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March 24, 2015 1:44 PM   Subscribe

Adapted and developed by Greg Daniels for NBC, the American version of The Office debuted on March 24, 2005, and viewers and critics were intrigued from the start. More than 11 million people tuned in to watch the remake of the British series’ pilot, and it was met with negative reviews from critics who were disappointed that it seemed like a cheap carbon copy. The following week, though, Daniels’ series proved that it could and ultimately would shine on its own, as the episode “Diversity Day” introduced us to the real Michael Scott, and how this horribly awkward goon of a Dunder Mifflin boss would affect the lives of his poor office drones.
posted by Chrysostom (40 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
For all that the final seasons of The Office were strange, weak, limping things, some of the early episodes were great. This was one of them.
posted by nubs at 1:57 PM on March 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


The episode was also responsible for catapulting Mindy Kaling from a writer's gig at the Office to being a TV star in her own right. Somebody had to slap Michael in that episode.
posted by jonp72 at 2:04 PM on March 24, 2015 [9 favorites]


showed us that Michael was an endearing, albeit bumbling, idiot, but it also laid the foundation for the show’s lovable cast of characters.

I've never seen the US OFFICE, and I'm passing no comment on American humour when I write this, but: your David Brent was endearing and the characters were lovable? Wow. That's quite a different show.

Apart from the central love interest, of course. I watched it for the love interest...
posted by alasdair at 2:14 PM on March 24, 2015 [8 favorites]


I've never seen the US OFFICE, and I'm passing no comment on American humour when I write this, but: your David Brent was endearing and the characters were lovable? Wow. That's quite a different show.

When they tried to copy Coupling, and made the episodes basically exact word for word replicas of the British versions, except without the accents, it flopped. Badly.

With The Office, they changed the show considerably, and it worked much better.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 2:24 PM on March 24, 2015 [6 favorites]


and the characters were lovable?

Tim and Dawn were definitely lovable. Even Gareth was a little bit lovable. Also Keith.
Tim and Dawn forever!
posted by dialetheia at 2:24 PM on March 24, 2015 [9 favorites]


There's a moment in Foxcatcher where John du Pont (played by Carrell) is speaking to Channing Tatum's character and tells him (as best as I can remember):

"Don't call me 'Mr. du Pont' anymore. We're friends now. Most of my friends will call me Eagle. Or Golden Eagle."

That was the moment I realized that Steve Carrell wasn't in any way getting away from his comedic acting in the movie, but that he was a versatile actor even within his Carrell-ness. With maybe a slight change of tone that line could have easily been delivered by Michael and inspired almost the same sort of pathos and pity.
posted by a manly man person who is male and masculine at 2:27 PM on March 24, 2015 [7 favorites]


I've never seen the US OFFICE, and I'm passing no comment on American humour when I write this, but: your David Brent was endearing and the characters were lovable? Wow. That's quite a different show.

The UK Office run was two six episode series, along with two specials, while the standard order for a US TV series is 23 episodes for a single season; the US Office had 201 episodes total; given running lengths there is about 10 minutes of US office for every minute of UK Office. It was all but inevitable that a central character as fundamentally unlikable as David Brent would have to be sanded down a little and have some of his incompetence come off in a warmer way; there's only so much that one could stand a narcissist of that level, without it being punishing.

It was equally inevitable (given the successful run) that the supporting cast would get more fleshed out and play stronger roles - it's harder to support years of storylines hanging just on four principal characters. But having watched both (at least the first 3 or so seasons of the US Office), the two shows are still siblings - each with their own strengths and weaknesses, but more closely related than anything else around.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 2:32 PM on March 24, 2015 [11 favorites]


Also, "endearing" seems a little strong for Michael Scott. Pitiable, sure, but you still didn't want to work for him.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:43 PM on March 24, 2015 [9 favorites]


alasdair: "I've never seen the US OFFICE, and I'm passing no comment on American humour when I write this, but: your David Brent was endearing and the characters were lovable? Wow. That's quite a different show."

