The Office, Episodes 9.18-19: "Promos" and "Stairmageddon"

With only three and a half hours of airtime left before it disappears and gives people like me one less reason to watch NBC - I think I'm just down to one now - The Office would like us to believe that its endgame is finally kicking into overdrive. With its increasingly choppy editing, the show practically seems to be SCREAMING at me to appreciate everything that's going on.

Hey, Jess! Look at the sheer number of SATISFYING and DRAMATIC story arcs we've got going on now! THE MORE THE MERRIER!!!

Like that.

On one hand, it's a fairly promising sign that the writers are back to writing episodes that have too much material for TV, instead of too little, like season eight. (Must ALWAYS hate on season eight.) On the other hand, having a large amount of story arcs doesn't matter at this point unless they're actually interesting, setting these characters up for interesting conclusions to their individual stories. Y'know. SATISFYING. And DRAMATIC.

As the world's most important sort of person - an amateur internet critic - I feel as though I am entitled to judge this show's progress on setting up each piece of their big exciting endgame I've heard so much about, and then state my opinions for all to hear, as fact.

So, like, we're learning all about the documentary itself now. Isn't that SATISFYING and DRAMATIC??

If you'd asked me at the beginning of this season, right after the cold open of "New Guys" where Jim and Pam offhandedly decide to ask why they're still filming, I would've said yes, unquestionably. I really wanted to learn about this thing! But now that we have, and now that my youthful naïveté has died of old age, I think maybe I wish that we hadn't after all. The actual logistics of this supposed documentary have been ignored so long that these last-minute attempts to make it seem relevant simply haven't been working for me lately.

Let's just ignore Pam's comment in "Promos" about how they've been filming for "ten years", because you could just chalk that up for Pam not being very good at counting. (And in the middle of a storyline about Pam not being very good at counting on Jim, no less!) And let's ignore the concept that nine years of filming these people, paying for trips to follow them to "beautiful" Tallahassee or the foreign hellscape that is Canada, was allocated to a public television documentary, before any of it even aired to see if anybody even cared. Let's even ignore the absurd premise that there is someone out there in this world on the interwebz who thinks Andy is hot.

Those are all just minor quibbles. No, it's something else that really gets under my skin.

Are you seriously telling me that the documentary we've been watching for the past "ten years" isn't actually the real documentary??

That appears to be what we're saying, yes.

But what about what we've all been watching for the past "ten years"? What was that? I've seen people suggesting that we've just been seeing the documentarians' raw footage all this time. Raw footage that has already been quite masterfully edited down into slightly over two hundred episode-sized portions. I highly doubt that makes it easier for the to edit it down to nine!

Maybe this is just my zombie youthful naïveté talking, but I always thought there was an unspoken promise with mockumentaries. An unspoken promise, that the thing you're watching is actually the fucking documentary.

I understand that the writers wanted to be able to see how the juiciest moments of the documentary ends up affecting everyone who's still around by the end of the season, which pretty much requires them to compress it horribly by this point. They needed it to suddenly become relevant both to Pam's fond memories of her sweet will-they-or-won't-they courtship by Jim years ago as well as to Angela, Oscar, Dwight, and the (State) Senator's they've-collectively-done-more-than-enough-thank-you-very-much contrivance. I probably shouldn't have expected it to make sense, but I guess I did, so screw you.

The really confusing thing about the final documentary, though, is how little a part Michael Scott seems to actually have in it. Steve's no longer on the show and his character is consequently no longer relevant to any ongoing storylines, so OF COURSE the documentary doesn't really care about him. He's only the person that THEY PROBABLY SPENT MORE TIME FILMING THAN ANYONE ELSE. Apparently the Dutch find even Kevin "Dumpster Man" Malone to be a more compelling figure than him. (Because they're high, on drugs.) And that advance newspaper documentary review doesn't even mention Michael at all, seemingly deeming Andy to be the inept, ridiculous manager most worth remembering.

Congratulations, Josh McAuliffe of Scranton's Times-Tribune! Now you've been immortalized nationwide as someone who has absolutely no taste in paper company regional managers!

Speaking of Andy, what do you think of his extremely well thought out decision to take a new direction in life? SATISFYING and DRAMATIC, no doubt!

I seem to remember someone involved with the show, at some point, promising that they were going to move us away from guest stars who are too well-known to blend into the show's universe. Well, they're doing a bang-up job of it! Instead of stunt-casting famous fat chicks like Kathy Bates, they've restricted themselves to the more organic route of casting famous fat chicks like Roseanne. Mission accomplished!

