I was just musing about the second season the other day, and had a sort of silly question:
What exactly were the writers trying to accomplish with Debra’s dating the old guy? I mean, obviously it was meant as filler material, but usually you fill up time on a show with something entertaining in one way or another. But this was all kind of just, realistic I guess. It wasn’t a big romantic thing since both of them were perfectly well into each other, so hooking up was easy; it wasn’t particularly relevant to any office politicing; he didn’t end up being a serial killer himself; but he didn’t help get her over the Ice Truck Killer thing, since she did that with the writer dude; and the whole “he’s old” thing amounted to a couple quips between the two and was entirely not brought up by any other character.
I suppose it doesn’t matter. To be certain it’s better to have documentary style filler about your characters than invent stupid stuff like Kim’s adventures in 24. It just seems odd to have such a large percentage of time in a TV show be sort of pointless.
Perhaps the actors or screenwriters just failed at portraying a sort of As Good as it Gets vibe, but intended it?