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What's Wrong With The OfficeA Slate diagnosis.


Posted Thursday, Oct. 18, 2007, at 5:52 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

One bright spot lies in the emerging love triangle between Dwight, Angela, and Andy. At first, the breakup of Dwight and Angela's supposedly under-wraps relationship seemed ill-advised. Dwight and Angela's trysts had been a welcome counterpoint to Pam and Jim's prolonged courtship, but their bickering over Angela's dead cat this season has been about as funny as, well, a dead dog. Last week, however, Andy emerged as a legitimate suitor, making an inspired play for Angela's attentions by performing "Take a Chance on Me" a capella and with accompaniment via speakerphone. The stunt earned him one of those furtive smiles Angela used to reserve for Dwight—and a not so furtive one from Slate. There's promise here.

There's less promise in Ryan Howard's promotion to Dunder Mifflin's corporate office. At first glance, this seemed like a genius move. Offloading the temp-turned-MBA jackass from The Office's primary setting would free up space for underutilized secondary characters (we love you, Kevin!) while banishing the least interesting one to a supporting role. Turns out that was wishful thinking. A newly bestubbled, technobabbling Ryan is hogging screen time, and it's ruining the show.

Ryan was always The Office's thinnest character. In the first two seasons, he served as a walking reaction shot. As the butt of Michael's pranks and a leg attached to Kelly Kapoor's ball and chain, he did little more than stand off to the side and look aloof. Moving Ryan from tempdom to B-school to the corporate office hasn't added to his single dimension. B.J. Novak, the actor who plays Ryan (and is also one of the show's writers and producers), has simply shifted from blankness to smugness.

The new Ryan has a cocksure attitude and a new suit to match, but he still can't generate laughs. (OK, he did have one good line this season: "People keep calling me a wunderkind. I don't even know what that means. I mean, I know what it means. It means very successful for your age.") It doesn't help that the character's story line—building a snazzy new Web site called Dunder Mifflin Infinity—seems so dated that it could've been a plotline on Murphy Brown. But by far the bigger problem is his relationship with Steve Carrell's Michael Scott.

The rapport between the buffoonish Michael and the buttoned-down, easily exasperated Jan Levinson was one of the show's high points. It was delightful to watch as her irritation became tinged first with grudging respect, then sexual attraction. Now, with Jan conked out on Michael's bed, it's up to Ryan to dress him down. Ryan can do exasperation, but that's all he can do. He's perpetually annoyed, so when Michael bugs him, he just furrows his brow a bit more. We liked it better when Jan was on top. Among other things, it made Michael's "that's what she said" lines seem less forced.

NBC finally has a hit on its hands, but now the network is giving the audience too much of what it wants—Jim and Pam together, Michael acting infantile, Dwight killing innocent animals, Ryan being a villain. It's true that the hourlong episodes make the problems we've enumerated seem more glaring. But they're problems all the same. Will the show return to form next week when it goes back to the half-hour format? That would be awesome.

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Photograph from The Office by Justin Lubin © NBC.
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