Andy, who Paul Lieberstein's writing staff last season tried desperately to convince us was a good, likeable boss and a more-than-ample permanent replacement for Michael Scott, is now openly a bad, unlikeable boss who is anything but permanent now. He's preparing to ditch his job on a childish whim for the third time in two seasons, this time for good. He's gonna be a professional entertainer of some sort that isn't entirely clear yet! And his agent is Roseanne.

I'm not going to pretend that Andy having explosive I'm-about-to-lose-my-freakin'-mind breakdowns over the tiniest, pettiest things imaginable isn't always at least sort of funny. (And it's cute that some of Jim and Pam's prank musk has apparently rubbed off on lonely, pathetic Nellie.) And I'd be lying if I said the trip to the talent office was a total waste because, hey, we got to meet Paul Feig as the genius behind Dog-Cat-Mouse, who surely has a compelling enough backstory to fill an entire documentary of his own. ("I was setting down my cat, and I accidentally put her on my dog, and I was like SO MAD at myself at first, but then I was like, wait. Wait a second.") When taken individually, the Andy plots aren't that bad.

But his agent is Roseanne. All of this was leading up to Roseanne as Carla Fern. It's stupid and distracting. (Well, so is Andy himself, but I've had six seasons to get used to that shit.)

Well, what about Dwight? Nothing less than the absolute most SATISFYING and DRAMATIC for one of our biggest characters, right?

You're certainly trying, I'll give you that. I think it's a noble goal to finally let Dwight grow up during the final season. That being said, if you're writing a storyline about a character maturing and coming into his own, and said storyline involves that character shooting a coworker with bull tranquilizers, wrapping him in bubble wrap, slapping an Evel Knievel helmet on him, hurling him down a makeshift stairwell slide, and driving him to a sales call where he'll be stoned out of his mind.......well, you're probably doing that whole "maturity" thing wrong, sorry to say.

"Stairmageddon" seemed to largely be about planting the seeds of Dwight getting a third crack at being manager someday. I get the feeling that I'm supposed to believe he'd have the ability to actually make it work this time, which is why it's problematic that he's firing off guns in the workplace again. Sleepy guns instead of murdery guns, but guns nonetheless. It's not really serving the bigger story that I think the writers are trying to tell.

Oh yeah, but he also has a new non-Angela girlfriend! She has braids, and Brussels sprouts! She's the most exciting female love interest on The Office since Kathy! Or Cathy! Whichever one it was!

There's one thing Dwight's been up to this season that has actually been fairly compelling, though. I absolutely adore his weird friendship with Clark, i.e. himself minus the testosterone. (Clark's awkwardness is admittedly hot to weirdos like me, though. He could buy me an auger anytime.) Basically, this is the closest thing I've seen to the old Michael/Dwight dynamic since Michael disappeared off the face of the earth, and also, off the face of Josh McAuliffe's documentary review. As time marches on, Dwight has advanced past merely being the deranged sycophant who always seemed to wind up far too engaged in his direct superior's nonsense, to someone with a deranged suck-up of his own!

You know he's gonna end up back with Angela, right? Are you seriously telling me that wouldn't be SATISFYING and DRAMATIC in the least! I mean, you've seen what's become of the (State) Senator!

Yes. Yes, I have. From the start, (State) Senator Robert Lipton has just been a transparent machination of your twisted desire to stretch out the Dwangela dwama for as long as possible. Frankly, it was always obvious that your hearts really weren't in your half-hearted attempts to use him as as political satire, made all the more stupid by the fact that Parks & Rec pulled this sort of thing off, like, almost every week.

Time hasn't changed any of this. I still don't care about the Senator. Consequently, I don't care about his "relationship" with Angela, I don't care about his "relationship", and I sure as fuck don't care about his "relationship" with Wesley Silver. (Creed and I are unalike in this way.)

Yet, I think I can understand why Greg Daniels kept this plotline when he returned to the helm. It's an excuse to pair up Angela and Oscar, and that's a good thing. They've emerged from this season as a genuine comedy duo, so different yet so freakishly similar. It's almost a shame that Oscar's not okay with vaginas, because I'm sure their lovemaking with the Senator never provided them with the same sort of intense visceral thrill of their disastrous joint phone message!

