Also, I Try To Convince Myself I’m Not a Sociopath for Liking Robert California
Steve Carell never won an Emmy for Michael Scott.
Jerry Seinfeld never won an Emmy for playing himself.
Seinfeld, like The Office, ran 9 seasons, and both shows ran their last 2 seasons without a major creative influence that had been there since the beginning: Steve Carell (The Office) and Larry David (Seinfeld), both left their respective shows after their 7th seasons.
Another coincidence is that both returned to their beloved series for their respective finales: David as a writer and Carell, as Scott, to say, “I feel like all my kids all grew up and married each other. It’s every parent’s dream.”
Though the finales of both decade-defining comedies were met, to the least, differently (one largely positive, the other, divisively and overwhelmingly negatively), those receptions were also based on two very different sets of expectations.
When Seinfeld ended, a lot people thought the creator was calling it quits too early, though Jerry Seinfeld rebukes this, telling Stern,
“The public wanted more. But, Howard, the public is NOT in show business. So you should do the OPPOSITE of what the public wants. There’s a reason they are not in show business.”
whereas when The Office ended, there was a certain “consensus” that, as the entertainment page of Time.com put it,
The Office lasted longer than you might have thought it would. It had a well-executed, moving “ending” as Steve Carell left after seven seasons, and then the show stuck around for two years more…That The Office ran too long is hard to argue against by now
The Argument That The Office Overstayed Its Welcome
Rolling Stone even proclaimed, in hindsight, that The Office jumped the shark with Jim and Pam’s wedding in Season 6.
While the paragraph Rolling Stone dedicated to this argument doesn’t really sum it up, I have noticed upon one of one hundred re-watches, that in the Jim and Pam Wedding episode, many characters do things so beyond the pale as to become cartoonish:
- Kevin has his shoes thrown away by hotel staff (“it became a safety issue”) and so he wears Kleenex boxes to the wedding
- Dwight makes the turn from nerd to ladykiller by ignoring a young woman he coupled with the night before
- In Jim and Pam’s wedding, their co-workers take up about 85% of the procession, not to mention high-jacking the ceremony with their choreographed dance
- Jim and Pam elope to get married under Niagara Falls
I’m sorry but people don’t elope the day of their already scheduled wedding. And they don’t allow their co-workers to be the focal point of their ceremony.
Regardless of when you probably stopped caring about the characters on The Office there is a general consensus that the show was not the same after Michael Scott left.
I don’t think we should this against The Office too harshly.
Hell, even Jason Alexander felt the last two seasons of George on Seinfeld were not as good as the first 7, telling Marc Maron,
I got a little cranky with it in the last 2 years…when Larry David left after season 7, um, I felt like the best of George went with him…and the writing staff at that point, all unbelievably talented guys who have gone on to huge careers, but, I felt like they didn’t quite understand George to the depths that Larry did
While no one person can fill Steve Carell’s shoes, and while the last 2 seasons certainly have their problems (camera guy, Deangelo, Andy and Erin are just Jim and Pam again but less good), there is also a lot there to defend.
Top 8 Reasons The Office is Worth Watching After Michael Scott
#8. It Doesn’t Matter As Much Anymore
This argument can be made for any series after its original run.
While you’re watching a show you’re invested in these characters that have become your friends over the years.
Everything they do is new and therefore feels consequential.
Only in hindsight can each episode, each scene with your favorite character, each questionable writing decisions that were probably fatigued by the 1,000 previous writing decisions, be given the more realistic amount of importance they always deserved.
On re-watch you can enjoy a show simply for the jokes. You don’t have to worry about the character arcs or whether episode 124 was as good as episode 76.
For the remaining points I’d like to stick to things that happened on The Office after Michael Scott left.
#7. Boboddy: Creed as Manager
Without the last 2 seasons of The Office the world would have never seen Charles Minor (played by Idris Elba) appoint Creed as branch manager due to his seniority.
This of course, would mean we never got to hear Creed try to come up with an acronym for the “word” “boboddy” which he wrote on a large piece of paper because he decided everyone in the office was “making up acronyms”.
Creed: What does the B stand for?
Stanley: Business
Creed: I like it! (proceeds to not spell business correctly on large piece of paper)
#6. Cameos
With time away from the series, it’s easier to have fun with these cameos and just to be happy they existed in the Dunder-Mifflin universe.
- Jim Carrey (“Finger lakes”)
- Ray Ramano
- Will Arnett
- Ricky Gervais trying out to be manager via Video CV
#5. The Fall and Rise of Angela
Now you don’t have to watch the last 2 seasons of The Office for the character arcs, but if you do, this is the one to watch.
The entire series Angela lived on the pedestal she placed herself on.
That all changes after Michael Scott leaves.
Before Season 8 Angela:
- cheated with Dwight during every relationship she was in
- ran the party planning committee like a Joffrey
- judged everyone against her hypocritical puritan standards
- humble-bragged about how small she was
- was, in general, very annoying
After Season 7 Angela:
- was cheated on
- had her husband come out as gay in a press conference while she was unwittingly standing next to him
- failed at hiring a hitman to take out Oscar’s kneecaps
- had her entire life fall apart as single mother to 1 human and 12 cats
- nearly became homeless
- was taken in by Oscar when she finally asked for help, but only after his insistence
Now I would never wish the aforementioned bullet points on anyone, but Angela?
