The Office turns 15: Why the show's cringe comedy survived a massive shift in taste

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https://www.polygon.com/tv/2020/3/24...e-on-streaming

Greg Daniels' NBC adaptation of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's critically acclaimed BBC comedy is still as buzzworthy as ever 15 years after it premiered on March 24, 2005. "One would think that a series so steeped in offensive cringe humor might not age well (and actor Steve Carell says it hasn’t)," says Siddhant Adlakha. "In the context of its workplace setting, many of the things said by Carell’s wannabe comedian Michael Scott would be classified as racist or as sexual harassment, while certain instances of ableism, fatphobia, John Krasinski’s Jim being kind of a dick, and Rainn Wilson’s Dwight don’t play quite as well. Comedy sours fairly quickly as society evolves — ’90s global megahit Friends, for instance, can be a pretty difficult watch — but creator Greg Daniels set The Office apart by contextualizing its lead character through the eyes of the people he impacts, with his moronic (albeit well-meaning) misgivings. The original U.K. series created tension by having white characters skirt around the specter of race; general manager David Brent (Ricky Gervais) would often sweep the topic under the rug. However, Daniels’ adaptation decided to subvert that instinct, and was much more successful than its U.S. contemporaries. The result was a show where the liberal workplace avoidance of race wasn’t just a backdrop, but a primary target, as Michael Scott would try (and usually, fail) to force the subject out into the open." Adlakha says being a long-running show allowed The Office to have a "nuanced approach to what might otherwise be a one-and-done racist gag. Rather than having queer and/or people-of-color extras merely roll their eyes before disappearing off-screen, the series gives its diverse supporting cast a good chunk of the narrative point of view, allowing them far more agency than straight, white American-focused sitcoms had up to that point. t’s practically baked into the show’s mockumentary format — a departure from the era’s multicamera, canned-laughter norms. As Michael says or does something untoward in the name of inclusivity, the single-camera, vérité approach captures his employees’ intimate, suppressed reactions in the moment. These reactions are then further explored in one-on-one asides, which act as confessionals and emotional release valves in response to Michael’s gaudy antics. The formula isn’t hard to predict, but the result is a show not only about one man’s well-meaning idiocy, but about the ripple effects of his behavior. However, to simply call the style of The Office 'mockumentary' fails to capture how it navigates each supporting character, in an environment that requires them to constantly hide their true feelings from Michael and their corporate overlords."

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• The Office is unique in its seamless transition from one TV epoch to the next: "The show never retreated far enough from the mainstream to benefit from a full-bore nostalgia push," says Alison Herman. "Instead, it preserved its increasingly high-wattage cast in amber even as they continued to scale the Hollywood ladder, giving us the uncanny yet reassuring sense it never left. Carell is a socially challenged middle manager and a silver fox regularly hitting the awards circuit. John Krasinski is a fourth-wall-breaking straight man and a horror auteur, and also Jack Ryan. Mindy Kaling is a bratty drama queen and a rom-com star who hangs out with Reese Witherspoon. The upward trajectory of the cast is something of a chicken-and-egg scenario: Does their celebrity help keep The Office in the limelight, or does The Office’s continued popularity help their careers? Inevitably, it’s both. The Office is a throwback, but a deceptive one."
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The Office crew members blame NBC's ambivalence for Steve Carell's exit

Boom operator/sound mixer Brian Wittle and hairstylist Kim Ferry tell Andy Greene in his new oral history book The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s that Carell could've stayed if NBC had wanted him to stick around. With the final year of his contract looming, the actor noted that Season 7 would “probably be my last year.” Wittle says of the remark: "I sat with him one time and he told me the story. He was doing a radio interview and he haphazardly mentioned, almost unconsciously, that it might be his last season. He didn’t plan on saying it out loud and he hadn’t decided anything. He was kind of thinking out loud, but he did it in an interview in public and it created news. Then what he said was the people connected to the show had no reaction to it. They didn’t call and say, ‘What? You wanna leave?’ He said he didn’t get any kind of response from them. When he realized he didn’t get any kind of response from them, he thought, ‘Oh, maybe they don’t really care if I leave. Maybe I should go do other things.’ So I think that made it easier, because when the news broke that he was considering it, the people that are in charge of keeping him there didn’t make a big effort to do so until afterward.” Ferry adds: "He didn’t want to leave the show. He had told the network that he was going to sign for another couple of years. He was willing to and his agent was willing to. But for some reason, they didn’t contact him."

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• What the critics said about The Office when it launched 15 years ago today: "NBC could have ruined the delicate dynamic of The Office by over-Americanizing it," Gillian Flynn wrote back when she was a critic for EW. "Some exec, at some point, must have floated the idea of morphing Pam into an Andersonian chesty blond babe. Instead, played by the sweet-faced (Jenna) Fischer with an air of humor and neglect, Pam’s the kind of woman who doesn’t bother to finish brushing her hair because, really, who notices? Fischer and (John) Krasinski have a gentle chemistry that should be fun to watch as Jim and Pam’s attraction develops. Meanwhile, Rainn Wilson, in the easy-to-overdo role of sycophant Dwight, reins in his nerd vibe just short of Urkel territory.”
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