Here's an old Slate article from 2006 which compares the UK, US, French, and German versions of the office. The tl;dr of it is that each one was rewritten in slightly different ways, probably to better appeal to their respective audiences.
Here, in broad strokes, are the chief differences. In the British version, nobody is working, nobody has a happy relationship, everyone looks terrible, and everybody is depressed. In the French version, nobody is working but even the idiots look good, and everybody seems possessed of an intriguing private life. In the German version, actual work is visibly being done, most of the staff is coupled up, and the workers never stop eating and drinking—treating the office like a kitchen with desks. Stromberg continually calls his staff "Kinder," or "children," further blurring the line between Kinder, Computer, and Küche.

While Michael Scott also sometimes calls his American office a "family," his staff knows he's the kid brother, not the father, and that if there's to be any Kinder in their lives, they're going to have to get busy with one of their fellow prairie dogs, because really—who else are they likely to meet, given the stretching parameters of the U.S. working day?
Also interesting to me is that the Tim/Dawn (or Jim/Pam) dynamic is mooted in the German version (but not the French version) because they're already dating.
posted by mhum at 2:44 PM on March 24, 2015 [19 favorites]


I tried to watch the UK Office and couldn't get very far just because the characters were so dis-likable.
posted by octothorpe at 2:54 PM on March 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


Well, to be fair, the pilot of the U.S. version was almost exactly the same script as the U.K. version. The problem was: while Gervais played David Brent as a lovable idiot bully, Michael Scott's characterization just pure asshole. His character needed to be changed, because the things David Brent sounded absolutely awful in Michael Scott's mouth. Like, when he fake fires Pam? That's kind of a laugh from David Brent, but Michael Scott, it's just pure mean. It was awful. So, turning him into kind a lovable idiot sans bully was necessary, made even better by him once in a while showing that he's actually not incompetent at his job, just at people.
posted by General Malaise at 2:56 PM on March 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


I loved loved loved the first three seasons of The Office (still do) - but then it started going downhill ~season 4 - I pretty much hated Pam's character development amongst other things (like dropping plots rather quickly and the general meanness). The introduction of Holly is the only reason I own season 5.

It went on for wayyyy too long imho.

Though even after all the character assassinations twards the end, I still liked Dwight for some reason.
posted by littlesq at 3:02 PM on March 24, 2015 [3 favorites]


Nothing I can recall on the US Office packed the wallop that Tim glibly spewing manager-speak did at the end of Series 1 of the UK Office. It was like watching a man damn himself eternally.
posted by infinitewindow at 3:03 PM on March 24, 2015 [9 favorites]


I'll strongly argue against season 3 being the downturn. The downturn was season 7, when Steve Carell left.

Everything from that point forward was blatantly milking it. You create a show centered around a specific character played by a brilliant actor and then keep making it when he leaves?

Season 5 introduces Erin and Holly, and includes some of the funniest shit in the entire show like the fire drill, Michael's tiny tv getting smashed, etc. The show had fully hit its stride by then.

You can really see it start to suck after that too. They just start flanderizing every character to the point that it's utterly ridiculous. Basically everything involving the various characters going to florida is a shining example of this. It almost becomes tim and eric levels of stupidweird, but that's not what you want. That could be fine if that was what the show said it was on the tin, but it's like buying ice cream and getting peanut brittle.

I will always defend seasons 5 and 6. 7 is ok, and everything after is just phoning it in. It's like seasons 1-9 of the simpsons and then everything after it. There ARE good moments after that, but quite a lot of it is very half assed.

It would have been a much better show if they had just comitted to ending it when Steve Carell was going to leave, and i really don't doubt it was almost entirely a monetary decision not to since it was still pulling ridiculous game of thrones ratings.



On a side note, holy shit, ten years?!? I guess it makes sense, but i remember this show being one of the very first things i ever watched on netflix instant when it was brand spanking new. And yea, i guess that was at the tail end of high school, but wow.
posted by emptythought at 3:44 PM on March 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


I imagine the Eastern European version of The Office would be horribly grim.

