I'm on season 5 right now and i still don't get Angela's attraction to Dwight, everything about her character should despise Dwight, he's an overgrown man child who hates cats. Shes super serious and hates shenanigans, she loves cats and she can't stand stupid behavior.
Shes a very attractive lady, hottest in the office next to Pam and yet she loves this goofy pedophile looking man child, i don't get it.
Dwight is an alpha male. He demands excellence from himself in everything he does, and always expects to be the best at what he does. He is a stickler for the rules and has a high level of respect for authority. Most shenanigans he gets involved in are due to Jim messing with him, or following Michael too closely. He's also willing and able to defend himself and those around by any means necessary. Remember how turned on she got hearing people give their version of when Dwight defended Jim from Roy.
Compare this to Andy who is just the opposite of all that. While he might have been much more reliable of a boyfriend, she had virtually no physical attraction to him.
He gets in a ton of shenanigans outside of Jim or Michael, all on his own, like when Jan brought her baby to the office and Dwight stole her stroller and took it outside and was seeing how durable it was, dragging it on the back of his car, running over it, throwing it at walls, etc. Or like when the bat was in the office he threw a bag over Meredith's head with the bat and started beating it.
Not to mention ignoring everything Angela told him to do when she asked him to give her cat its medicine, he proceeded to kill it buy suffocating it in the freezer, which should have been the end of her attraction to him from that point on.
Yes he tries to give off the impression he's a strict by the rules no nonsense kind of guy, but he goes against that alot. I mean he's a stickler for the rules yet he's fine with framing Toby a coworker with drugs? ok.
But no matter how off the wall or goofy his antics are, he always has a valid reason for doing them... at least in his own mind.
With the bat, when everyone else was running out of the building, Dwight stayed in and took care of it by any means necessary. I really doubt Angela would care that it involved trapping it on Meredith's head.
With Sprinkles, Dwight (thinking as a farmer) saw an animal with major medical problems and no quality of life, so he tried to put it out of his misery, which in his mind made sense. Of course there was also a degree of him just not wanting to deal with it, but I degress. Also he didn't mean to suffocate it in the freezer, he tried to poison it. He put it in the freezer, but it turned out to still be alive.
Not sure if you missed most of season 4, but it did end her ability to have a relationship with him. Even when she tried to continue with it, she couldn't get past what he did to her cat. It wasn't until the end of season when she was trapped in a relationship void of chemistry that she realized how much she missed Dwight.
Framing Toby was the result of following Michaels orders to closely again.
You are so right about him being an “alpha male “! That does make such a big difference. I find him to be quite sexy , too.
shareKeep in mind, Angela broke up with Dwight after he killed her cat and for a while, simply wanted to have an affair, which implies she is mostly attracted to one thing during this time. I don't want to give too much away but later in the series [spoiler]she wants him to father her offspring as she knows he has good genes and enough money to potentially provide[/spoiler]. It really isn't until much later that her romantic feelings for Dwight resurface.
That said, the two are very similar. Despite them believing they are professional, moral, and intelligent people, they often prove they are the complete opposite. They are more likely to do their job than get involved in whatever craziness is going on (granted, Dwight makes an exception when it comes to Michael's shenanigans). She obviously loves it when Dwight shows dominance and throughout the series, he steps out of Michael's shadow and becomes more assertive. That goes a long way too.
Yeah i see what you mean i didn't think about it that way.
I do love Dwight, he's definitely one of the funniest people on the show, i just didn't get Angela's attraction to him, but i kinda do now, thanks :)
Something else I noticed over the course of the series which may shed some light on things. While Dwight is initially written as a creep who does not know what a vagina looks like, later seasons gradually show him to be quite the ladies' man in spite of himself. There are several instances of women throwing themselves at him despite him being a jerk and a weirdo. He's sort of like Kramer from Seinfeld toward the end where women are drawn to him for reasons even they don't understand. Angela is kind of a part of that, if not in the early seasons, then in later seasons.
share"..he's an overgrown man child who hates cats"
Attraction is not something you choose. It also doesn't have to make sense, and often doesn't. A vegan girl can be attracted to a butcher, even if she hates him mentally.
Angela is certainly not 'a very attractive', and what makes you consider her a 'lady'? She has no 'ladylike' qualities whatsoever, she's like an angry snake, ready to hiss at anyone and anything.
Angela is not socially adept, she probably doesn't have friends - her social network is most likely relatively small, and she lives with cats, which already indicates that she has given up on trying to attract mates.
So she lives in a 'socially unsuccessful', maybe even a bit 'awkward' circle, where she can't really shine or be the 'life of the party'. She can't easily attract mates, although being a female, of course men are drawn to her somewhat.
Now, expecting realism from a TV show is silly, but I think her attraction to dwight is at least a little bit realistic, and could actually happen in real life.
Dwight is not an 'alpha male' by any means, but he can play one convincingly enough for angela to have 'stirred feelings' inside of her about him. Dwight is not an apologetic simp that acts as a doormate, but he tries to dominate every situation he is in. Even though Dwight is not actually very successful in this regard (it's not always realized in concrete way), the constant aura of dominance has an effect on angela.
Dwight has AMBITION - an aphrodisiac to women.
He also goes for what he wants, and takes it (whenever he can), has strong opinions and a big ego.
Dwight is a faulty individual in many ways, and a little bit crazy - but as an attractive MAN, he certainly succeeds in angela's eyes.
Dwight DARES, and sometimes that's all it takes. Meek men usually don't 'dare', and this is something that, in a big way, separates the 'wheat from chaff' in women's eyes.
'Overgrown man-child' (what a weird term!) doesn't enter into it.