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Been bingeing the American Office

Started by Cuellar, October 16, 2019, 07:26:34 PM

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Cuellar


SteK

I find most American comedy the same, sorry. There's some gems, though. Actually no, there aren't.


Cuellar

Some good moments from Dwight. But that's pretty much it.

BritishHobo


NoSleep


McChesney Duntz

Quote from: SteK on October 16, 2019, 07:30:23 PM
I find most American comedy the same, sorry.

That's such a fucking insane statement that I don't even know how to process it.

Bennett Brauer

Frasier is a carbon copy of that ponce from Cheers.

weekender

Quote from: Cuellar on October 16, 2019, 07:26:34 PM
It's dogshit

How many episodes have you binge-watched?

The whole first series of the remake is fairly crap.

S2 becomes much more fun once the US characters flesh themselves out.

DrGreggles

I thought seasons 2 to 4 were pretty fucking great.

Replies From View

After season 1 it's better than the UK version.

Cuellar

Quote from: weekender on October 16, 2019, 08:07:27 PM
How many episodes have you binge-watched?

The whole first series of the remake is fairly crap.

S2 becomes much more fun once the US characters flesh themselves out.

Currently watching episode twenty fucking 3 of season SEVEN

lankyguy95

You've watched seven seasons of something you hate?

Replies From View

The end of season 7 is certainly an opportunity to remark that the show has run out of steam.

rasta-spouse

Quote from: lankyguy95 on October 16, 2019, 08:42:48 PM
You've watched seven seasons of something you hate?

This is a "the call is coming from inside the house" twist for me too.

Rolf Lundgren

I've binge watched it too and as a result I can barely remember any episodes. But overall I liked it with my lasting thought of when it went downhill being when whoever the boss was seemed to change every three episodes.

Dog Botherer

Season 2 til whenever Erin arrives is gold. after that it's good in patches til Steve Carrell leaves.

do not watch after.

ajsmith2

#16
It's my favourite sitcom ever and I like the last two seasons as well. It only slightly starts to go off the boil at the end of season 8 and into 9 but there's still tons of gold right up to the end.

lankyguy95

It was fantastic at its peak and horrendous at its worst. I think it starts gradually tailing off as early as S4 but it all falls apart on the last season. Some dreadful episodes in there. The one with a paper airplane competition, anyone? Or that extraordinarily broad episode where Stanley stabs himself with a tranquiliser dart so he doesn't have to walk upstairs to the office? Fuck me.

There are three different US The Offices:

S1: six weeks of Greg Daniels trying to do a version of The Office

S2-4: Mike Schur making his first ensemble workplace sitcom, mixing terrible behaviour with warm human affection, weaving multiple long-running relationship plotlines with week-by-week situation premises and loads of verbal and visual gags along the way.

S5-whenever: Paul Lieberstein and sometimes Daniels keeping a reasonable facsimile of the previous show trundling along, filling half an hour of NBC's Thursday night schedule with something that functioned as a decent, lesser warm-up act for Community and 30 Rock and Parks & Recreation.

The biggest problem with the latter years isn't Michael finally leaving, it's that he stayed around too long. The character's grotesque awfulness kept getting sanded down to keep him in situ, at the expense of other characters coming to the fore. New additions to the cast (eg Erin) did spike the quality here and there, and turning over the boss for a fresh dynamic within the same structure earlier (my vote: promotion for Darryl) could have led to new openings for the writers.

mippy

Lieberstein wrote Pretty Pretty Dresses,possibly the bleakest sitcom episode I've seen that didn't involve Bojack's mom, so he gets a pass from me.

Captain Z

See, Parks & Recreation is another one. I recently watched the first three episodes of that and didn't laugh once.

up_the_hampipe

Quote from: Captain Z on October 17, 2019, 12:37:00 AM
See, Parks & Recreation is another one. I recently watched the first three episodes of that and didn't laugh once.

First season is widely considered not very good.

neveragain

Quote from: mippy on October 17, 2019, 12:00:21 AM
Lieberstein wrote Pretty Pretty Dresses,possibly the bleakest sitcom episode I've seen that didn't involve Bojack's mom, so he gets a pass from me.

Yup. Yup. Mmm-hm.

cliggg

I've been binging this the last few weeks too and it's just not that good. It's too crude, no subtlety of any kind. Jim Halpert is a horrible bully, for a character that's supposed to be the funny guy he never actually laughs at anything. The technical aspects of it annoys me too, there appears to be about 8 different camera crews filming, it took until nearly the end of the series for them to do an episode where the documentary was actually screened on television, why were they being filmed for 10-15 years if it wasn't being shown anywhere?, how much they rely on talking head cutaways, that style of joke ran thin very early but they persisted with it god bless them, none of the characters liked Michael until he was leaving then they all sang him a special  song and cried. Of course there are funny moments too but they are few and far between. Creed is the best character.

Cuellar

Quote from: lankyguy95 on October 16, 2019, 08:42:48 PM
You've watched seven seasons of something you hate?

Got to be even handed about it, give it a fair crack. And 'hate' is a strong word. I don't hate it. It's so bland, it's just sort of there. It happens, then it stops happening. But it is bad. The fucking bit where Michael asks Holly to marry him. What the living shit was that about? All the employees holding candles and taking it in turns to ask Holly to marry them? What? The fucking SONG when Michael leaves?

