Reel Politique: DVD Review, The Office, Season Three
If you are reading this on Thursday, September 27th, 2007, then you know that The Office begins its fourth season this evening on NBC at 9 PM. As I wrote over at MSN, the network has been in crisis mode for a few years, all because NBC no longer had Friends, Frasier, and Seinfeld.
NBC, it seems, has a sense of entitlement about TV comedy. If CBS is the diamond network known once upon a time for its news, and ABC is for kids, with the more recent Fox as the Page Three girl of the networks, then NBC prided itself on a “must see” Thursday string of highly polished sitcoms, going back to Cosby and Cheers. What they didn’t seem to notice at first, but which the Golden Globes and the Emmys have acknowledged to their credit, is that NBC has lucked into a whole new generation of great, quirky comedies for a Thursday line up. Their virtue to home viewers, which is probably their vice to the stuffy old timers who run the networks, is that these shows are offbeat and unpredictable, cynically up-to-date while also sentimental when they have to be. Another cool thing about the line up is that no one show is the anchor; they are all great in different ways.
The initial hook, though, was The Office, a very unusual sitcom for prime time American TV in that it was shot with a single camera as if it were a documentary, and in sporting dry, discomforting wit. Like many other shows, it was adapted from a much beloved but short-lived British version, and initially the American Office had to overcome comparisons to its GB progenitor (a funny American Office episode might be one in which the British office people … the original cast, including creator Ricky Gervais … come to America for a tour of US offices, and meet their stateside counterparts).
As I wrote at QuickStopEntertainment about the DVD of Season Two, “The essence of the show is, of course, Michael Scott, whose approach to life is like that of a professional comic’s. Though he wants everyone to laugh with him, unfortunately, they always end up laughing at him, primarily because his idea of comedy is from the 1950s. He takes an improv class, where as in life, he never listens to the instructor, and, like a Jerry Lewis, is always one for promoting causes, until he finds out how much they cost (Michael spends a lot of money in the show, including on a new house and a series of ‘togetherness’ photos). Like an Andy Kaufman routine, The Office traffics in discomfort, and the task of the cast is to take it as far as they can without alienating the audience. Thus in season two, some of the other Dunder-Mifflin employees, such as Jim and Pam, take pity on him and rescue Michael before he descends to some of the depths that tempt him.”
Season One was a trial balloon only six episodes long, while the fuller Season Two continued to chart the romance between officemates Pam and Jim, culminating in a kiss during an office party. Meanwhile, Michael became obsessed with the idea that he had a relationship with his boss, Jan. As Season Three opens, Jim has taken a new job at another branch, because the kiss with Pam did not lead to a romance. In reaction, Jim transfers to another branch, and we meet a whole bunch of new office types, including Ed Helms (like Steve Carell, a Daily Show alum) as Andy Bernard and Rashida Jones (who became Crush No. 1, just as her mother, Peggy Lipton was in the 1960s when The Mod Squad was on) as Karen Filippelli, who instantly pulls a Pam and falls for Jim. But as usual with “big changes” in a show, like plastic they revert back to their former shape. Thus, the two branches are merged and Jim, Andy, and Karen are transferred to the Scranton branch. Meanwhile, Pam has indeed canceled her wedding to Roy, and Michael, after a fling with Carol, does indeed end up in a non-imaginary relationship with Jan. As the season progresses, Jan (Melora Hardin, another crush) spirals downward and Ryan, the former anonymous temp, spirals upward.
The important thing is that, unlike most sitcoms, it is laugh out loud funny. I cite as a perfect example episode four, “Grief Counseling,” in which Michael goes into a tizzy over the death of his old boss Ed Truck (whose job Michael now has) and evolves into a bird funeral. Most sitcoms, you sit there in front of the TV dead, maybe laughing inwardly if you’re lucky. Instead with The Office you laugh out loud with a blend of recognition and emotional involvement. It’s the kind of magic only the best TV sitcoms can create.
We never see the people actually making the documentary about Dunder-Mifflin (one wonders what goes on in the “office” on their side of the cameras), but surely all the attention the constantly circulating cameras bring must make business much better at Dunder-Mifflin. No matter. The office may be failing, but The Office is a success. Each progressive seasonal set of The Office comes bearing increasingly abundant supplements commensurate with its aesthetic and material success. The Season Three Office set (Universal Studios Home Video, 4 discs, Digipak with Slipcase, Dolby Digital 5.1 English and Spanish subtitles, $49.95, street date September 9, 2007). Here there are eight cast-clogged audio commentary tracks (in the one for episode three, Ms. Jones and John Krasinski both met the real life counterparts of their characters. In addition there are a number of short segments, including “Kevin Cooks Stuff in the Office,” winning entries in a “Make Your Own Promo” contest, NBC promos, “Dwight Schrute Music Video,” a Joss Whedon interview, a blooper reel, the full “Lazy Scranton” video, Conan O’Brien’s inaction with the cast as part of the Emmy Awards broadcast, and no less than three hours of deleted scenes, which is the equivalent of another eight episodes. And it still won’t seem like enough.