The Two Best THE OFFICE Episodes of Season One

https://jacksonupperco.com/2024/11/06/the-two-best-the-office-episodes-of-season-one/

The U.S. version of The Office (hereafter referred to only as The Office unless in direct comparison to the U.K. show on which it’s based) is the sitcom of the 2000s – the one that I’d cite as the best case study for this era and its major trends. There are funnier shows (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development, 30 Rock) and more popular shows (Two And A Half Men) with their own degrees of impact on the genre’s trajectory, but none is as rightful an ambassador for this decade, where The Office’s mainstream positioning on a legacy broadcast network granted it a greater ability to represent and influence this liminal, evolving time for the American sitcom, embodying equally vital elements that we could define as both reflective of “old” trends and “new” trends – right when traditionalism was coexisting and/or clashing with a desire for modernity. And its general excellence (within the 2000s) only gives its credibility a compelling boost, allowing it to stand not merely as a fine case study, but also as a genuinely good situation comedy, boasting I’d say, the sitcom character of the decade: Michael Scott. But we’ll get to him later. In the meantime, let’s talk about the old and the new. The “new” sensibilities are the most obvious — this is, for starters, a single-camera show, which was not the typical setup for mid-’00s comedies on NBC, a Big Three broadcast network that had offered most of the 1990s’ major sitcom hits, all of which were live audience multi-cams and (mostly) gone by the 2000s’ midpoint. Although there had been plenty of single-cams on both cable and even broadcast prior to 2005 (NBC’s own Scrubs, for instance), it still was not the most common choice, especially on NBC, where Will & Grace remained its best performer. That changed with The Office and the even-better-rated My Name Is Earl, which debuted during the 2005-2006 season and even helped improve The Office’s fortunes, creating a landscape for new comedies to blossom in the Thursday night block that NBC was trying to reseed, now with single-cams that could be compatible with both Earl and The Office. Here, great shows like 30 Rock, Parks And Recreation, and Community followed – single-cams owing some part of themselves to Earl, and more specifically, to the funnier, more critically well-received and aesthetically influential Office.