I really like this show and I’m not all about picking it apart, but just to defend Tanbarkie’s statement, the school could have asked for some sort of proof that he had, say, more then a few thousand dollars. College for, what, 30 kids is gonna run over a half million dollars, just for tuition, even if we generously say it doubled in the last ten years that would have been a quarter million dollars, Michael never had anything close to that, and probably never will.
It retrospect I would think the school would have/should have asked him, when he made the promise, to set up some sort of trust fund(s) that they could have kept an eye on to make sure he was on his way towards keeping his promise. At the very least someone should have called him once a year to make sure he was still planning to do it.
He was apparently still visiting the school every so often (he’d been to the one girls sax recital for example, and knew a lot of the kids by name), so its not like he dropped off the map after making the promise.
As for checking his story, agree that’s what the school should’ve done, but its not like public schools IRL are always on top of things they should be, so I didn’t really think it was so unbelievable that they didn’t check up.
It was a little unbelievable he didn’t get sued after the fact, but hey, that’s Hollywood.
Let’s face it, folks.
We all recognize that this could have been one of the best comedies in TV history. It has VERY talented actors who play compelling characters.
Yet, week after week, there are negative posts about each episode.
BECAUSE THEY KEEP THROWING IN COMPLETELY UNREALISTIC SCENARIOS THAT INSULT THE VIEWERS INTELLIGENCE.
I have been watching old episodes on NetFlix and they are better than the new episodes, but even they lack credibility.
Maybe some of those hundreds and hundreds of producers that they cram down our throats in the opening credits (like Steve Carell and BJ Whatshisname) could earn some of that producer credit money and demand better writing.
I still like the show, but it is frustrating when they throw reality completely out of the window and give us shit like dual-managers in a company that is going broke etc etc etc ad nauseum.
Yeah, he was still visiting, and he probably kept telling them he was going to do this, and I’ll bet he really and truly thought he’d find away to do it, but no one ever actually made sure he could.
Now you’ve made me wonder, could he actually be sued for this?
I’ll bet someone, somewhere at some point in time has made a similar promise, I wonder what the protocol actually is for something like that?
Here’s the litigation value for the episode. Dunder-Mifflin is safe, but Michael himself could get in trouble. Then again you “can’t get blood from a turnip”.
Possibly the first person to do this is Eugene Lang, a millionaire businessman who made the promise to the graduating sixth-grade class of P.S. 121 in New York, his alma mater. He met with the kids regularly over the next six years and mentored them. Ninety percent graduated from high school and 60% from college.
Didn’t Pam explain that they decided to get married in Niagara Falls specifically so they could invite everyone from the office but not risk them actually showing up?
Michael threw a wrench into her plan by giving everyone the day off so they could travel to the wedding. Thereby ensuring everyone would come since they didn’t get the day off work otherwise.
Hey Mister Scott!
What’cha gonna do?
What’cha gonna do to make our dreams come true?
Repeat on a near-constant basis for the next three days to get a glimpse of the hell that’s been going on inside my head.
I just saw ‘Shareholder Meeting’, and I still liked it. I have a feeling the writers produce episodes like they had with ‘Scott’s Tots’ presuming they’re taking the audience to the deepest state off discomfort in the shows history, when they’re really detaching the connection we have with the characters. I think Michael will be “redeemed”, and I don’t even care if it’s by some karmic mistake, all I really ask for is that it’s clever.
As for the Jim debate, I think I’m most impressed by Krasinski’s range, (though subtle, I didn’t think/know he had any), than I am the character. He reminds me of people promoted where I work. Though he was perfect as a boss in ‘Shareholder Meeting’, imho.
It’s the “how do we top ourselves this time?” problem. Early on in a show’s history, it’s not difficult to set up a situation that goes just a little bit further than viewers have seen before, without also landing in the realm of unbelievability (“Last time, Dwight dressed up as a Sith Lord for Halloween and got a little too into it… I know, we can top that by having him get into a fight with Michael at his dojo! It makes sense that a dork like him might take karate lessons with a bunch of kids anyway.”).
But as time passes, if the writers aren’t careful, they can find themselves having to come up with crazier and crazier set pieces in order to continue surprising the audience. Eventually, they’ll either hit a point wherein the audience sees the character and just expects something ridiculous to happen, thus losing the element of surprise entirely (Creed is a sterling example of this), or where the character undergoes complete Flanderization and no longer maintains even a semblence of reality (see Michael, Dwight, and to a lesser extent, Ryan).
I think you’re looking too hard for faults and making some up that aren’t really there, and then you include these nonexistant faults in with a few real ones and start convvincing yourself that there are a ton of huge gaping problems when in reality it’s mostly made up stuff that isn’t really there.
Take this quoted example. Think about the character of Dwight Schrute. With everything we know about him, it is completely believable and 100% in character for him to firmly pull the camera crew into the conference room for each one of those individual “my idea” line readings every single time he publicly gives credit to Andy.
Isn’t it more plausible he said it once and the documentary film crew has edited the footage to have “my idea” show up everytime Dwight tells Andy it was “your idea”?
I’m getting pretty sick of the “Jim is stupid now that he’s a boss” storyline.
That’s what I was thinking. Either that or Dwight used the phrase more than once in the same confessional session (e.g. “Andy thinks it was his idea, but really it was my idea. This is essential, because Jim must never realize that it was actually my idea.”) and it was edited later. Since the show obviously IS edited, there’s no reason to assume that all events took place exactly in the order shown. In fact, there have been episodes where this very clearly was not the case, such as the wedding episode that intercut Jim and Pam’s boat ride with the church service.
I really didn’t see this as a “stupid Jim” storyline. He was tricked, but Dwight failed in the end. And he actually succeeded as a boss in the last episode (although he turned Ryan into an enemy.) Really there’s only been three “Jim is bad as a boss” episodes, only one of which has been this season.
There wasn’t really any reason to think he was a genius before. He was less dysfunctional then the rest of the staff, and he was clever enough to play tricks on Dwight (but then, Dwight wasn’t really hard to trick), but he’s never really had anyone that was an effective foil. I kind of like the idea of him not getting the fact that he’s the target of others after he was the one doing the tormenting for so many years.