Tying The Office and Grey's Anatomy Together

One of the things that both The Office and Grey's Anatomy are very good at doing is setting up a comical moment and then injecting serious character insight at the end, so that entertainment and character development are blended together into one nice scene.

Take for example this past week's episode on Grey's Anatomy, where Cristina (Sandra Oh) gets suckered into a lunch date with her boyfriend Preston's (Isaiah Washington) mother. She freaks out, tells her ailing boyfriend that he needs to bail her out, then storms out. Later, she's at lunch with Preston's mother and things are not going well, when lo and behold Preston has gotten up out of his hospital bed and shows up to save Cristina. But instead of saving her, his mother starts ordering him around and normally-proud Preston can only stammer out an apology before walking away. The scene is a very nice comedic turn of events for Cristina, who had hoped to be saved by Preston but instead sees him get badgered around by his mother and leave with his tail between his legs. However, the next thing Preston's mother does is turn to Cristina and just lay into her, calling her selfish for dragging her hurt boyfriend out of bed just because she was uncomfortable having lunch with her. It's quite a poignant cut into Cristina's character, and goes to the heart of numerous problems that she has been having up to this point. She really is a very self-centered person, and the comment will probably begin the process of maturation for her.

The Office does something similar, albeit with a different feel to it. In the season opener, we learn that Pam (Jenna Fischer) has rejected Jim (John Krasinski), causing Jim to transfer to a different office so that he won't have to see Pam anymore. Meanwhile the main plot of the episode revolves around Dwight (Rainn Wilson) trying to accurately ascertain who may or may not be gay within the office, so eventually he tries to buy a "gaydar" online. Towards the end of the episode, Jim ships Dwight a "gaydar" that's really just a metal detector with lettering imprinted on it to make it look like it can detect homosexuals. Dwight excitedly uses it on Oscar (Oscar Nunez), the only known gay person in the office, and when Dwight moves it towards Oscar's belt, it goes off because of the metal in the belt buckle. Dwight is gleefully tricked into believing that the gaydar works. However, he then accidentally brushes the gaydar against his own belt, and then it goes off, and the confusion on his face is priceless as he thinks that he himself might be secretly gay. As with the scene in Grey's Anatomy, the humor lies in seeing how the follies of Dwight's character lead him to be duped. Pam sees all of this and giggles, but then she becomes crestfallen as she realizes that Jim was the reason why she was able to enjoy this moment of hilarity, and that he is no longer around to make her laugh. It cuts brilliantly into her character's inner desires, and how she is living with the consequences of her actions.

It's really this deft hand that the shows exhibit, being able to balance comedy with character development, that I think makes both of these shows so enjoyable for me. Without the character insight the shows would be soulless sitcoms, and the humor wouldn't be nearly as sharp. And without the humor, the shows would crush themselves under the weight of their character's troubles. But both shows blend the two so smoothly together, flowing one right into the other, that it really is a joy to watch both shows week in and week out.

Converted Fan of The Office (US)

I dated this girl once who was always ahead of the fashion curve. She wore Uggs a year before they became popular. She wore flip-flops before they were hot. She somehow knew what was going to be fashionable and started wearing it before everyone else figured it out. I, on the other hand, have always been slow on the uptake. I usually wait until something has proven itself to be immensely popular and the prices have come down before I will get interested in it.

While I don't normally do this when it comes to TV shows (I watched Buffy, Grey's Anatomy and Lost right from the get-go), I was extremely hesitant when it came to watching The Office. I had several co-workers who loved the British series before it even became available in the US, and when the American series started broadcasting two years ago they raved about it non-stop. Personally though, I saw the promotional clips and though, 'Eh'. I really didn't get it. Sure, there was absurdist humor about life under a clueless middle manager and the silliness of working a desk job, but I thought it was a little bit forced and hence not that funny. But it kept getting great reviews and recently won an Emmy, so I've always thought that I should rent it on DVD and give it a shot (I feel that way about lots of shows, including Veronica Mars and House).

Finally this past weekend I rented season two of The Office from Blockbuster, and I couldn't stop watching it! I started with the first disk at midnight on Saturday, figuring I'd watch a few episodes before I went to sleep. I ended up watching all six that were on the disk, plus all the episodes on the second disk. I didn't get to sleep until 6am! Then after a short nap I went back to Blockbuster and rented the rest of the disks and watched them all that afternoon! Yes, I went a little bit bonkers. :-)

It was odd, because watching the first episode I didn't really think it was anything special. At one point I thought about just shutting it off and going to sleep because I was getting tired, but I figured I'd just keep watching. Somewhere around the second episode was where I got hooked. The thing that did it was the big plotline between Jim and Pam, of course. I mean, these two people are so cute, how can you not root for them? Once I saw that the show was really about them and not about Steve Carell's boss, I started to get into the show a lot more. Both actors are superb in their roles, able to convey so much of what they're feeling with just a look, a glance, a turn of the mouth. So many shows these days just throw two attractive people together and assume that that's enough "chemistry" to justify a love story between them, but this show really goes to great lengths to show how these two people get along and why they should be together.
They really are the core of the show.

Steve Carell's inept boss isn't too far behind though. The promotional clips really make him out to be just a buffoon, and that was one of the turn-offs for me about the show. But once I started watching the episodes, it became clear that the show was able to carefully balance his insane actions with his child-like need for acceptance and friendship. I really understood what made him tick, where all of his foolish actions stemmed from. I felt like I really grew to understand his character by the end of the the season. And his usual silly self was the perfect setup for the two instances where he actually rose above himself and did the right thing. Both times his boss Jan was involved. It was pretty amazing to see how powerful it was to start with a situation where it appeared Michael was going to screw up yet again, pissing off Jan by doing something idiotic, and then seeing him completely redeem himself. The contrast was just completely unexpected and amazing, and that made it completely plausible that Jan would end up kissing him each time.

The other amazing thing was how the writers of the show so completely nailed down the relationship between Dwight and Angela. At first I wondered how either of them could ever find someone to love them, and then when they started interacting with each other, staring each other down, their relationship really started to make sense. I could see how they were exactly what the other person needed, both authoritarian control freaks who needed someone to who would stand up to them and give them a dose of their own medicine. It's the only thing they understand, and the only thing they respect, which is why their relationship works.

Really, when I think about it, the writers and actors on this show started out with simple caricatures of office people that were pretty cliched and flat, and ended up building extremely rich relationships between them that really ring quite true and are amazing to see in action. The show is really about how people interact together, like all successful shows. The promotional materials and short clips that are floating around really can't convey that essence. Even now, having seen the entire second season, watching NBC's little "webisodes" and clips online fails to really capture what makes the show great. I think I couldn't have started liking this show if I hadn't had the opportunity to rent them on DVD and just watch the episodes back to back to back. I hope they keep up this direction for the show in the upcoming season.