The Office

I need my 30 minutes of ‘suspension of belief’ dose every day, be it in the form of Yahoo Bridge or Seinfeld reruns or Jeopardy ‘Tournament of Champions’. Can’t wait for Ken Jennings, the undisputed reigning monarch of Jeopardy with total earnings of approx. $2.5 million on Jeopardy, to get back into the tournament. Last week while flipping channels, I happened to stumble upon the new NBC serial ‘The Office’ and judging by the past two episodes, they have a winner on their hands. It’s been a while since I have watched TV serials and barring Seinfeld, during its first few good years with Larry David and the absolutely juvenile, moronic ‘Tom Green Show’ on MTV, have I found a TV show this funny. The plot for this show is a copy from a hit British TV show, but I believe the format is pretty much the same, just with more Americanized plot lines.

The show has an excellent cast with Steve Carell, who plays Richard the Regional Manager of an office supplies company. Dwight, played by Rainn Wilson, plays the Assistant to the Regional Manager, but is actually the office bully. Dwight is the bright spot in this show and his paranoia and over-bearing behavior, leads to funny situations and funnier interaction amongst the office staff. In the last episode Dwight gets the wind of corporate downsizing and just to be kept abreast of all the water cooler gossip, moves the water cooler next to his desk. He also fashions a Survivor style “alliance” with one of the sales guy and plots to get someone from HR or finance fired, just to save his own job. While all this happening, the boss Richard, is blissfully unaware of everything that is going on in the office and to boost the morale at the workplace decides to throw a birthday party for an employee whose birthday is actually a few months away. At the birthday party he makes fun of her hysterectomy, divorce and advanced age, while the rest of office suffers with looks of disbelief. He also signs up for a Cerebral Palsy Walkathon with an employee, pledging $25, which he doesn’t realize is $25 for every mile the kid walks. When he does realize his gaffe, he tries to rescind his donation, but the employee refuses to make that change. Extremely funny show with great characters. The best part is if you could relate each of those TV characters to some of the people at your own workplace. It makes the show that much more watchable.