"The Office" Watch-"New Guys"

Dwight & "Dwight Jr."

The Office was the best comedy on television over its first four full seasons.* It was the first comedy I truly fell in love with.** Then it fell into mediocrity in its 6th & 7th seasons with special events like Jim & Pam's wedding & baby, or Michael Scott's farewell arc serving as reminders of how great the show once was & occasionally could still be. Then came the 8th season. Season 8 of The Office was always going to have a few bumps in the road as the show had to replace its center in Steve Carell's Michael Scott but it didn't just have a few bumps in the road, it was a disaster that led to the show's first truly bad season of television.***


*Season 1 of "The Office" is only 6 episodes, & since this isn't the UK that's not close to a full season of television. 

**The honor of the first show I truly fell in love with goes to "24."

***It's so bad that for the first time in the show's run I didn't buy the DVD, & I have no intention of ever doing so. 

The writing staff made a number of errors in the show's 8th season that ultimately doomed it. First & foremost they made Andy the boss out of what I can only assume was laziness as he was the character most similar to Michael, & indeed they even downright copied a number of Michael storylines from earlier seasons. They could've opted for their abandoned season 6 arc of Jim rising to management & having to take on real responsibility or put Darryl in the job, completing his rise from the warehouse. Doing so would've put a truly competent & sane person in the job having to deal with their increasingly crazy employees, which would've been an interesting contrast to the first few seasons when those roles were largely reversed. Alas they opted for the easier, less interesting, option & the other characters they brought in to help replace the whole Michael left, Robert California & Nellie Bertram, never developed into anything (though James Spader did his damndest to still get some laughs out of California with some great line readings).

Beyond that the show continued its downward spiral with its other characters as Dwight became increasingly deranged beyond even the shows reality (& without much humor to boot), Pam had somehow become boring & downright annoying at times, & Kevin's devolution reached new lows. It was ugly all around as only Jim & a few minor characters (notably Creed) escaped unscathed.

The Office had fallen apart & with writers/actors Mindy Kaling & B.J. Novak leaving & showrunner Paul Liberstein (who also plays Toby) developing the Dwight spinoff, The Farm, it seemed the show was as good as dead but with The Office still being the networks highest rated comedy NBC would likely keep dragging its corpse out for years to come. Then, however, something amazing happened. NBC announced the show's 9th season would be its final one & that original showrunner Greg Daniels* would be back to helm the final season. There was finally reason to be optimistic or even excited about The Office again.

*Daniels is a TV comedy God. He wrote for "Saturday Night Live" in the late 80s, "The Simpsons" in the early to mid 90s, co-created "King of the Hill," developed "The Office" for American televisions & served as showrunner during its best seasons (1-4), & then co-created "Parks and Recreation." The man is simply a genius. 

That brings us to last night's episode, "New Guys," that Daniels wrote. Daniels was proficient in immediately dealing with the cast changes & setting up stories for the new season. Having Kelly throwing her jackets at everyone in the office in celebration of her move to Miami with her boyfriend, & then having it revealed she's moving to Miami, Ohio. Then Ryan moves there as well claiming, "Northwester Ohio is going to the the next Silicon Valley. They call it the Silicon Prairie." Those are the sort of intelligent joke the show used to specialize in. While Pam's telling the camera crew* that she & Jim are essentially boring & married now served both as a meta commentary on the stasis of the storytelling regarding their relationship & as the first catalyst in Jim considering where his career & life currently sit.

*Daniels may be the only writer over the last 3 or 4 seasons who ever directly acknowledges in his episodes that there's a documentary crew there. That may seem trivial but I think it goes to show that Daniels is still committed to keeping the show connected to some form of reality, something the show has sorely needed. 

While the episode gets its title from the two new employees, Clark (played by Clark Duke of Sex Drive) & Pete (Jake Lacy), it's focus is not on those two but on how their arrival affects Dwight & Jim. Clark & Pete are being called the new Dwight & new Jim by the rest of the staff & both Jim & Dwight react, not surprisingly, in vastly different ways to this comparison.