I love the US version of the Office and couldn't stomach the original.
posted by discopolo at 3:49 PM on March 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


The Florida storyline is really the low point of the series for me. I agree that anything after Michael left is when the show really took a hit, but those Florida episodes really make it obvious.

They did, however, give us Florida Stanley, so it's not all bad.
posted by downtohisturtles at 4:01 PM on March 24, 2015 [4 favorites]


your David Brent was endearing...?

Yeah that does make it a totally different show. Once or twice Gervais managed to get me to feel sympathy for the character, but mostly Brent is simply pathetic and makes you cringe. Hard.
posted by Hoopo at 4:04 PM on March 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


emptythought: " You create a show centered around a specific character played by a brilliant actor and then keep making it when he leaves? "

Respectfully, we were clearly watching different shows. Jim and Pam were the central characters, the normal, relatable ones surrounded by workday insanity, and the natural endpoint for the US Office was their wedding - it was all pretty pointless after that.
posted by namewithoutwords at 4:17 PM on March 24, 2015 [3 favorites]


I imagine the Eastern European version of The Office would be horribly grim.

Slough is where they try to escape to with their laundered assets.
posted by Meatbomb at 4:20 PM on March 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


discopolo: I imagine the Eastern European version of The Office would be horribly grim.

I remember learning that "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" was advertised as a comedy back in Romania. That's a world-weary sense of humor. Good movie though.
posted by traveler_ at 4:40 PM on March 24, 2015


More than 11 million people tuned in to watch the remake of the British series’ pilot, and it was met with negative reviews from critics who were disappointed that it seemed like a cheap carbon copy.

It WAS a carbon copy- of the UK pilot ep. Intentionally so- and where's your evidence of "negative reviews" based on this? And you seem to imply that Americans (and Canadians) were watching it BECAUSE it was a remake of a British series. I'll bet a fortune that no Americans (well fewer than 1% of the US viewing population, same diff) were even aware the UK version existed.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 4:49 PM on March 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


I imagine the Eastern European version of The Office would be horribly grim.

Why? One should have expected that the US version, with its vacationless drones with no health insurance, no maternity leaves, and no funded childcare would be even more grim if the US didn't habitually lie to itself.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 4:51 PM on March 24, 2015 [16 favorites]


Season 1, Episode 2 of the office through the end of Season 2 is one of the most perfect stretches of television ever made.
posted by sallybrown at 5:22 PM on March 24, 2015 [4 favorites]


I tried to watch the UK Office and couldn't get very far just because the characters were so dis-likable.

I thought that the UK version, though a bit grim, felt real in ways that the US version did not. The US version begged for laughs in ways that made it seem like just another sitcom, and so I never got into it.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:27 PM on March 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


Sometimes I throw garbage at my wife just to hear her say "Please don't throw garbage at me.".
posted by Cosine at 5:30 PM on March 24, 2015 [8 favorites]


where's your evidence of "negative reviews" based on this?

It may not have been clear from the formatting, but the text you quoted was lifted from the UPROXX article; it wasn't written by Chrysostom. UPROXX linked to this 2005 Guardian article, which includes quotes like:
The New York Daily News said the show was "neither daring nor funny", adding that "NBC's version is so diluted there's little left but muddy water". The Los Angeles Times complained that Carell, who also appeared in the movie Anchorman, was "too cartoon" and said: "Lost in translation is the sadness behind the characters."
posted by mbrubeck at 5:36 PM on March 24, 2015


One of the most interesting things, I thought, about the US version of The Office was when we would occasionally get a peek into Michael Scott's personal history. Most tellingly, of course, was when he went out on a sales trip and CRUSHED it — it was obvious that he was a victim of the Peter Principle, where he was so good at his previous job that he got promoted into a job that he was terrible at.

