The Office: Launch Party
By fred | October 14, 2007
(S04E03) Well well.. What to say, really, about this show. I am a big fan of The Office, it is a fantastic show, great cast and brilliant writing. It is hilarious and succeed to not fall into stupid sitcom cliché situations and plots, and its “mockumentary” touch and bits of realism mixed into it is always very well made. To be honest, I strongly believe that this one is better than the original British series.
Original was funny, but they made it hilarious. They’ve been able to turn good into great and make the American version of the show even better than the original was. This is probably the best, most funny sitcom on the air at this point, and I love it.
I really do, and that’s why watching those new hour-long episodes is so painful. As I said before, I wasn’t personally opposed to have twice as much of The Office every week, because I love it that much, but there was one condition for this to work fine : writers had not to break the rules and rhythm of the show.
But they did.
Because instead of writing as they always did so far, episode after episode, they focused heavily on the new format, the one-hour long episode. Let’s be real, I think everyone watching those episodes clearly saw that it was in fact two episodes put together, even without looking at the clock you can always tell when the first one ends and the second one begins.
It’s easy : when the laughs stops, you’re in the second one.
And the mistake writers did is, instead of writing a brand new episode completely independent from the previous one, they wanted to make it a follow-up, a second part of a global story. So they forced it.
By doing so they broke the rhythm of the show, they broke the show even. Because so far this season, and again this time, I think everyone can agree that the first episode – or the first half hour – was always great. It was great, it was funny, it was The Office as we love and missed it. And then, each time, the second episode/part wasn’t a brand new one – and it wasn’t (that) funny, it was a huge disappointment.
This installment felt extremely forced, and always resulted in stupid, unbelievable, unfunny plots. Last week Michael willingly drove into a lake because a computer told him to, despite Dwight yelling at Michael that there was nothing but a lake there and trying to prevent the inevitable, the sinking of the show car.
This time, he just took a pizza delivery boy hostage.
This is when the show loose all of its uniqueness to resort to stupid moves you would only expect from low-class series. And just as last week, it doesn’t stop there. Last week after the lake incident both Michael and Dwight went to get their basket back, yelling and behaving as retards, or brainless people, pretty much. Really, it was painful to watch.
This week, Dwight switch to commando-mode and was ready to attack the hostage, I mean minor pizza boy.
Posted in Reviews
Shows: The Office
