I know we’ve been to Michaels house (more than once), Jim and Pams house (we were there when he revealed it to her for some inexplicable reason), Holly’s house, Dwights farm (bunch of times), and others that I can’t think of off the top of my head.
We’ve been on numerous personal dates, in 10’s of hotel rooms, 10’s of restaurants, everyones cars, a whole bunch of road trips, even a rehab facility.
I know there are alot of places and things outside the office, and unrelated to regular office workings, that I’m forgetting. This was just a quick list off the top of my head.
Like I said, disagree with me that’s fine, but don’t try to make the show into something it’s not. It’s NOT about office relationships and day-to-day antics in the office like it used to be. It’s hardly about the office anymore at all. That’s why the show should bow out gracefully now.
In both the case of Jim and Pam’s house and Holly’s house, they hadn’t even moved into those houses yet. (Jim did allow the crew to come to his old place when he was having a party, but most of the office was invited.) They weren’t allowing the film crew into their personal spaces. We’ve seen Michael’s house a lot and been on non-work trips with Michael more than anyone else, but that’s consistent with his character.
*We’ve very rarely been on personal dates, I don’t think we’ve seen 10+ hotel rooms, and we’ve been in the cars of only a few characters (mostly Michael and Jim). The only time I remember the crew spending time on the road with characters like Phyllis or Stanley was in the episode where everyone went out to make sales calls, which is work-related. I don’t think we’ve ever been in the car with Kelly, Angela, Creed, or Toby.
*Well, you’re making claims about the show that I do not believe are factually correct. If you feel the show is outside the office a lot then that’s an opinion, but I don’t believe it is true that more than 50% of screen time is spent in non-work related settings. In a given episode perhaps (the one where Michael helped Holly move was largely outside the office), but not the past few seasons averaged together.
The facts disagree with you. State your case without exaggeration and you’ll achieve greater effect. (And referring to a woman in her 40s as an “old lady” makes you sound like you’re about 12.)
I think the characters do show personal growth, but in a slow, painful way. Michael will probably always be clueless about why his “comedy” routines fall flat, and he’s pretty much at the mercy of his emotions, but he seems to have a little more self-awareness than he used to. At least, I think he’s close to grasping that Holly was the best chance he’s ever had, and probably ever will have, for a real relationship that works.
It is hard to buy the Kelly would be happy with the “party” she got, though. Angela and Phyllis, for all their personal quirks, did come up with parties that were better in the superficial ways that would be important to Kelly – a theme, a well-decorated cake, fully-inflated balloons, etc.
(Has anybody worked at an office where they had individual birthday parties? Most of the ones I’ve worked in have had a monthly collective cake-themed break for everybody having a birthday that month.)
Did anyone else notice that Holly’s Nashua boyfriend was chuckling at Michael’s jokes? Could they be a bit alike – the boyfriend and Michael – and maybe that’s why Holly likes him?
We have individual parties, in an office with 20-something employees. I’d rather have nothing at all than a collective “we don’t care about you as an individual” cake event.
I have a sibling who works at a gigantic corporation with thousands of employees, and their department does collective monthly celebrations because otherwise there would be a “cake break” every single day.
In the office I worked at, there were 12 employees and we did a little birthday thing for individuals. It’s all a matter of scale.
No. Dwight is all about being in control of himself (and everything else for that matter). It would be out of character for him to physically attack Jim unprovoked.
You can do that in an office of 20 people. You can’t do it in an office of 500. Statistically you WILL have at least one birthday a day.
Since this has been brought up a couple times, I just want to point out that while the characters of Phyllis and Michael are supposed to be the same age, Phyllis Smith is 57 years old to Steve Carrell’s 46. Still not an “old lady”, to be sure, but the difference was evident enough that I called B.S. when the same-age factoid was first mentioned (hence the reason I looked this up), so I’d have to cut Cubsfan some slack on that one.
Regarding the show overall, I tend to agree with those who’ve said that it’s much funnier when it deftly skirts the line between reality and sitcom-style ridiculousness, rather than sailing over it via trebuchet and then heading back just to piss on it for good measure. This applies most often to the behavior of Michael and Dwight, but lately the other characters have been getting in on the act as well (Kelly with her high-school-dimwit-socialite behavior, Angela with the cats, Kevin with…whatever it is that he’s supposed to be).
When Creed starts looking like one of the more well-adjusted characters, it’s time to dial it back a bit.
I think I might agree with Cubsfan a bit in that I think this show is getting a bit close to shark-jumping territory lately. The Super Bowl episode where Dwight sets a fire in the office and then essentially causes Stanley’s heart attack, and cuts the face off the CPR dummy were just examples of behaviour that’s too far gone to stretch my suspension of disbelief. There’s no way he would ever not get fired for that, anywhere. I love the off-the-wall quirks of the characters, but when, as was said earlier, the characters start getting Homer-Simpsonified to the point where they are just caricatures of their former selves, it loses something and becomes less about the delightful interplay of interesting characters and more about the pure Jackass-style shock value of “Oh my god, did he just do that?” voyeurism.
Also, where Michael comes to Canada, and he was in the airport talking to the CFO guy (David?) and basically throws a mini-tantrum complaining to the CFO guy about him moving Holly: you don’t talk to your boss that way. That’s just too much, this isn’t grade 8. He may be a man-child, but that was a bit much for me. My fear is that the show has become a bit long in the tooth and is falling into that same trap that so many other shows have where they try to constantly top themselves every week to appease a perceived fickle fan-base. It’s still relatively funny, and I loved watching Dwight and Jim, though the inability to inflate balloons was rather insipid. I think it would have been better if Dwight had instead used some dangerous machine to do so, like his car or a hydrogen tank, and then something dangerous happened unexpectedly instead. That might have been better.
Actually, it seems he is an experienced employment lawyer and he bases his admitted estimates on his experience. It’s basically what he would tell his employer clients what they would probably have to settle for if faced with this kind of a complaint.
This was a fine episode for me, with one minor, insignificant plot hole that you could drive a Mack truck through:
Holly was forced to leave Scranton because she started a relationship with Michael. I guess she doesn’t learn too quickly, because now she’s hooked up with a D-M Nashua employee! What, sleeping with management is verboten, but underlings are fair game?
It might not be the best policy, but it’s not unbelievable. Holly’s job is to act as a buffer between the employees and the regional manager. Being in a relationship with the regional manager is a giant conflict of interest. Dating just one of the regular employees is not any more problematic than any other office relationship.