Which, of course, isn't to suggest that the character is likable, but that he was at least at times sympathetic instead of a horrendous bully like his predecessor was.
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:29 PM on March 24, 2015 [13 favorites]


There are moments from the show that still just bubble up in my brain and make me laugh. The image of Dwight reading bedtime stories to Jim and Pam always makes me laugh. I think he was reading Harry Potter.
posted by Biblio at 7:12 PM on March 24, 2015


Determined
Worker
Intense
Good worker
Hard worker
Terrific
posted by Chrysostom at 8:34 PM on March 24, 2015 [5 favorites]


BIZNUS
O
B
O
D
D
Y
posted by downtohisturtles at 8:58 PM on March 24, 2015 [3 favorites]


Does anyone else remember the time they killed off Will Ferrell?
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 9:06 PM on March 24, 2015 [3 favorites]


Respectfully, we were clearly watching different shows. Jim and Pam were the central characters, the normal, relatable ones surrounded by workday insanity, and the natural endpoint for the US Office was their wedding - it was all pretty pointless after that.

I wasn't really disagreeing with that, i just think that Michael is just as much if not more important. He sets up the scenarios, a lot of the time. Other characters can, but Michael is the engine that drives the show even when he isn't the primary focus or actor.

The thing is, Steve Carell leaving happens after the wedding. And not even that long after. A season and a half, and some change. In the grand scheme of the length of the show that's not that long. It's like them getting married pull the pin out of the grenade, and then it just finally blew up a bit later.

It deflated a lot if not almost all of their interesting interpersonal tension... and moved on to the if anything vaguely misogynistic jealous wife stuff like the whole plot where Pam tries to get Dwight to help her prove that Jim might be attracted to/flirting with/wanting to cheat on her with Cathy. Worth noting that really stupid plot was in the 8th season, and only a couple episodes in. i got similar weird vibes of "women r crazy amirite?" as the entire premise of the joke/punchline from the one a couple episodes later where Robert doesn't want his wife hired and everything that's gone through therein. holy shit, season 8 was worse than i even remembered. It's really an ABRUPT dropoff in quality.

The show was able to survive them getting married without completely going to crap. But them getting married and no Michael was unrecoverable.

Alternatively, i think the show could have lost Jim and Pam but kept Michael and continued on at an arguably higher quality than it did with them married and no Michael. at least IMO.
posted by emptythought at 4:49 AM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


> Most tellingly, of course, was when he went out on a sales trip and CRUSHED it

Are you talking about the episode with Tim Meadows? That was a great moment of characterization. It's similar to the moment in P&R that was discussed a few weeks ago, where Leslie says something about having had a crappy day and wanting to go home. Just a few seconds of airtime but it adds so much depth.
posted by Horselover Fat at 6:55 AM on March 25, 2015


holy shit, season 8 was worse than i even remembered. It's really an ABRUPT dropoff in quality.
The world agrees with you. The best (IMDB-) rated episode of season 8 wasn't rated as highly as an average episode from any previous season except the first.

I have no opinions of my own here, though. I did begin to find Michael Scott endearing when I tried to binge-watch the show, which after barely a dozen episodes led me to find it unwatchable. I think "Chili's is the new golf course" was the last straw.
posted by roystgnr at 7:02 AM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


I recently watched the whole series on Netflix, and I went into Season 8 expecting it to be absolute garbage, and was then surprised at how much I enjoyed it. The show became a different animal once Michael Scott left, but I thought they were able to do a lot of things in his absence that I found enjoyable, like:

