The Office Dinner Party: Am I going crazy or…
Posted by Dan
April 14th, 2008 at 11:26am
In The Office
…did the return of The Office kind of suck?
There’s a certain bar of quality for The Office — so even an off episode is generally better than a solid episode of many other shows. But, that said, this was a really off episode. Certainly not the one we were hoping to run into after a long, painful hiatus.
This was probably the single most uncomfortable episode to date on a show that has derived many of its laughs from cringe humor. I guess part of it is the awkward nature of the dinner party — there’s so much that can go wrong at a dinner party and so many opportunities for faux pas. But all that was augmented by the fact that we have been taken out of our natural surroundings in the Dunder Mifflin HQ and into the Michael Scott condo (although they’ve made location shoots work well in the past — Jim and Karen at the cocktail party, the convention episode, etc.).
Here’s a deleted scene if you want to recapture some of the awkward.
I’ve probably gone on this rant before, but I really hate what they’ve done to the character of Jan. I liked it when she was the buttoned-down businesswoman with a streak for being wild and letting her destructive tendencies get the best of her. But now she’s just completely unhinged and abusive, which is only funny for a little bit before it gets old.
On the other hand, 30 Rock’s return was pretty solid. Not the best ever, but just a solid episode.
I mean, “I ate my twin.”
Come on — that’s good stuff.
6 Comments Add your own
1. jesse | April 14th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
There was a lot of good stuff in the dinner party episode — but I do think it suffered a little from cartoonishness towards the end, with the police showing up (and, worse, making a joke of them apparently having been called before). You could feel the writers going for the cheap/broad/”dark” laugh over the characters and story. Jan is emblematic of this problem (a minor one in the scheme of the show, but still noticable) — she can be great in small doses but when they “go big” with her, she seems more like a comedy writer’s conceit than a real person.
One thing I liked, in a twisted way, was to see Michael and Jan pretty evenly matched in terms of being horrible to each other. I mean, Jan is obviously painted as a worse person than Michael, but I liked that they seem to be making each *other* miserable rather than Jan just abusing Michael.
2.
Kyle | April 14th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
I thought it was great. It was rarely funny, but a really dark dive into the hell that Michael’s life has become. The most interesting thing about it all was when Jim almost left the party without Pam. That was not a good sign for their future.
3.
Kyle | April 14th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Hey, those countryists at NBC won’t let me watch the deleted scene from outside the US! I also can’t watch Hulu. Other countries have it bad.
4. Lyn | April 14th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
I agree 100%. I was surprised by how many people in my own office thought this episode was great.
5.
sara | April 14th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
I didn’t think the episode was bad, but I definitely agree with what’s been done to Jan’s character. Remember how awesome she was in “Casino Night,” before her self-loathing completely consumed her? Yeah. That was great. Now she’s just sad. Although Hunter’s band was pretty great. I just wish they’d invited Kelly and Darryl.
6. Michael Rebain | April 15th, 2008 at 11:14 am
I had the opposite reaction, being pretty disappointed by the 30Rock episode (first time ever I’ve felt that). I understand the comments about Jan’s characterization, but there was a lot of great stuff in this episode, especially Beth Grant and the $200 plasma screen.
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