This week, NBC’s The Office wraps up its seventh season. The big news a few weeks ago was Steve Carrell left the show. His character, Michael Scott, decided to leave the Scranton, Pa. office and join U.S. Navy Seal Team Six to hunt down Osama bin Laden.
Honestly, I have to tell you, I don’t care, because I stopped watching a season ago. It wasn’t something I consciously did, at first, anyway, I just happened to move on from watching it for a while, and I figured out I was actually probably better off. I loved The Office, but I had to move on from it before things got rough.
At this point, you are probably asking yourself, “Why would someone be better off not watching a show they loved?”
I’m not one of those Office haters who says the British version is better. I think it’s unfair to compare the two shows, because British shows typically don’t go on for as many seasons (or “series,” as the monarchists call it) as American shows do. The U.K. Office lasted two seasons and had a special or two, while the U.S. show had to plan for a longer future. The American version really came through as realistic early on, and there were so many times when viewers, including myself, swore they knew someone in their office just like that.
The problem with the U.S. version, really, is that it’s gone one too long. It’s fine for a sitcom to bend reality, that’s part of the bargain, but as The Office has gone on, the show’s reality-based feel and “That happened to me, too!” style of workplace humor had to get stretched into implausible situations. Also, they played up Dwight way too much.
Do you really get that involved in your coworkers’ personal lives? Sure, there are the extracurricular activities, business trips and such, but to give the characters depth, they had to bring coworkers into each others’ personal lives, far, far more than actually happens. For me, I started seeing the show as not a group of people I felt I saw daily at my own office, but caricatures that got sillier over time because the workplace can provide only so much material.
I stopped watching in early season six, around the time when Pam and Jim got married. (Spoiler alert!) Sure, it’s nice to see a will-they-or-won’t-they couple really make it, but just like in real life, when people get married and have kids, they aren’t as interesting. This sort of realism was probably unintended, but it was enough of a turnoff for me to watch two of my favorite characters get to be so predictable. The show’s straight men lost their appeal. Plus, how many times can you watch John Krasinski make that look at the camera when someone else says something stupid?
I enjoyed watching The Office for a long time, even though I prefer shows were huge laughs come over the snickers from awkward situations. But what I noticed when I stopped watching, and this is true, is that the own outlook on office life improved a lot. Instead of trying to find the sarcastic comments to reference with compatriots, I was able to actually want to work and improve. This is probably why, I moved up and moved on from one job to another, as many real life people do, but characters on The Office can’t.