5 unpopular opinions about The Office

Happy 2013 to me because I just finished watching The Office and, boy, do I have a lot of feelings about it. Unfortunately it quickly became apparent that almost no one in the series-reviewing world shares those feelings so thanks a lot morons cause now I have to write my own review to make up for your shortcomings and I'm not even getting paid. (I do have an excuse for blowing off studying though, so at least there's that). Anyway. Here, in no particular order, are my unpopular opinions about the Office.

Jim and Pam are barf-worthy

Assholes.

I'm so glad I found this picture because now I can get right to the point: those two are the epitome of annoying and I'm not even talking about the later seasons. Let's take a tour of the horrifying character traits illustrated in the above picture. On one hand we have Mr. Whiny Friendzone himself, who bought a ring one week into dating someone. What a sweet, not at all creepy gesture. On the other hand we have Ms. Repressed Loser, who couldn't just be an adult and propose herself, but had to spend 500 episodes dropping passive-aggressive hints about wanting a proposal. As we've seen numerous times, those two are completely pathetic in their own right, but put them together and you get.. "the greatest TV couple of all time" apparently. In reality though, they are not even the greatest couple of The Office:

Dwight + Angela > Jim + Pam

I mean, come on. Dwight and Angela were a better, stronger and far more interesting pairing than stupid Jim and Pam, whose whole relationship was based on their shared office-induced misery. It took one workplace change for the supposed "soulmates" to start acting like a divorcing middle-aged couple and at that point they've only been married for 3 years, imagine what their fights will look like in a decade, when years of resentment have built up. Angela and Dwight, on the other hand, are equipped to handle anything, since their relationship has already survived every obstacle imaginable, including cat murder. The main reason Angela and Dwight win, though, is that the essence of their characters doesn't depend on their relationship. They both have well-defined personalities outside the context of their romance, making their emotional scenes carry much more weight. We can tell what attracts those two people to each other and we can also tell what drives them apart. Can we say the same for Jim and Pam? What brought them together, apart from the fact that they're both pretty and they both hate their jobs? Even the super dramatic Jim-relocation arc failed to give any depth to that relationship, despite the abundance of romantic "greatest moments" montages. I know it doesn't seem like it, but I don't have anything against Jim and Pam, I actually liked them, both individually and as a couple. Just don't try to pass them as the great Office romance when there's Dwight and Angela right there.

The Michael-centric episodes are painful

(Too) often, there would be an episode that turned The Office into The Michael Scott Show, with results of varying annoyance. There's no denying that Michael Scott is a great character. He gave us countless hilarious moments and his irrational hatred of Toby is probably my favourite running gag of all time. When I was first watching the show, however, I googled "Michael is ruining The Office" on about a dozen different occasions (nothing came up, except how Steve Carell leaving ruined it). For a new viewer the show's ridiculously heavy focus on Michael and his stupidity gets tiring very quickly. (And yes I know that some people like uncomfortable, cringe-worthy humour, but that's the kind of people I avoid at all costs.) The simple fact of the matter is that Michael is a character that can easily cross the line between funny and grating, and, when given a whole storyline for himself, he often falls in the latter category. That's not to say that over time I didn't get to love Michael (especially after the writers wisely toned him down), but I still skip most of the Michael-centric episodes, because 99% of the time it's not worth sitting through all that cringe for one or two laughs. Which brings us to:

Dwight is a better character than Michael (and everyone else)

Dwight is, hands down, the best character to come out of The Office. I want to punch something every time I see that title go to Michael, are people fucking serious? Yes, Michael is great, he's Beyonce always, after all, but Dwight is so much more consistently funny it's ridiculous. Dwight's storylines have literally saved so many mediocre episodes while Michael's have destroyed perfectly good ones, so I don't know how there's even a discussion to be had here. And don't get me started on Rainn Wilson's performance, dude managed to make Dwight, even at his most cartoonish, feel like the realest character in the show while Steve Carell was overacting his heart out. I'll seriously be forever bitter about The Farm not airing but what else can you expect from the network that cancelled Community. Also speaking of bad decisions:

Robert California single-handedly ruined season 8

The Office writers during season 8

Last and least, we have Robert California. My disdain for this character is so overwhelming that I don't even know where to begin. Let's just stay loyal to Michael's spirit and turn to Wikipedia: "The character of Robert California was met with acclaim during his guest appearance on the season 7 finale Search Committee. (...) However, as time passed, critics, even ones who had initially praised Robert, began to respond negatively to the character." How there are people out there who liked this character in the first place is honestly beyond me. And yeah he was critically panned from one point on but I feel that the reviews should have been way harsher because most of the problems season 8 had could be traced back to this dick. Granted, Nellie, whom everyone loves to blame, was annoying as fuck at first but at least she got toned down as time went on. California, on the other hand, got turned up to 11, thanks to the writers unhealthy obsession with having James Spader on every single episode. He's a great actor and he used to be super hot but come the fuck on. 

This concludes my 5 unpopular opinions about The Office, a post written mainly out of spite, the purest form of inspiration there is. In case you disagree with anything on the list, please keep the following words in mind: