probably my all-time favorite show. but jim and pam? annoying, start to finish. it's like nelly or toby says: they deserve each other. together, apart, can't stand em. maybe they're supposed to be a spoof of the classic sitcom couple, but it's indiscernible. sorry pb and j fans. they're kinda dumb. so obvious they like each other. never find out why pam denies it. probably just to prolong the storyline
rating only applies to the seasons until steve left. not sure I've seen the entirety of the following seasons. they're not awful, except the boom guy storyline, including the dance recital fight. and the forum ending. andy gets awfully insufferable at the end. and the illogical back-and-forth between he and erin (they can't be interested in each other at the same time or something...)
so my least favorite thing? pam constantly complains about her long engagement, only to call off the wedding the day(?) before. and on the beach (cringe), she says she had plenty of reasons to break it off with roy. yet she had gotten back together with him, saying it showed dignity and maturity...
edit: some other annoyances. jim, when pam leaves that message during a college party, driving down to see her, then changing his mind, saying he's not that guy... yeah, you're the other guy. seems like a trope. make the current bf a jerk, so the gf and other guy don't seem so awful. when jim does that obnoxious shrug when roy apologizes for attacking him? lol what a tool. and he pranks dwight every day. but when dwight gets him with snowballs, he fuckin cracks
edit: not sure why it's my first time thinking about it. but I was watching the episode where erin plays scrabble. and she's just so... frustratingly stupid. don't know a better way to say it. yet her character is treated differently, given more exploration and development than kevin. funny, cause michael tried setting em up. yeah kevin is given some depth, but it seems like he's defined as a "lovable clown", while erin is taken more seriously. hard to ignore that it's not about looks. which lends to a sitcom trope going back to even the flintstones. easy to spot the dynamic between character personality and appearance, but not to describe. more to it than lead males can't be too attractive, or they'll be less funny; and female leads can't be too unattractive, or they'll be less likeable
I do not understand why this show is such a cultural phenomenon. It's good, it's pretty funny a lot of the time, the characters can be endearing, but a lot of the time they're not, and the show isn't consistent at all. A lot of these characters are horrible people, but the writers are under the impression that they're not. Jim is selfish, conceited, and a bully, Pam is entitled and manipulative and a horrible relationship partner. Dwight isn't really hateable, he's just super eccentric, apart from the cheating with Angela he really doesn't have any despicable traits. The writers, however, paint him as a foil to Jim The Perfect Protagonist, and so he's cast in the villain role a lot of the time, despite just being a guy trying to do his job. Michael says the haha funnies a lot, sure, but he absolutely ruins the days of his employees constantly, and that's not a funny or cute thing to watch, because the writers try so hard to convince you that it is. Always Sunny is so much better with its characters. The actors, writers, and directors are aware of how fucking awful these humans are, and how much they fuck everything up and ruin the lives of everyone they meet, and they indulge that. They don't try to hide it, they don't think it's endearing, they just want you to revel in the hedonism and the horror of it all.
The office is still a good show but if you think it's the best show of all time please watch more TV shows.
Season ratings coming soon, need to do a rewatch or a skim or something
7/10 overall
After having seen Parks & Rec and the UK and Germany versions of The Office, I was pumped to see what the US version has to offer.
It is easily one of the best sitcoms I have seen so far, and with no doubt in my mind better than the other countries' versions (although it is hard to compare UK and US because the work so differently, and it cannot be understated that UK started it all and was, at first, simply copied). This show is hilarious yet wholesome, and not preachy (sadly an adjective that has to be used in the environment of modern comedies).
Virtually every episode is good. It's in season 7 or 8 that it starts to collapse, the latter being the season Michael Scott, the funniest and main character of the show, leaves. Interestingly enough, the single episodes aren't usually bad (although season 8 had some incredibly disappointing ones, especially towards the end), but without Steve Carrell there's just a big piece missing that cannot be replaced by any of the other characters, as charming as some of them might have been as side characters.
Thus, the show becomes a little bit harder to evaluate. It was easily a 10/10 for most of its runtime, but those two last seasons are close to ruining the perfection, yet without being unwatchable or a total waste of time (Modern Family became gradually worse without losing any of its characters).
All in all, I'm very glad I watched The Office, and I would absolutely recommend it to just about anybody who likes to laugh, despite a comparably weak last third of the show. Most of the episodes are too good to miss out on.
I'm not great at math, but considering I loved seasons 2 to 6 or 7 so much (season 1 was an odd, but very short start) that I would give them an 11/10, I will effectively only let the worse seasons drag the rating for the entirety of the show down by one point. The finale was also good, which helps.
Review by FranciscoBlockedParent2019-08-15T02:20:04Z
The Office is one of the most popular shows on the internet. It still remains as Netflix's most popular TV show after all these years, and is generally loved by most people. I watched all of it in the last month.
I have to say that I think it is kind of overrated, many of the jokes felt very forced, sometimes the quality of the humour was really childish and unfunny, and too cringey too many times for my taste. I found myself jumping 10 seconds ahead when I felt like I just couldn't deal with some scenes anymore. But why didn't I stop watching it?? The truth is there is some unidentifiable quality that kept me coming back, something special that I can't explain. I wanted to see more, see what would happen to the characters, what stupid things they would do next, how it was going to end. Some episodes were weak, some characters took turns and developed in a way that made no sense to me, but overall, the show remained strong and the last few episodes were great, specially the finale. The show ended on a high note, which is difficult to say about many shows nowadays. I really enjoyed it despite all my criticism, it was not as good as I expected it to be (you can see that the writers struggled after Steve Carrel left the show), but it's lighthearted and fun, and it really has some incredibly funny moments.