You know, of course, that she wasn’t really visiting her sister in Scottsdale. She was going to Scranton to visit Michael and possibly also doing other non-work-related things.
Best scene for me was when they first walked into the candle room: Jim reels back to the door with his eyes watering from the stench. I can completely sympathize. Also, it would appear that Jan and Michael have a master-slave thing going, what with him sleeping at the foot of the bed on a bench.
I don’t know. They clearly have no idea what to do with Jan. I think the shows taking a dive.
I don’t know either, but ever since the show started I’ve wanted to see Michael visit a therapist, get some counseling. (If he has, I’ve forgotten – Pam talking him off the roof doesn’t count.)
If Jan cracks up, Michael might end up in therapy with her. That’s reason enough to keep Jan around – not just to see how she rights herself but to see Michael get some self-awareness.
He probably asks himself why he stays with her, but his answer doesn’t go any farther than her new boobs. He won’t let himself think any more deeply than that. It’s too scary for him.
I don’t think the Jan thing is particularly out of character. In previous episodes they’ve had her talking about going to therapy and that her shrink had been working on her controlling her self-destructive tendencies. Then, when she finally decided to give the relationship with Michael a go, she says that her shrink just told her to go ahead and give in to those tendencies once in a while. Her downward spiral is a perfect extension of that going to far, what with the reckless spending, depression and domineering. It’s been pretty consistent within the plot.
The problem I have is that the writers are making her too evil. It was fine when she was uptight and manipulative, but now they are showing her to be utterly cruel. Even a little emotionally unstable would be entertaining and interesting but the pure, unadulterated evil and cruelness to Michael isn’t fun to watch and isn’t particularly funny.
I think it’s pretty common for some Office episodes to be really divisive. It’s usually the ones where they ratchet up the awkwardness that turn a lot of people off. Count me as one who doesn’t really find extended scenes of awkwardness to be very funny, mostly they just make me uncomfortable. This episode was one of those that was just too awkward for my liking. I think the Office is at it’s best when it’s playing is a little closer to straight.
I think that’s exactly right. Because he tried to break up with her last season when he talked it over with “the girls” and they made it clear Jan shouldn’t be treating him like that, and he shouldn’t be forced to do things that make him uncomfortable.
I think the relationship between Michael and Jan is one of the most fascinating things currently on television. They’re simultaneously horrible for each other and perfect for each other–because a part of everybody secretly thinks Michael deserves a hellish homelife for the way he tortures everybody at work. Michael is caught in this quagmire because of his own shortcomings and blindspots, and because he’s a good person. Jan gets caught in a destructive cycle with Michael because, quite frankly, she can. He won’t stop her–he just wants her to love him. And I think the sane part of her does love him, or is at least, very fond of him. But she won’t let herself see him as a man who deserves love and respect, because then she has to face what she’s done to him.
They both get something from the relationship–unfortunately, it’s unhealthy and frightening. And I think they think they’re both getting what they deserve, too.
I agreed with everything you said except… why does Michael deserve this? I don’t think Michael is ever intentionally torturing anyone; he really doesn’t realize how awful he is sometimes. He’s just a bumbling, clueless needy dork who utterly lacks self-awareness. Jan is so evil to him, it seems far out of proportion to Michael’s wrongs. I can see how he wound up in the relationship, and why he can’t get out of it, but I can’t say I believe he deserves to be treated like dirt under Jan’s feet.
I hope there is a cathartic break-up episode this season where Michael finally dumps Jan and maybe changes a little for the better from the experience.
I don’t personally think Michael deserves this at all. I think Michael stays because he thinks he deserves it. He’s clearly got low self-esteem. He wants to have kids so that people have to love him and can’t say no to playing with him. I just wouldn’t be surprised if he assumes this is how relationships are, and more to the point, this is how his relationships are. Like most people trapped in an abusive relationship…“She wouldn’t do x if I didn’t do y…” Or “She would be more x if I only I did y…”
I have a lousy ear for lyrics. Enlighten me?
What does it tell you about Dwight that he actually fought to get in to the dinner party?
I just watched it again & agree 100%, although I am pretty sure some of the actors (steve carell specifically) were deliberately overselling the episode as a joke. There were SO many good jokes, and they don’t rub your nose in them. Perfect deadpan looks, quick throwaway lines, great moments. I loved the episode. If this show has a couple more solid seasons, it is going to enter pantheon status for me.
and
Finally!!!
I just watched this episode, and one of my first reactions was “I’ll bet this is getting panned in Cafe Society.” Then i come in, and everyone seems to love it. I’m dumbstruck.
