Six Observations from Rewatching First Two Seasons of “The Office”

The beauty of the Pam-Jim relationship is that Pam doesn’t comes across as more office hot than a bombshell. 

Whatever natural attractiveness she has (although admittedly this is subjective) is masked by an unattractive meekness. That Jim is into Pam is more about how he connects specifically with her than being a player who'll set his eyes on the most attractive girl in the Dunder-Mifflin office.

Jim might have been better cast as someone who's not as objectively good looking (he was, after all, a member of the handsome men’s club) but at the same time, Jon Krasinski played the part very well. As Krasinski started to accrue more good-looking girlfriends (Amy Adams I can buy, but then Rashida Jones?) the illusion that Jim wasn’t good with the ladies was broken a little.  

It’s likely deliberate that we know so little about Roy.

He plays into the stereotypes of blue collar workers and his language is a little blue but it’s not out of the question that he’s a more well-rounded individual if one were to look closer. We know that Roy gets along with Pam’s mom so he can’t be a complete rube.  

The sticking point here is that we see things from Jim's point of view and he's just the other guy. He might be a good guy for Pam, he might not, but it's not for Jim to know.

Holy crap, I forgot Michael Scott was a terrible person.

The writing staff had certain obligations to connect Michael Scott to David Brent so this could be considered a true spiritual spin-off. That included putting a pilot that was shot nearly line-for-line from the British pilot (a move that Greg Daniels would later regret). That episode includes the extremely thoughtless ruse of Michael Scott play firing Pam which crossed a line. Although the writers intended to gradually improve the character so that he’d have more longevity than David Brent (a man designed to be fired over the course of twelve episodes), they started from a pretty low point of awfulness. While it made good cringe-comedy, Michael was not just unsympathetic but just a terrible human being at first and I wouldn’t have blamed most viewers for quitting the show in the first season.

Even if the #metoo era hadn't come along, he should have been fired for the way he treats Pam and hits on Ryan (even if he isn't gay) and sends inappropriate content.  He also comes off as worse in today's era not just because of inappropriate behavior but he was a gaslighter before the term was coined. He denies truth whenever convenient and continually avoids responsibility for the things he says and promises.

Daryl is an undefined bully. 

 On two or three occasions in these two seasons, Darryl just tries to intimidate Michael physically which just made me plain uncomfortable.

In the basketball episode, it is somewhat justified considering Michael cheated but it also hints at a lack of definition in their relationship that no chain of command or authority is established between the two. When Michael gets back from vacation with Jan and Craig distributes pictures, there is no punishment. Michael is shown to be more lenient to people he thinks are “cool” but there’s almost no oversight between Michael and the warehouse and I’m chalking this up to a lack of world-building.

In a Season 2 episode where Darryl intimidates Michael to join a union, he comes off as worse, because he knows that Michael is weak-willed and wants to be popular and Darryl is consciously milking that weakness to get what he wants.

Toby is awful at his job

 
I would argue the biggest failure in Dunder-Mifflin is Toby. In “The Merger”, Michael repeatedly humiliates an overweight man, puts him in the uncomfortable position of explaining his grievances in front of a room full of colleagues, and then fires him after he clearly says he quit (more gaslighting). Toby is a witness to all this and does nothing. There’s also simply letting Michael’s alternative diversity sensitivity workshop to happen for more than 30 seconds or allowing Michael to talk about his relationships so publicly or give inappropriate awards at the Dundee’s multiple years in a row.

It’s understandable that Toby is too reticent to deal with Michael half the time because it paints his character well as a pushover but the early seasons needed a foil.  Occasionally, when Toby is on his game—Quite beautifully shooting down the idea of inviting boy scouts to casino night or confiscating inappropriate material in “Diwali”- the show is working much better as Michael has a substantive foil to react against.

The show does occasionally highlight being a leader is tough

It’s true that a lot of the disasters are Michael’s fault but he does get placed in a lot of unwinnable situations. In “The Alliance”, Oscar enlists him to donate to a fun run without properly informing him that his donation is per-mile and not a one-time fee. When Michael discovers the error, Oscar calls him distasteful for reneging on a pledge knowing full-well that Michael wants to look good in front of the cameras and that Oscar rushed the form in front of him. Nearly the exact same thing happens when Carol sells Michael an apartment as a condo with misleading information about whether he’s paying a one or a three-year mortgage.

In some instances, Michael just can’t win to start with. When Jan entrusts him to fire someone, it’s almost as if they want to torture him. Surely, they could just ask Michael for his feedback and make the trigger-pulling decision at the corporate level if they know that Michael doesn’t like firing people.

The perfect scenario is a mix of the two: In “Health Care” Michael makes the ill-fated decision to pass the buck on health care to Dwight (not a good choice), but as the employees’ demands on Dwight show, there’s no such thing as a health plan that would satisfy everyone.