-Kevin became much more human, and his friendship with people in the office was explored more fully
-Erin, whose painful backstory became less “ha ha foster home kid” jokes and more about her vulnerability (and ultimately, her incompatibility with Andy) and difficulty asserting herself and maintaining appropriate boundaries
-Jim and Pam’s marriage problems (it wasn’t just her worrying about him potentially cheating, because there was also a subplot where she had a really close friendship with a member of the production team in Jim’s absence), and their decision to go to couples therapy not as a joke, but as a real thing grownups do when their heady will-they won’t-they romance has been worn down by time and the drudgery of daily life
-speaking of the production team: the interesting things they do with the tv crew suddenly becoming visible and human, and how that messes with viewer perception, and how it makes you reinterpret the whole “Jim looks at camera with goofy expression” trope
-The release of the documentary and the way its selective presentation of certain dramatic elements is staged/manipulated (The scene where they go to the Paley festival and Meredith complains that they focused on her drinking instead of the fact that she had been working on a PhD in child development during the entire run of the show was an interesting critique of reality-show structuring)
-Oscar and Angela going from enemies to two spurned ex-lovers of the same man to friends to family

It barely resembled the show in its heyday, but that was part of what I liked about it. It became interesting in unexpected new ways, and it ended up humanizing a lot of the earlier “joke” plot points.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 8:13 AM on March 25, 2015 [7 favorites]


I thought the show really started to drop off by season 5. I stuck it out to see the wedding, then just stopped.

We'll always have "Dinner Party", though.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:15 AM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Now I really wanna see the German version of the Office
posted by mrbigmuscles at 9:37 AM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


I grew up in Scranton and lived there at the time of the series finale. I loved the whole show - all of the seasons, and I totally agree with a fiendish thingy on the best things about season 8.

My favorite thing about The Office was the effect it had on my hometown. All the actors visited throughout the run of the series and they all came to the city for a huge parade and celebration for the finale. It was really amazing. John Krasinski got behind the bar and started bartending at a place my friend from highschool owns. They showed the last episode at our minor league baseball stadium and everyone freaked the f out when Steve Carell showed up.

Throughout the show they used real references to Scranton and filled the background with stickers, magnets, menus, etc. from Scranton businesses. I may be biased because I felt like Scranton (the Paris of Northeast Pennsylvania according to Michael Scott) was kind of a character on the show.

Here's an article that explains just how much of an impact The Office had on my city.
posted by elvissa at 9:48 AM on March 25, 2015 [9 favorites]


I, too, think they were fine keeping it going. It was different, but not awful by any means. I do believe it's clear that many fans were there for the Jim/Pam dynamic and their attempts to recreate that with Michael/Holly and Erin/Andy were more flailing than how they worked out an ending to Oscar/Angela, of all the unexpected characters to come to the fore. And the various ways they tried to replace Michael, with Jo Bennett and Robert California, added their own nuances. I will say that the one major failure of the tail end of the series was a criminal inability to do anything worthwhile with a certified comedy genius, Catherine Tate (at least after the seminar subplot).

I have to throw in that while "The Farm" was clearly a complete misfire at recreating the comedic atmosphere of the show but centered around Dwight and the Schrute farm, I enjoyed the way they wove it back into that last season in various ways.

We'll always have "Dinner Party", though.

Yes, this. I seem to have a more analytical approach to the show than those fans I mentioned above, but for my money, the inevitability and the comedic matter/anti-matter joining found in "Dinner Party" is the best work the show ever did. Pure farce through and through without violating a single character's internal reality. Lessons for generations of comedy writers.

But yeah, the show needed to be Americanized to succeed. It's some kind of weird I-knew-them-when hipsterism to insist that they just recreate the British show, down to the point of misusing the obvious talents of Steve Carell, who is not Ricky Gervais, and thank goodness for that. Michael Scott is a different animal than David Brent, even though they occupy a similar structural role in being a legendarily awful boss. The British show is a wonderful thing, but that level of bitter satire can only be stood for so long, and two series was about right (if the special was any indicator).

By the same token, I saw some comments a while back that, in some sort of Walter White-like level of heroic identification, certain fans wanted Dwight to end up as the permanent manager, but they couldn't see that actually gaining that level of responsibility would destroy the character in a show-dynamics sense.
posted by dhartung at 2:44 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


I think my favorite thing I learned here is that I will have to first state "I swear that this is not a joke" when mentioning that one fundamental difference in the German version of The Office is that they are actually seen doing work
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:05 PM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


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