Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The Office Review: Episode 9.11, "Suit Warehouse"

A couple years ago, I wrote a brief series of Family Guy reviews, where I mostly complained about the show being the show that it is in the first place. I reviewed them not out of any affection for the show - for I have very little - or any real desire to think about it - for I have very none. Rather, they're just the side effect of having to live with a gross urophile who would watch pretty much nothing else, and needing to talk through that. Since then, I've been thinking - why not give brief weekly episodic coverage to something I actually do like, or at least care about, even if it's maybe a little embarrassing?

And so, that is how we have arrived at this: a series of reviews chronicling the final efforts of The Office to convince people that it is, indeed, still a thing that exists even without Steve Carell. (A series of reviews I hope to be more timely from now on.) This ninth and final season thus far has, to be sure, not even come close to match anything from the heights of seasons 2-4, yet with Greg Daniels back at the helm there are just enough flashes of what the show had that, well, I find myself clinging to the hope that somehow it'll all come flooding back in time for the finale. There's actually character development again! Stories! Stuff like that! Simple things that fell by the wayside during Paul Lieberstein's years as showrunner, where a bunch of things happened in arbitrary sequence, and then unhappened as necessary, and so on. (Pretty much the only thing he could commit to was, well, the thing that Steve Carell leaving already forced him to!) So, of course, the question remains: Will anything that has happened so far this season actually matter, or will it all crap out in a most spectacular way?

(I suppose I should mention that Jesse reviews typically contain spoilers, so....spoiler alert, for anyone who cares.)

There's also always the possibility that it will crap out spectacularly while still somehow actually mattering, like Darryl's interview at Jim's magical "sports marketing" firm. The interview gives the writers an opportunity to indulge in the ol' cringe humor, which was cute, but it doesn't pack nearly the same punch that these scenes used to. Not only is it pretty short - it's hard to get too uncomfortable in under a minute - but it's so blatantly mechanical, too. Not at all natural. Was the original version of this scene longer before it got chopped down? It's a weird case, though, where the scene itself didn't work for me, but the wider character arc it's in service of still did. I like Darryl's continuing struggle against his discomfort with the white-collar world - in an era of the show characterized by silly, over-the-top developments, this remains a surprisingly down-to-earth problem. If anything, it's one that they've been underplaying. Here, it's dealt with in a frustratingly perfunctory manner courtesy of writer Dan Greaney, by having Darryl come right out and say he doesn't belong there. "I'm just a warehouse manager", he says, only for everyone else on the Athlead Board of People Sitting Around a Table in a Vaguely Businesslike Way to come right out and say that they also used to hold an improbable variety of mundane jobs, too, so it's totally okay and we can drop this angle entirely! Subtlety!

Oh, but then Darryl unwittingly kills a bunch of fish, and that gives him something else to panic about for the duration of the next act break. It's good for a laugh I guess, but it's kind of a contrived problem that comes out of nowhere instead of stemming from his central character conflict. As Pam aptly notes: "They're the ones who put a fish tank next to a basketball hoop."

Honestly, though, I'm sure the main point of the trip to Philadelphia was to see Pam continue to not speak up about how she's not alright with this at all. Some weeks, her feelings are coming from an understandable place; other weeks, the writers make her sound like your typical shrew of a sitcom housewife who can't stand their husbands having even the slightest hint of a life of their own. Fortunately, this week is the former. It's finally sinking in that Jim's full-time in Philly will mean, y'know, actually moving there, which is an understandable thing to be apprehensive about. An understandable thing that, once again, Dan Greaney makes sure is overly obvious, this time by having Asian Receptionist Guy come right out and say, "We can't wait until you move here", which I guess he thinks is something that people say to people they've just met.

It's better when Jenna Fischer is allowed to get the point across in the usual actorly way, by, um, acting. The best emotional moments of the episode come when the writing stops being overly obvious and lets her shaken silence do the speaking. She's actually going to be missing these people after all. Isn't that how it always is? I'm sure everybody has bemoaned their sad, pathetic routine, only to feel genuinely distressed when even that starts fading away. There's something to be said for familiarity. At any rate, this continues to be the first time in, oh, let's say four seasons that I've been legitimately interested in what happens with Jim and Pam. A rift seems inevitable, and this being the final season with the reset button potentially finally off the table, anything could happen. (But probably won't.)

In the Far Less Relevant Stuff Department, Dwight and Clark try to sell to a father-son business. (Stone & Son Suit Warehouse - so that's where the title comes from!) Dwight, now with 10+ years of experience as a salesman, apparently still doesn't know any better way to do so than by dragging someone along and pretending to be a father-son team as well. An incredibly unsettling father-son team. It's sad, really - don't think about it too much. Your tolerance for this plotline will depend very much upon your tolerance for Dwight, because it's essentially The Wacky Adventures of Dwight and Dwight, which is surely more fun for the writers than anyone else. To be fair, there actually are a few laughs here, but then Dwight (the actual Dwight, not Clark, who is essentially also Dwight) starts talking in grotesque detail about cat turd collection, and....no matter what else they brought to the table, would you buy paper from someone who did that? I can safely say I wouldn't!