By the time we see Angela hit rock bottom, and then go onto help Dwight’s Aunt with a beet-farm style makeover, we actually get to see a redeeming, and humbled, side of the woman who once bragged about wearing clothes made for large dolls.
It’s one of the few character arcs of the later seasons that wasn’t a re-tread, and overall, it was pretty satisfying.
By the time Angela and Dwight end up together, you feel they actually earned it.
#4. The Best Ryan Quote of All-Time
Technically, this occurred in Season 7, but it did take place during one of the “Search Committee” episodes at the end of the season where Michael Scott is basically out the door.
Jim gets in trouble with Charles Minor, Ryan hears about it, peaks out from his “office”, which is a closet, and says:
#3. The Best Use of Stanley Since “What Won’t He Notice?”
#2. Why…Say Lot Word When Few Word Do Trick?
Such an iconic Kevin scene, it’s hard to believe that this didn’t come until the 8th season.
#1. The Lizard King, Robert California
My girlfriend thinks I’m a psychopath for this.
She’s right, she’s always right.
But I think Robert California is the best thing to happen to The Office after Michael Scott left.
Do I look like someone who would waste my own time? – Robert Califronia
Of all the famous TV sociopaths, I feel the need to defend my love for Robert California the most, because at some level, Robert California may be the most concerning one to stand up for.
At least serial killers like Dexter have some redeeming qualities, some twisted logic or desire for justice. It’s not clear that Robert California as a person, has any qualities we value in a person.
But Robert California is not simply a man, he is a myth.
(First of all, Robert California would be nothing without James Spader. No one else but him could pull off such a complete lunatic with so much confidence, but…)
The best defense of his character lies in the words written for him.
All life is sex, and all sex is competition…There is one person in charge of every office in America, and that person is Charles Darwin. In the end, doesn’t he decide who the manager is? – Robert California
Robert California is purely a literary character, he does not exist in the real world but rather, as the personification of ego, inappropriate libido, and the kind of faulty logic and thinking-you-understand-science-and-truth that led to Eugenics.
He is a shape shifter, a genius trickster, an anomaly in a show about the ordinary.
From Wikipedia, on “Trickster”,
In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a character in a story (god, goddess, spirit, human, or anthropomorphisation), which exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge, and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and conventional behaviour.
Everything he does – like talking Jo Bennett out of her job as CEO of Sabre – makes sense because he exists above mortal humans.
He can’t jump the shark, he is the shark.
There’s no such thing as a product, don’t ever think there is. There is only sex. Everything is sex. You understand that what I’m telling is a universal truth? – Robert California
He exists solely as fun-house mirror to the drab reality of Scranton, PA.
He pulls his pants down at work parties.
He makes lists of people he thinks are cool and uncool.
He insists his hosts determine the kind of gift he should bring them.
The trickster crosses and often breaks both physical and societal rules. Tricksters “…violate principles of social and natural order, playfully disrupting normal life and then re-establishing it on a new basis.”[2]
Because he is everything and nothing at the same time (“you don’t even know my real name”), the writers can have him say some of the most profound and simultaneously ridiculous statements to ever grace The Office.
Sesame Street was created to reflect the environment of the children watching it. Complete self-absorption of Elmo is brilliantly reflective of our time. Ours is a cultural ghetto, wouldn’t you agree? – Robert California
While you can argue many of the late-seasons’ characters didn’t fit the feel of The Office (again, Deangelo), Robert California doesn’t fit in a good way: his literary way of talking, his pop culture observations, and the temerity with which he presented his opinions put the ordinariness of our beloved office dwellers into stark relief.
Let me tell you some things I find productive: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, honesty. I’ll tell you somethings I find unproductive: Constantly worrying about where you stand based on inscrutable social clues. And then inevitably reframing it all in a reassuring way so that you can get to sleep at night. No, I do not believe in that at all. – Robert California
The entire concept of The Office was based on “inscrutable social clues” and the people who worry about them.
We are reminded of how much we like our normal, workaday characters by how ridiculous Robert California is, and how uncomfortable he makes us feel.
Funny how the houses are always colonial and the penises are always circumcised? – Robert California, on the subject of doodles
His first interview is a microcosm of all of his future relationships on The Office, and is at the beginning of the “Best Of” clip below.
But like the parties at his villa that never crescendoed into true madness, Robert California never truly existed.
He was a figment of our collective pop-culture imaginations, who dropped in to play pretend and point fingers at our so-called “normal lives” only to vanish just as he had arrived, in a cloud of “seeking out uneducated gymnasts”, without anyone learning his real identity.
You want a street fight with me? Bring it on, but you’re going to be surprised at how ugly it gets. You don’t even know my real name, I’m the fucking Lizard King. – Robert California