The Office

I'm in the middle of watching the second season of The Office (the American one). It's an amazing show. It induces very strong emotions in me.

The first emotion is joy, motivated by the fact that it is incredibly funny. Two scenes stick in my mind. The first is from the very first episode of this series, where Dwight opens his desk drawer, pulls out a plate with a blob of jello on it, with his stapler floating in the middle of it. He exclaims, "Jim put my stapler in jello again!" I think the boss says, "Jim, stop putting Dwight's things in jello."

It's such a beautifully absurd thing, and the characters' reactions just skip over the absurdity of it, like it happens all the time. It's this juxtaposition of something from way out in left field with mundane reactions that made me laugh until my stomach hurt.

The second scene is more recent. It was the opening of one of the episodes. Jim passes Dwight in a doorway. Dwight is on his way to the vending machines, gets there, and screams, "What are my things doing in the vending machine?" Jim turns around to help out. In place of chips or candy bars, there's a stapler, a Dwight's name plaque for his desk, etc. Suddenly Pam shows up, surveys the items for sale, and buys Dwight's pencil holder. Dwight offers to buy it back, and then discovers his wallet missing. Jim helpfully locates it in one of the slots of the vending machine. Jim hands Dwight a bag of change, and he and Pam walk off.

I was absolutely dying.

There's one more scene like this that floats to the surface of my mind. Dwight comes into the office one day to find his desk missing. (How can you find something that's missing? The phrase doesn't imply that you've actually found the missing thing, and even if you had, then it wouldn't be missing! I love this phrase.) Dwight starts looking around, then starts out into another room. Without looking up, Jim says, "Warmer." This proceeds as Dwight wanders around the building, until he finds his desk sitting in the Men's Room. The part that absolutely kills me is that everything is set up perfectly. The computer is plugged in, it's screensaver running. Even the phone is plugged in, as evidenced by Jim calling Dwight to get some information about a certain paper product they're selling. Dwight sits right down and gets to work.

It's absolutely amazing.

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Another feeling that hits me often when watching The Office is a deep sense of embarrassment. It simply overflows from most scenes involving Michael Scott. Steve Carell earned his Golden Globe award at least a hundred times over. It takes true talent to play such a preposterous individual. And Michael Scott is 150% preposterous. The things he says and does are just incredible. I wouldn't say that you can't see it coming, it's just that you can't imagine it will actually happen. It's astounding, and hysterically funny, but it also makes me very uncomfortable sometimes.

I felt this way sometimes watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, another brilliant show, but the feeling I get from The Office feels much more blunt. It takes me longer to recover from the Office. It leaves a dull ache for a while.

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The last feeling that I get is harder to describe. It's really a couple of feelings, sometimes together and sometimes separately. It comes from the evolving story between Jim and Pam. I think it's mostly empathy and sorrow for Jim's character. The two actors have great chemistry together. Their timing and body language mesh beautifully together, and when the plot takes an awkward turn, you can feel the sudden shift in temperature between them. It's so abrupt that it's almost savage. It's great work from the actors, and from the writing, but it wrenches me around.

You really do want to give Roy a bop in the nose, don't you? Or maybe Pam a good solid shove to wake her up? Poor poor Jim.

I haven't finished watching this season, and my understanding is that there are dark times in store for Roy and Pam, but I don't think this automatically makes things lighter for Jim and Pam. We'll see, we'll see.