He’s clearly the most reprehensible character on the show. Heck, maybe on any show.
And he doesn’t ever seem to really suffer for it. He got a DWI, but he still held his sales job. He apparently got off ‘Scott-free’ (arggh!) for the carpet incident. About the worst thing that’s happened to him is being sprayed with silly string after passing out at the Christmas party. His success seems partly due to his ‘friendship’ with Michael, or maybe he just falls through the cracks.
Do you think the writers have an appropriate comeupance in store for him? I’m thinking a drunken altercation with several warehouse guys, or a macing from Angela following a Christmas party groping.
Or is his very existence a statement that there is no justice in the world?
I don’t have TV, so I only watch The Office on DVDs (weird, I know). So I am ignorant of anything that may have happened this season, but it won’t bother me to have spoilers revealed. Neither am I familiar with the British series, where I understand the Packer-counterpart character is more prominent than in the US show.
Eh, he’s just a blowhard. A loud, obnoxious douchebag, but he doesn’t really do any harm. He’s a minor character, and gets treated as such. So no, I don’t see any major, cosmic comeuppance coming his way.
I’ve never considered Ryan reprehensible. He seems long-suffering, and if guilty of anything, it’s gutlessness (I once had a girlfriend not unlike Kelly – she talked marriage and babies from the second date and threw fake-suicidal tantrums whenever I said we weren’t right for each other, so I sympathize with the guy).
However, from threads on this board, I get the impression that Ryan became much less likeable once he got the corporate job. Is this the case?
I actually haven’t found Ryan to be that bad since getting the corporate job. Or, at least, no worse than he’s always been.
He’s always been kind of a tool, talking trash in interviews about everybody in the office, and setting Michael up when he spoke to his business school class.
He’s still sort of tool-ish, but he hasn’t done anything really egregious in his role, and things like the website he was pushing actually are good ideas.
Frankly, I sympathize with him for having to put up with Michael.
As an MBA working in Manhattan, clearly I can relate to Ryan much more than I can relate to any of the Scranton characters (except maybe Jim depending on whether I feel contempt or apathy towards my job on a given day). The problem is that from a corporate culture standpoint, you have this kid who was a temp and then a mediocre salesman in a branch office in Pennsylvania all of a sudden becomming this New York big shot at corporate. Even if he did everything right, that alone would breed resentment. Except Ryan isn’t going about his position the right way. He is pushing too many changes on a culture that does not embrace change while managing in a very aloof and overbearing manner.
I own the British series and have watched all the episodes several times, but can’t place who this counterpart-character is. The only people I remember from the Swindon branch were the women, who all seemed pretty smart and cool generally. Am I just blocking someone out? It has been a few months since I’ve looked at the DVDs.
I don’t know who this Todd Packer guy is. I went to IMDB to jog my memory, and had to click something to get it to show every bit character. It seems he’s been in 5 episodes (compared to 50-59 for the main and secondary characters. Bob Vance has been in more episodes.) They don’t even have a picture of him.
oooooooh now I get it. I was getting Todd Packer mixed up with Andy from Scranton (Ed Helms). I probably haven’t seen enough of the U.S. Office to justify posting to this thread, come to think of it, but I do love me some David Koechner so it was all worth it. Ignorance fought!
You can check the Youtube links I gave, but you really have to see Finchy in action. Buy or rent the DVD’s of the orginal Office. It’s only 12 episodes, with one special made after.
