The Office: Going To A Garden Party

Surprisingly enough, there's not one single joke about racism in the 1800s.

Last week’s episode was electric. “The Lotto” was possibly the first time that The Office had ever really explored the pathos of the Nardog. This week’s episode, “Garden Party,” continues with this trend. While not as outright funny as last week, I’m definitely content with the direction the show has taken since Ed Helms replaced Steve Carell. While the last few seasons have been mostly directionless, Andy Bernard taking the helm of an otherwise empty vessel has truly breathed new life into the series.

The story this week revolved around Andy throwing a garden party at Dwight’s beet farm to try and impress not only James Spader’s Robert California, but his disapproving parents as well. Needless to say, things backfire, but not in the usual cutesy Office style. It actually turns out that Andy’s dad is an asshole who doesn’t approve of his son’s success. The whole episode felt like it was building towards a confrontation between the two, but alas, it never happened. Hopefully they deal with this at a later date, seeing as the father is the reason Andy is willing to go to any extent of self mockery so that people will like him.

The B story involved the usual Jim-Dwight warfare. This time, Jim gets Dwight to buy a fake book on garden party etiquette, which causes Dwight to make a hilarious ass out of himself for the duration of the episode. Since the beginning of the series, the dynamic between these two has always been the most important in my opinion.

The Office: We’ve Got A Winner

The foundation of 49% of observational comedy

When Steve Carell announced he was leaving The Office everybody predicted the show would die as a result. Not only had the penultimate season been a huge lowering of the standards, but Steve Carell’s exit became the only focus of the show. Characters were sacrificed and even more importantly, so had the comedy. We as the audience had grown too fond of Michael Scott. We never saw him as the bumbling idiot the comedy required because we had shared too many experiences. Our love killed the comedy.

And because of this the show became depressing. The jokes failed on a regular basis but the drama of character interaction became downright painful at times. I should have loved it, but it felt like an abandonment of what the show had earlier been. So Steve Carell left the show. James Spader came in to supply the “famous guy” role left vacated and Ed Helm’s Andy took over the management position for the sole reason of Ed Helms starring in the two most profitable comedies of all time. Surprisingly, it’s actually working.

News Roundup: Post-Modern Family Awards Edition

Totally deserved it.

Hi, folks. How was your Emmy night? I found that subjecting myself to the whole experience was a weird kind of emotional roller-coaster: We begin with Modern Family winning everything, which I don’t begrudge it but it wasn’t especially suspenseful, and move on to infuriating crap like Louie getting shut out and The Big Bang Theory winning over Steve Carell. Then, just when your faith in humanity (okay, in the TV Academy) is almost beyond repair, they give Peter Dinklage the award for Game of Thrones and Friday Night Lights wins twice. HBO didn’t even have a lock on the miniseries this year!

Then, just when you think the night might have been saved, they give an award to The Kennedeys. Seriously, what the hell? Then we round up with Modern Family winning everything again.

But now it’s Monday, so let’s all move on. Here’s what else is going on:

• Showrunner Chad Hodge has kind of given up on trying to have us take The Playboy Club seriously. (Now it’s just “a sexy, fun soap,” a pitch that at least has the virtue of making sense.)
• Netflix doesn’t own the Quikster Twitter feed.
• And their stock is still tanking.