At the start of the episode Dwight finds out he's not the father of Angela's baby, a story highlighted by the biggest laugh of the episode as Dwight, upon hearing the news, throws up the blue energy drink he's created from beet runoff all over Angela (Of course I also find people throwing up to be inherently hilarious).* Still reeling from the news Dwight channels his frustration by trying to bond with Clark who's been nicknamed "Dwight Jr." by the rest of the staff. When Clark asks to help with Dwight's leads & get a look at his client list, in what I'm guessing was purely a move to get Dwight away from him, Dwight freaks out in a fit of paranoia thinking he has a rival. Things only escalate when Clark proves to be much better at slacklining, in a great bit of physical humor by Rainn Wilson. Naturally this leads to a Dwight plan to redeem himself, a rooftop bicycle trapeze, that nearly leads to his death. It's still Dwight dialed up a little to high for my tastes but unlike last season the laughs are mostly there.

*Unless I'm throwing up, then it's just a sign I should slow down my drinking or running. 

However it's this Jim storyline that proves to be the most interesting. It's revealed early on that one of Jim's old college buddies is starting a sports marketing firm based on an old idea of Jim's but Jim turned down the job because it's in Philadelphia & he & Pam don't want to uproot their family. After trying & failing to befriend Pete* Jim overhears Pete describing his hopes for his future to Angela, as he interviews to adopt Angela's cat, & it dawns on him how long he's been working at Dunder-Mifflin something that troubles him now & would have surely horrified Jim of season 1. It's this realization that spurs him on to take the job with his friend in Philly.** However he does so without consulting Pam, a clear mistake since she tells Dwight earlier in the episode, "I love my boring life, exactly the way it is." My brother, Sam, points out that this seems rather unlike Jim but I'm willing to buy it as Jim both knows that his friend is going to find another business partner & feels, from the conversation with the documentary crew, that Pam is bored with their life. I'm very interested to see where this leads & it's been a while since I've said that about The Office.

*Pete's favorite sports are boxing, tennis, & NASCAR. WTF is wrong with Pete? He likes one sport than no white person cares about anymore & then two that only white people care about, but two very different kinds of white people. Also kudos to Daniels for having Jim be somewhat offended that Pete's a Red Sox fan seeing as John Krasinski is a noted Sox supporter. 

**It bears mentioning that, in season four's "Local Ad," Jim has himself working as sportswriter in Philadelphia in his "Second Life." 

Episode Grade: B+

Other Notes:

• Andy returns & proves to be much funnier one episode into the season thanks to his frustrations with Toby & nicknaming Pete, "Plop" because he "poops all the time." His treatment of Nellie is less amusing but serves to further humanize her which last season mostly failed to do.

• "I'm a dog person." "If you pray enough you can change yourself into a cat person." "Those guys will always turn back Angela." 

• Oscar having an affair with Angela's husband is a fairly dark route for the show to take but I like that it's taking the chance. It's one of the few things from last year I'm glad they carried over.

• Kevin remains far too stupid. I know some people disagree with me but go back & watch the first few seasons & tell me they haven't taken his idiocy too far. 

• Darryl on slacklining, "It seems like the sort of thing white guys with dreadlocks do. 

• "Not bad for a day in the life of a dog food company."

• Once Community comes back I'll be reviewing it regularly but as for Parks & Rec I'll likely be switching off between it & The Office depending on which episode I have more to say about. As for this week's Parks I thought "Ms. Knope Goes to Washington" was a pretty middling episode for the show, granted as the best comedy on TV I have high standards for it, with a perfect John McCain cameo & some good glitter jokes between Tom & Anne being the only things truly of note before the end tag with Andy as a Washington tour guide, talking about how Sinbad lived in the White House while filming First Kid, bumped the episode up to a B.