Premiere Week 2012: The Office

The Office is kicking off its ninth and final year. The show uses a mock documentary style to follow the daily lives of the office staff at a small paper company. An Americanized remake of the brilliant British original, the series started strong and, at points during its first few seasons, could even be argued as having surpassed the original. After hitting its creative high around the third season, however, the quality began to decline. By season six it was merely another mediocre workplace comedy and really should have been cancelled at the end of season seven with the departure of series lead Steve Carrell. Instead, it trudged on through a truly terrible eighth season and now what is promised to be it’s final go round.

The season nine premiere, written by series head Greg Daniels, was certainly a step up from most of what we saw last year. The was a much stronger adherence to the mockumentary format than the show has had in quite a while, with cameras being dropped to awkward angles and characters directly referencing and speaking to the documentary crew. The characters also felt more grounded than they have recently, with the exception of Dwight, who is continuing on his path towards absolute clown. What didn’t improve, though, was the cohesiveness of the plot. At it’s height, The Office was able to blend several seemingly disparate storylines together into a unified theme, each reflecting or commenting on the other. The plots on display last night were much like those of the last several seasons: each existing wholly on their own, as though four writers were simply given the task of creating a five minute sketch, each of which were then chopped up and intercut with each other to fill out the 21 minute runtime.

Stay, Skip, or Give It 4: I’m going to give The Office a Stay, with the caveat that the recommendation only applies to those who are already invested in the series. It doesn’t show any sign of suddenly regaining its originally quality, so there’s no reason for new viewers to watch what is now a very mediocre show. With only a season left, however, those who have already been along for the ride thus far may as well stick it out, if only to see how it all ends.

Final season promo