I’ve watched from Season 2 and seen most, though not all, episodes. One thing has puzzled me: why does Michael hate Toby so much?
Toby’s a sad sack and a doormat, but not a bad guy. He doesn’t really do much and is frequently just ignored by the others. Michael’s intense dislike of him seems unjustified. I’m wondering if it’s just that Toby is kind of an anti-Michael - their personalities and styles are such polar opposites that Michael instinctively dislikes him. But maybe I’m reading too much into it.
Have there ever been a reason given for his attitude?
Part of Toby’s job is to make sure Michael follows the various company rules regarding the rest of the staff. As Micheal in the earlier seasons is constantly humiliating/sexually harassing/running over with his car his various employees, Toby is his natural antagonist.
Michael sees Toby as his nemesis, essentially for the reasons Simplicio gave. HR is the antithesis of everything Michael Scott is. Toby’s basically the hall monitor in his mind. He’s the square, he’s the party-pooper, the one who ruins the fun.
Even though, realistically, Toby’s incredibly generous to Michael along the way and only holds him back in the most muted of ways, Michael sees him differently. Michael sees himself as this amazingly funny party guy who everyone loves, and the office as a happy place of fun and excitement surrounding this cult of personality that he thinks he has --and Toby just has to ruin it because he’s a fun-hater. What’s worse, it’s his job to be the fun-hater and to be the corporate suit besides (Toby doesn’t report to Michael, he reports to corporate). It’s a very cartoonish view, but you’ll note that Michael actually pays very little attention to the people he considers beneath him status-wise (Meredith, Phyllis, Creed, etc.) and sums up their characters in similarly paper-thin ways, with various degrees of accuracy.
If you watch the episode where Holly replaces Toby, you’ll see he explains… HR is a breeding ground for monsters. He just assumes Holly will be the same way. In an odd way, despite how personal Michael makes that battle, it’s really not all that much about Toby as a person. It’s about the role Toby has to be the one to tell Michael “no”. In general, Michael doesn’t like to be managed at all, much less from an HR person telling him that his amazingly funny jokes are inappropriate.
I’ll have to look for that one. I don’t think I’ve seen it. That makes sense, although Michael really has very little to complain about re. Toby. He doesn’t get nearly the pushback that he should.
I’m kind of looking forward to the new season without him. He’d gotten so over-the-top, I was finding him tedious to watch.
What’s funny is I felt bad for Toby in the early seasons but as the show went on I came to hate him. There comes a point when I wanted to smack him and tell him to get a backbone.
It’s as if Michael has typecast everyone in the office into stereotypical roles from day 1 and no matter how hard they try to prove otherwise he resists it.
For instance he always sees Phyllis as the “grandmother” figure of the office no matter how many times she reminds him that they are the same age and talks about her love life with Mr. Vance.
He’s got Toby pegged as the HR killjoy and even if everyone in the office suddenly loved Toby and he became the life of the party Michael would still be in denial and demand he go back to his predetermined role.
In real life, I find that people in companies often dislike the H.R. department. I know that in my company, H.R. is seen as a bunch of lazy, uneducated, bureaucratic fools who understand nothing about what we do, or what kind of people we need, but still have the authority to make the first cut of applicants for a position.
It’s kind of funny to me that a similar kind of hatred exists for Toby, but he’s actually rather nice and fairly competent, in contrast with my real-life experience with H.R.
The episode when Michael goes into the woods after being exclude from Ryan’s camp trip (Survivorman) has a priceless Toby moment. Michael leaves Jim in charge, and within a few scenes, Jim can’t stand Toby either.
I always assumed that there was a bit of an inside joke to making Toby such a spineless nemesis because the actor that plays him is also involved in running the show…actually, Paul Lieberstein is the Showrunner, meaning he really is the boss of the show behind the scenes. Kinda ironic that he’s a buffoon on it…
I used to feel sorry for Toby until he used his position to give Jim an undeserved performance warning simply because of Toby’s long running crush on Pam.
