The Office & 30 Rock /// Season 6 & Season 4
(Apologies for the TV dump, I just found myself compelled). It’s probably not fair to review these shows together, but it must be said that neither one is doing a great job of holding my attention anymore. The Office held some glimmers of hope after its horrible, horrible, horrible fifth season; now it seems on track to be just another rotating series of low-stakes hookups. I love the shark-jumping move of having Michael date Pam’s mom, yet Pam’s shrill bitchiness on the subject sucked all enjoyment out of it. What happened to that endearing awkwardness we used to love, Pam and Jim? Oh right, now you’re smug married assholes who think that whatever veneer of tolerance you had for your co-workers should now be scrubbed clean off. In the old days we would have seen people squrim under Michael’s ignorance and stealthily evade his friendship—in 2009 they’re calling him a repellent idiot to his face. What about that could possibly ring true? We know the office has some sort of compassion for their loser-in-chief; they can’t just be cruel. Also, when the fuck are we going to stop wasting Dwight, the one character with any real torque? His and Toby’s hard-boiled detective mission was a B-plot with game, and those shouldn’t be so rare. As for 30 Rock, jeez. Jeff Dunham, Betty White and self-deprecating Jimmy Fallon in the same episode. Gay Halloween party. Kenneth compromising his principles. It doesn’t feel at all like this show knows what it wants to be. It’s forcing a lot of top-down mechanisms instead of letting the real chaos of producing a television show give rise to organic premises. Baldwin as Jack as all-too-human God is consistently the most rewarding conceit, and even better when he’s got a nemesis like Gob Banks to play against. Elsewhere, it’s an ever more entropic mess.