It's Derek, guys. It's pure Derek. This is where Gervais learnt how to do Derek.

It could be one of any number of American sitcoms. Community, Parks and Rec, Brooklyn Nine Nine.

I think it's gone off for good now, after Will Ferrell ended up in hospital.

ajsmith2

I hated Jim on first watch but warmed to him on later full series binges. Still, it's one of the few cases (Finchy/Packer being the only other, imo) where the original UK character remains inarguably better than their US analogue. Tim was a frustrated, alienated and somewhat tragic figure who still lived with his mum in classic UK sitcom stylee, but the yanks couldn't have such a 'loser' be their audience identification figure, so Jim had his own crib from the off and was a well liked big regular hunk of a dude you could go for a beer with. Thus his bullying of Dwight struck a sourer tone than Tim on Gareth stuff as it came from a place of such comfortable privilege rather than being the frustrated self amusement of a desperate and tragic man trapped in own personal hell (and I know there are issues with the Tim/Gareth bullying as well, but for me at least Tim's more abject plight makes it more dramatically if not morally justifiable).

It gets better when you rewatch it though, as one of the big advantages of the US Office is the sheer volume of episodes and screen time and how it allows al the characters to breath and show different nuances. So one of the big enjoyments of a US Office rewatch is seeing Dwight grow from a toadying Gareth clone to his own man. I love the later seasons where instead of sucking up to Michael he treats him like the buffoon he clearly is. And in a similar way, Dwight gets his revenge on Jim many times in later seasons, and an entirely believable mutual respect develops between them. Which in turn makes Jim more likeable by the end. It's aspects like that that mean I can never go along with the 'early seasons good, it lost it big time after season 4/5/etc' a lot of people advise. I just love the characters too much. Yes they're doing broader stuff by the end, but the characters are so well developed by that point. Michael was good but I never saw him as the keystone of the show and it's such an ensemble piece that tbh I barely miss him by the time he leaves.

ajsmith2

Quote from: Cuellar on October 17, 2019, 09:39:38 AM
Got to be even handed about it, give it a fair crack. And 'hate' is a strong word. I don't hate it. It's so bland, it's just sort of there. It happens, then it stops happening. But it is bad. The fucking bit where Michael asks Holly to marry him. What the living shit was that about? All the employees holding candles and taking it in turns to ask Holly to marry them? What? The fucking SONG when Michael leaves?

It's Derek, guys. It's pure Derek. This is where Gervais learnt how to do Derek.

It could be one of any number of American sitcoms. Community, Parks and Rec, Brooklyn Nine Nine.

I think it's gone off for good now, after Will Ferrell ended up in hospital.

Never seen Derek but from my understanding of it it doesn't seem very like the US Office, even if you hate both shows.

US Office is well better than Parks and Rec imo, which is the kind of sickly sweet distillation of the US Office formula with all the interesting pulp and bits taken out. My archetypal example of this is always: compare the one dimensionality of the Jerry bullying to how relatively nuanced the portrayal of Toby is (although they did fuck up that character along with a few others like Oscar and Andy in the show's last year, I'll admit).

Will Ferrell was fucking useless in The Office, but you're just about to come up to James Spaders run which imo is filled with brilliance. He's marmitey, but he's certainly different from what went before, so I'd say worth hanging on for that at least.

ajsmith2

Quote from: cliggg on October 17, 2019, 08:09:26 AM
The technical aspects of it annoys me too, there appears to be about 8 different camera crews filming, it took until nearly the end of the series for them to do an episode where the documentary was actually screened on television, why were they being filmed for 10-15 years if it wasn't being shown anywhere?

That was unrealistic but I was able to go along with it. I know a lot of people didn't like the fact that they eventually acknowledged the camera crews presence but I preferred it to them just ignoring it and it was the obvious way to wrap the show up. The thing I really took exception to re: that stuff was when they did a fucking CLIP SHOW (itself a dated concept in the 21st century) and it was all done through FLASHBACKS IN TOBYS HEAD.  There's supposed to be a documentary crew filming everything: if you have to do a clips show in the mockumentary format, why not take advantage of it and do it in-canon by having the crew them show the office staff 'what they've captured so far' resulting in humorous reactions? What the fuck are we supposed to be watching in terms of documentary footage when we're seeing Toby looking dolefully into camera and then flashback clips appear?


Cuellar

Yes, the technical side of things is a mess too. When Michael leaves, and takes his mic off and everything at the airport, he says 'Let me know if this ever gets aired'

....

This is, need I remind, SERIES SEVEN. FIVE years after the first series. That line might have made sense after the first series. I get the feeling that, after five years of filming (and filming everything, people in bathrooms, dinner parties at peoples' houses, people on trips to New York, and Utica, and so on, seriously, how vast is this project), it would a) probably already have been aired or b) have definitely got the green light from some network. Why carry on filming for so long if it might not get made.

RUBBISH

Cuellar

Quote from: ajsmith2 on October 17, 2019, 09:47:19 AM
Never seen Derek but from my understanding of it it doesn't seem very like the US Office, even if you hate both shows.


It's actually very like the Office (US). Everyone is horrible to each other all the time but then someone does a talking head to camera saying how great everyone is and how they're the best of friends and they wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Despite working in a place that would have been closed down  almost immediately and several of the main characters sent to prison.