Friday, January 19, 2007

Squirming and Sighing

As Captain Calamity has pointed out, The Office's unique mix of comedy and pathos is what makes it so compulsively watchable. It's a really tough thing to pull off (see Scrubs for a more hit and miss version of the technique) and last night it was perfect.

Andy's a douche. You know it, I know it, deep down maybe even Andy knows it. That kind of brazenly sycophantic social awkwardness doesn't happen overnight, it has to be the result of a lot of terrible years of...something . But every time I'd start to feel too sorry for him (rejected by Michael, obviously hurt by Jim and Pam's prank), he would do something so disastrously funny that I couldn't help but laugh.

And I loved that Jim and Pam were reunited by the common annoyance of Andy, but every time we glimpsed Karen's troubled eyes, watching her boyfriend pal around his former unrequited love, my heart dropped. And that, my friends, is the mark of great storytelling.

1 comment:

Gossip Boy said...

I've been referenced?!?! I am not worthy. I bow at your feet, St. Clare.


I just want to say that only The Office could give us Karen, the character we're suppose to hate but kinda started to like and now we love her even though we still love Pam and why can't Jim just be together with both of them in some time-sharey but not gross or creepy "MTV True Life: We're Polygamists" kind of way?!?!?!