I've been a pretty vocal opponent of The Office recently. But! We had a good reason. With the exception of a few episodes here and there, the past two seasons have highlighted everything that is wrong with the show. It's been a rough ride--cartoonish, ridiculous, and, most criminal of all, completely stupid. Take the post-Super Bowl edition, a stand alone episode that meant to bring The Office to a whole new audience. Dwight locked everyone in the office while he set a fire and Michael--sensitive and thin-skinned Michael--thought it would be a good idea to allow his staff to roast him. The fact that it was all so dumb prevented any comedy from being allowed to exist.So then consider how excited we were during last night's utterly brilliant episode entitled "Lecture Circuit."
Sure the comedy was built around some completely unbelievable situations--it's hard to believe Michael would be allowed to call people from other branches of Dunder-Mifflin "sugar boobs", "baldy" and "black woman" to their faces--but who cares! Compared to some of the stuff The Office has given us, this episode could have qualified as a documentary on office politics. "Lecture Circuit" was the best type of Office episode, one that trades on Michael's utter buffoonery while at the same time taking the time out to give him some humanity. Much like episodes when Michael and Jim have had heart-to-hearts, pairing Michael with Pam had a nice friendly playfulness to it. Steve Carell and Jenna Fischer work well together--he tempers his ridiculousness, she does the same with her passive aggressiveness--and watching their scenes was a reminder why we loved the show in the first place. Even if the plot--Michael doing speaking engagements at various Dunder-Mifflin branches--was basically a rip-off of the British episode where David Brent takes Dawn with him when he's invited to do some motivational speaking, this turn of events was a good one.
Meanwhile, at the home office, things took pause as well. Free from the awful machinations of the Dwight-Angela-Andy subplot that had sucked so much of the life out of the show, Dwight got back to being that sorta weird guy that Jim liked to torment; Angela disappeared completely save for a few frowns (thank the lord); and Andy finally got to do something other than play a cuckold, while trying to awkwardly woo one of Stanley's clients.
About Andy: Ed Helms is easily the most underused comedic weapon on the show, and it was great to see him embrace the pathos that he's obviously so capable of taping into. The biggest problem with Andy as a character is that he's part Michael and part Dwight; and since they both dominate the show already, there is rarely anything for him to do. But in "Lecture Circuit", he was free to roam, and his interactions were so uncomfortable they actually forced me to hide my eyes. Well done!
"Lecture Circuit" was written by Kelly Kapoor herself, Mindy Kaling, who, full disclosure, I have an unabashed crush on; Ms. Kaling could literally not be funnier. Of course then I wasn't surprised to see Kelly get plenty of screentime too. Having Dwight and Jim, now heads of the party planning committee, forget her birthday was a stroke of genius if only because it allowed Ms. Kaling an opportunity to display her fangs. I'd like to see those more often.
In the meantime, next week brings part two of "Lecture Circuit" and, hopefully, this is the start of The Office rebound. Fingers crossed...
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