Let's talk about Erin and Pete then.

Pete's standing in Erin's general proximity when he takes Stanley's request for his "morning 3-by-5", and I think they might've been in the warehouse huddle in "Promos", but I don't remember for sure. That's it.

Really?

Yep.

Well, how about the original receptionist/office straight man pairing? Isn't all this marital drama just SATISFYING and DRAMATIC to the MAX??

That's putting it way too strongly, but yes, it's still fairly engaging. Though their material has been uneven, John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer have been killing it in the acting department all season, evoking the awkwardness they shared in season one, but without that sense of fun underlying it anymore. "Stairmageddon" is probably the most emotionally honest they've been all season, but of course it's not to each other. And yeah, it's frustrating that they're still putting off getting to the meat of this conflict, but this seems to be setting us up for actual progress again. And it's nice to have a reminder that Toby still possesses skills relevant to his job, as when he finally asks the question that someone should've asked Jim awhile ago: "What's a little while?"

But, and I can't stress this enough, this amounts to two fairly short scenes of very serious marital discord in the middle of an episode that is otherwise, well, Weekend at Stanley's. As the finale looms ever nearer, they try to cram more and more into each episode, as though they continue to realize more and more each week just how dramatically they've overestimated how much time they had left in the season. And cramming a mixture of comedic and dramatic storylines into a tiny space is a surefire recipe for emotional whiplash. It's been happening all season, but the juxtaposition of Stanley stoned out of his mind on bull tranquilizer with Jim casually hinting at divorce really takes the cake.

I'm going to be disappointed if the DVD release doesn't included extended producers' cuts of episodes like these, to smooth out these pacing issues.

Okay, I see your point. But wasn't it SATISFYING and DRAMATIC to see Brian return?

Ugh, no. At least Kathy/Cathy made a move eventually! Brian's just there to suck every possible compelling out of a scene with his bland sketchballitude, I guess. Which is fucking LAAAAAME.

(By the way, I like the way some fans seem to believe that parabolic microphones are something the show made up, as a totally fantastical deus ex machina. I'd love to meet this people; they'd be hella easy to impress. I have a device that can pick up sound from someone else who also owns that device ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE GLOBE!)

Please tell me you liked The Big Piece, at least. Please?

It was cute. I actually liked the way they contrasted Jim's completely self-serious reading of Ryan Howard's ridiculous script with promo footage of Jim and Pam after reading Threat Level: Midnight. This was nowhere near as funny, but I can't complain much about such a subtle continuity gag.

I can, however, question why "sports marketing" now seems to involving helping athletes produce and star in movies. Athlead was more believable when it was basically an amorphous blob with no clear purpose whatsoever!

Any predictions on what'll happen to the more minor characters? They're all bound for SATISFYING and DRAMATIC conclusions too, you know!!

Kevin's line readings get loopier and loopier with every passing week. Just listen to the way he says the phrase "specimens in a human zoo"! By this point, I'll be shocked if his story doesn't conclude with the revelation that it's all been an act. Maybe he did it to take advantage of "lowered expectations" from his coworkers, as Oscar suggested last season. Maybe he just did it to get more screentime, a ploy which clearly worked better than Nellie's.

Clark almost certainly ends up as Dwight's Assistant to the Regional Manager. Failing that, Assistant to the Assistant to the Regional Manager. With his newfound power, he'll be able to have any woman he chooses, for sex! (He'll be too timid to choose any of them.)

Erin, presumably, stays with Pete because Andy's off in his own storyline. With any luck, we won't have to deal with Erin missing Andy again after he becomes famous. As a character, she's actually at her worst when she's entrenched in silly boyfriend drama, so they'd really be doing Ellie Kemper a favor by just letting her settle down and embrace her adorkability.

Meredith probably does something whorish and disgusting, Ryan and Kelly's re-re-re-reunion will be annoying as fucksauce, and I'm not sure about everyone else.

What about you?

Pardon?

What's the SATISFYING and DRAMATIC conclusion to your story, i.e. this review?

Oh. I dunno. I'll probably just say something about how "Promos" was a pretty good episode. And "Stairmageddon" was less good. I'm still excited about seeing where the series ultimately ends, but it's getting harder to ignore just how obvious it is that the writers were ill-prepared to handle all of the storylines they've taken on in the space they'd been given. And stuff.

That was neither SATISFYING nor DRAMATIC.

I know. I'm sorry.