Journalism 3 TV Review

Mmmm. The Office. I gotta admit, I'm actually not very proud of this one, but it's alright. They can't all be gems, right? ...Right? Ah well. Another one bites the dust:

Let’s face it – when you’re a college student, sometimes you just don’t have the schedule to commit a half hour to sitting down and watching television at the exact same time on the same day every week. But on the other hand, sometimes you need to make time to just lay back and enjoy some no-strings-attached quality television. That’s why The Office, currently airing on NBC, is one of the best shows to watch even when your life schedule isn’t as consistent as you’d like.

The Office is a sitcom that’s an American adaptation of the BBC series of the same name. It’s shot as a mockumentary, which means that the characters in the show are aware of the cameras that follow them around, often looking at them and having one-on-one conversations to them. The series follows the somewhat miserable employees of the Scranton branch of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, which is lead by the eccentric and sometimes inept regional manager, Michael Scott. Other notable characters include coworker lovebirds Jim Halpert and Pam Beesly, who share a common interest in pulling pranks on the even more eccentric Dwight Schrute.

The Office loves to utilize awkward dialogue and interactions as the driving force to its humor. The fact that the show doesn’t even have a laugh track brings the awkwardness to an even higher level by including the viewer, who is often forced to question whether they should be laughing or cringing at the embarrassment of the situations presented before them. Such comedy can much of the time come off as ‘dry’, however, and that may turn off potential viewers. But to those who aren’t turned off, The Office provides solid entertainment for a half hour, and the best part is that you don’t need to follow it religiously.

Like most shows, viewers of The Office are benefitted greatly when watching the episodes in its intended order and without skipping over any of them. What makes The Office so great, though, is that it isn’t completely necessary to do so. Because continuity takes a backseat in the series, you can get virtually the same enjoyment out of watching an episode without seeing any recent ones as if you had seen all the episodes preceding it. True, there is an overarching plot of some sort, but its bearing on individual episodes is minimal to the point that you don’t even have to worry about it. Add this to the fact that most major plot points are at least slightly explained when such information is crucial to the episode, and The Office makes for a great on-and-off series to watch when you’ve got the time.

So if your schedule is too demanding to follow the going-ons of television, The Office delivers a brand of comedy and entertainment that you can pick up and leave off from at your own leisure – because we can all use Casual Friday.

Score: 8/10