“The Office” — Local Ad
Five-part harmony.
I understand the need to give a perennial loser victories now and again, but those victories have to be kept within the framework of that character’s personality. This may seem particularly nitpicky, but I absolutely didn’t buy the “Michael Scott Director’s Cut” ad that was shown at the end of the episode (and this is from a guy who found the idea of a human intentionally driving into a lake to be completely sublime). As I saw it, Michael Scott is not capable of producing that ad. More after the jump…
Collectively, the office could pull it off but there was no indication that this is what happened. In the overnight edit session the only people present Michael, Dwight, Andy (?) and Pam, neither of whom seem particularly adept at the finer points of cinematic fundamentals (well, maybe Pam, but she was working on her own project). Throughout the whole episode Michael’s idea for the ad proved to be ambitious though completely unfilmmable (”and then we pull back again and it’s a sandbox…”), or in the case of Daryl making the jingle, unable to see genuine creative talent.
And herein lies the rub. We can buy Michael Scott as an idiot — even if the levels of idiocty reach preposterous lows, but it is far more difficult to accept him as a man with some actual talent, which is why I’ve always thought of it as a brilliant move to make him a really good salesman. But cinematic auteur? Hardly.
Of course this was just the last in a series of problems I had with the episode. The Second Life plotline seemed out of place (and I was going to say out of date, but then I remembered that one of the series’ charms is how the characters aren’t on the cutting edge of popular culture), and I’m getting tired of Jim continually doing the right thing at the end of each episode. How about an episode where he is the one who does something selfish?
What I am not sick of is the continuing complexity in the Dwight/Angela/Andy storyline. Dwight’s misery is endlessly watchable and Andy’s attempts at wooing Angela have proven to be far more resilient than I’d otherwise have imagined. The image of “necking” being the literal rubbing together of necks is one of those descriptions that is probably far funnier than actually seeing it.
After last week’s tour de force and Thursday’s return to the 30-minute format it’s no wonder the show may have slipped a little — or maybe it just suffered from coming right on the heels of a particularly brilliant episode of 30 Rock.
Tags: NBC, The Office
