Stranger Than Paradise

Out To Lunch at "The Office"



Physical State: insomniac
Mental State: fuzzy
Music: Labradford - Mi Media Naranja
Fashion sense: black t-shirt, grey sweats

Ok I want to complain (yeah buddy what else is new?). This is a Wavelength review in development I suppose so bear with me.

Recently I watched the first season of the BBC's The Office on DVD and thoroughly loved it. The creation of Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais, it was a wonderful series about the annoying and self-aggrandizing loser of a boss David Brent and his antics as the Slough branch manager of the Wernham Hogg paper company. Brent is everything that you could both love and hate in a boss (love = freedom, hate = stupid jokes among other things). The show was unique to me like a lot of Britcoms are because it's writing was spectacular and witty. Dialogue took the front seat. After seeing the first six episodes I was blown away by how rich this series was with it's characters: The god-like to himself David Brent, the easy-going and humble Tim, the needley, brown-nosing and obnoxious Gareth Keenan, the lovely and doe-eyed Dawn along with a slew of other interesting and idiosyncratic characters. Everyone who's ever worked in an office at one time or another has met permutations of all of these characters to some degree. There's a definite and immediate connection to them. This was one of the reasons I was so enamoured of the show, these people seemed very real while the show was very funny. The sense of real also could be due to the documentary-like nature of the show. The DVD as well had great interviews with Stephen Merchant and Gervais where they seemed to be sincerely talented in being able to riff comedic on the fly. With other cast interviews we got a chance to see how these people are in real life and what they brought to the show. I was in love. I watched the whole thing twice in a span of a weekend.

BUT (and this is a big but), I recently wanted to relive my fondness for Slough that I found in the first series by picking up the second season on DVD (just released this week). My first impression was "Hey someone took away my Office, mate!". Whoa! The second season is such a contrast in quality and depth to the first. Like night and day. Where the first season was tightly written, witty and quite diverse I found season two stale, predictable and tired. David Brent was hilarious when he was commanding the sinking ship of an Office in season one (and what a fun ride). With the addition of a new boss in the Office over David in season two, his jokes and antics seemed pathetic, forced and well past their expiry date this time around. The show seemed to be a showcase for humiliating the Brent character while leaving out a lot of the other characters. This viewing left me feeling a bit bad for David and all the people in the office. It was more like a sad little soap opera than the original ground-breaking Britcom of subtle sarcasm and hilarity. The jokes seemed forced and they relied on cheap laughs this time around where the first had been quick-witted and dynamic. At times I found myself sitting in complete silence with a feeling not unlike watching a favourite pet die (let's not mince words here, eh?. This would tend to be a negative review then really). The characters that I had grown to love from the first season seemed like mere shadows of their former selves in season two. There were no nutty pranks pulled on Gareth by Tim (just the thought of Tim's "you're a cock, you're a cock, you're a cock" in season one makes me hurt with laughter all over). Totally gone. Finito. It was like someone else decided to make their own version of the show while the creators were on holiday, BUT THEY WEREN'T. Its like Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais were out to lunch (I felt the same way recently about the last Hal Hartley film, No Such Thing. The "phoned-it-in" syndrome, that "I was robbed" feeling). I seemed to have missed the memo about someone stealing those things away that I held dear about the original series and I was a little disappointed.

So I'd say Series One gets an solid A: shows incredible potential, creativity and comedic intelligence.
Series Two on the other hand gets a solid D: below average, repetitive, pathetic and generally pales in comparison to the first.

You be the judge. Maybe I need to reconsider season two.

What tops it for me is that these guys have been offered a chance to make an American version of the same series (take a great British series and Americanize it = a "sure-fire" hit, ugh). Let's hope that there's more first season in the writing than the lukewarm second one as influence. I still have faith that Merchant and Gervais' will rise again.

Ah but what do I know.