that, but I found it weird when during the second half of this season they completely switched away from the audience sympathizing with him when the actor had to disappear for several episodes, mistreating Erin, etc. His annoying qualities had been toned down or given a more sympathetic "late-Michael Scott" sheen over the past two seasons (remember when he was supposed to unite the office as an "underdog"?). My guess is that they turned away from the Andy/Erin subplot when it was clear that there wasn't really enough chemistry between the two of them, hence them setting up the Erin/New Jim romance...

But then again I did kind of enjoy the scenes of people constantly telling him he was making a terrible horrible decision and Andy going back and forth until finally taking a dump on the hood of his boss' car

i agree with Nhex. Andy, as a character, has been a mess; the writers never seem sure about how they want to write him. i think this is an issue that goes back a ways in the show.

otm

making him manager was a gutsy move but it didn't pay off. they even had to rely upon suspended disbelief with the audience (punches a hole in the wall, years later is manager, nothing for a while then punches hole in wall again, forgotten rather quickly). now he's such a mish mash of backed out premises, discarded character traits and inconsistent behaviours that it's hard to give a toss about him at all any more. oh he wants to be an actor now? um okay. oh he's violent again? um okay. oh he likes erin again this week? um okay.

fwiw i'm not criticising the decision to have him replace michael scott; i'm sure they worked hard to make a character decision that retained the balance of the show

"backed out premises, discarded character traits and inconsistent behaviours"

this is like real life tho

i mean that describes most ppl i know pretty well.

it's in other people's reactions to him too though, e.g. when he was made manager nobody said 'whoa shit he punched that hole in that wall and now he's managing me' iirc

Andy dropping the manager trophy at the opening really sort of describes the post-Michael Scott Office perfectly.

i think the season with robert california was ok. or at least the idea of bringing him in was good... shake up the dynamics of the office thoroughly enough so it doesn't feel like something's missing. there were some good episodes last season.

catherine tate must be looking for a new agent by now

I'm more annoyed about Andy not mentioning Cornell in the last few seasons than the whole wall-punching-to-manager arc, I think...there's a lot of stuff that happened in the interim that I think helped to make that only part of his character. Obv the inconsistencies have been embedded in the character so that Andy p much has only a vague notion of up and down on any given day. Of course that plays against the credibility of him becoming manager, but I think that's explained away p easily:

1) nobody knew what they were doing
2) Jim's main concern was keeping Dwight out
3) punching a wall is kind of normal compared to some of the stuff Michael got away with. I mean, he kidnapped a pizza boy once.

oh yes that's true

Kind of amazing that he could be gone from work for 3 months and not get into trouble w corporate? I know they explained this in the episode he came back from his boat trip but it was a pretty flimsy explanation that I couldn't recall if my life depended on it.

it helps that wallace went totally screwball before he returned

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.