While some of the individual jokes and incidents were funny, and Jim and Pam’s interaction and their facial reactions are always good for a laugh, the episode as a whole left me completely cold.
Like Dinsdale, i find the show appealing in inverse proportion to Michael’s involvement. Also, in general, a show like this is only really funny to me if it retains enough realism to convince me that this stuff could actually happen. The British version nearly always stayed on the good side of that line, and for the first couple of seasons the US version did too, but it’s gotten to the stage (for me) where that link with reality has gone, and the show has become a parody of itself rather than a parody of an office.
I found this latest episode so over the top and contrived that it didn’t even make me feel uncomfortable, even though that’s clearly what the writers intended.
Having the whole cast around certainly helps, but i’ve found even the in-office episodes increasingly annoying over the past year. I’ll probably stick with it for a few more episodes, but if things don’t improve, it’s getting cut from the rotation.
This really hit home when Jan was serving dnner and had to squeeze between the chairs and the wall to reach everyone. Just … awkward.
I noticed that too, but I think it was deliberate. It was to heighten the chaotic, trapped feeling that Pam and Jim were going through. Small condo, people they don’t like, hours and hours to kill, no ability to get away (except to the “confession bathroom” upstairs).
We’ll see if they slow it down next week when we get back to D-M, but I think this was a specific, stylistic choice, not a general trend.
I was complaining about the unrealism of Michael’s destroying the warehouse in … was it in “Boys and Girls”? They’ve been crossing that line ever since Season 2.
I’m pretty sure one line was “You made a man out of me”, or something like that.
I agree with a lot of the criticism, although I still basically enjoy watching the show. I have a pedantic theory about this which I’ll share.
The British show had a lot of the same pain/awkwardness around David Brent trying to be liked by his staff, but there was a fundamental story about David that was internally consistent and that gave the show verisimilitude – he used to be quite good at his job, but was promoted slightly over his head, and traded the schmoozing/socializing he was good at, that went along with a sales career, for a boring office job and started day dreaming and drinking and maybe there’s a bit of a midlife crisis thrown in to make it even uglier. As painful as David’s behavior is, he’s never that far from salvation – he just needs to maybe cut back on the booze and accept himself as a middle manager instead of a rock star. The Christmas Special starts to nudge him that way.
The American version has no such consistency. The character is all over the place, and seems a lot more broken. They rejected the alcoholism angle for a dysfunctional relationship, but push that dysfunction to such ridiculous levels it doesn’t make you cringe, like cringe comedy should, but groan and roll your eyes.
The reason for this is, first, that there are more writers involved so there’s less consistency and more compromise. Ricky and Stephen wrote all of the English ones (though giving the actors opportunities to ad lib lines, they were able to generate a consistent and realistic arc through the entire run). Second, the kind of neuroses and dysfunctions the NBC writers hint at with Michael are a lot less fixable and a lot less funny (to me, anyway) because of that. Third, and probably most importantly, the entire run of the BBC version is about 7 1/2 hours, and the American version has probably tripled that by now.
Like I said, I still enjoy watching it, and it’s superior to most sit-coms. But the BBC version is a sublime situation tragedy, and the NBC version is merely an excellent if erratic sitcom.
My suspicion with regard to Hunter’s song is that it’s not literally about Jan deflowering him. Here’s my thinking:
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“You took me by the hand and made me a man” - This kind of situation is often not about a literal deflowering, but about an event that radically altered the singer’s views or experience of love or sex. I suspect that either way Hunter wasn’t a virgin when Jan hired him.
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“That one night and you made everything all right” - Not necessarily an overt physical event, but even if so, not necessarily actual coitus. Perhaps a situation in which an older woman “taught” the signer something but short of complete physical intimacy.
But here’s something that I think is even more likely … Hunter’s song isn’t about Jan at all but Jan’s ego has taken some imagined or minor incident between her and Hunter and blown it all out of proportion. Jan certainly seems to think or want to think that the song is about her, but it’s not really.
I like that better. Jan is conviced that it must be about her but if you were to ask Hunter he’d be all, “Jan who? You mean that older woman that I worked for for a few months?” and then he’d start laughing his ass off.
Okay, so Office Tally has an interview with the writers that says :
My take is still that it wasn’t coitus. Whatever it was is bigger in Jan’s mind that it is on her chest.
Has anyone seen the deleted scenes? There’s a wicked one of Dwight describing his dream dinner party. And another one in which Jan catches Jim and Pam snacking and, again, Jim throws Pam to the wolves. Pam doesn’t care, though, because she’s just so hungry and she does this little knee-shake of desperate hunger that left me in stitches