Waaaaaaay back in season three, the episode "Traveling Salesmen" made a thoroughly compelling argument for how Dwight could plausibly harness his Dwightness to sell paper, by finding a logical overlap between "creepy persistence" and "dedicated service". Six seasons later, it seems his skills have regressed immeasurably. He's just creepy, period, and his final maneuver to turn things around just rings false. After purchasing a suit from Stone & Son, he comes to the winking conclusion that "I guess it does make sense to buy from a father-son business", as though this alone somehow undoes the cat turd collection stuff. Again. Cat turd collection.

Meanwhile, without any of the main characters present to reign in their insanity, the rest of the office resorts to shameless product placement for the Nespresso PIXIE. Product placement that amounts to everyone drinking so much espresso - sorry, Nespresso - that they become unhinged hyperactive crazy people, which I'm sure is precisely how the fine folks at Nestlé hoped to have their product showcased. It's all very silly, of course, probably even sillier than the Suit Warehouse plot. Some of it works, like Stanley's joy at actually being awake to see 2 p.m. ("I usually take a siesta about now.") But then there's the giant, cartoony sweat stains, and everyone spontaneously decides to tear up the carpet - no, not like THAT - and it's basically a lot of silliness that wouldn't fly if there was actually anyone in charge. Season two's "Office Olympics" also had a plot that depended on the manager being out, yes, but that was also about generally responsible people blowing off a little steam....not going completely insane and destroying property without repercussions of any sort!

There's a bright side to the insanity at the office, though: Erin's anxiety over handling a shipment of pens on Pam's behalf. It's weird - people keep singling this out as though it's the most ridiculous part of the episode, as though she's literally Too Dumb To Live. (As one commenter somewhere put it, this makes her look "more mentally handicapped than Kevin", perhaps forgetting literally everything Kevin has done over the last four seasons.) Really, though, it's grounded in relatively down-to-earth real-world anxieties. I, too, get worked up when asked to handle a new task I don't feel has been adequately explained. Is it exaggerated a little? Sure, but Ellie Kemper does a great job of keeping it grounded, and her caffiene-addled talking head ("I don't want to be a busybody, but I don't want to be a lazybones. Busybody, lazybones, busybody, lazybones...") gives it even more legitimate context. After all, she'd hate to betray anyone's trust. About the pens. Though, maybe I'm unfairly biased toward this little plotline - after all, Ellie Kemper is ridiculously adorable. Hell, the ridiculousness of the rest of the office tearing up the building is almost worth it when Pam returns, sees the damage, and Erin tries to explain what happened: "You left me in charge of the pens, Pam. That's what happened. The pens happened!"

Wow. I ended up rambling on for longer than I'd expected. Maybe I should think about closing this up now. Well, what can I say? This was uneven, to be sure. I enjoyed bits and pieces of the trip to Philly, and as an anxious lazybones I found the pen stuff relatable, but I wish they hadn't been dulled so much by the sheer amount of time we spent in the Suit Warehouse. I get it, the writers like writing for Dwight because wackiness is easy, but that doesn't mean that doubling up so you don't have to write for anyone else works. On the whole, I guess I'd rate this about a 6.0 out of 10.

Trivial Observations and Miscellaneous Miscellany:
  • Eleven episodes into this season, and I'm still not at all sure just what, exactly, Athlead does. This week, we learned that "sports marketing" involves both "timelines" and "mandates", which are both appropriately businessish terms that appropriately businessish people might talk about in an appropriately businessish manner, and I guess that's as close as they're gonna come to clearing this up. Business!
  • I hate to seem like an obnoxious teenage girl, but as far as Erin is concerned, I guess I'd have to say I'm in the Team Pete camp. Andy's kind of a major douche, and though I like Ed Helms well enough, you almost wish he could just stay out there, having a big film career, for the entire rest of the season....but I guess the fact that we have an upcoming episode actually named "Andy's Return" puts a damper on that hope. Oh well.
  • For as much as I complained about Dwight's Dwightness tonight, I still liked his complete and utter failure at faking a phone call with Jim in the cold open. "Well, thank you, Jim! Yes, I am better than you. Thanks for acknowledging that. Okay, buh-bye, love you."
  • Likewise, for all my complaining about Clark's Dwightness, I still think he was a worthwhile addition to the cast, when he's allowed to be his own kind of creep. "Women reach their sexual peak at whatever age Jan was last week. I mean, it was like making love with a wild animal. But not like a cougar, like you might think. It was....like a swarm of bees. Bees that just find something wrong with every hotel room."
  • Oh, Darryl: "If this company's going down, I wanna go down on it. With it. I wanna go down with it..."
  • By the way, I cannot possibly adequately express just how much I hate trying to write with ballpoint pens. Dunder-Mifflin really IS a shitty place to work!
  • Next week's episode - well, tomorrow's, to be more accurate - is when Greg Daniels claims they're gonna start unraveling the mystery of who's behind the documentary, and it sounds like there's a lot of other shit going down. It's pretty much the episode that will determine whether season nine will ultimately sink or swim! IT'S ALL RIDING ON THIS! No pressure, though.
  • This week's review brought to you by the Nespresso PIXIE! Convenience that's up to thrice as expensive per serving as the competition, because extortion is easy - it's coffee that's hard! Now available in exciting and revolutionary new colors, like brown! (But seriously, see how long it takes you to get sick of the sad little 30-second music loop on its website. Oooh ooh oh oohohoh oh, indeed!)

2 comments:

  1. wow, you put a lot of thought into that! awesome. don't have anything to add, but i can't wait to read your long form thoughts on customer loyalty. that's some serious shit. :)

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    1. Thank you for the kindly kind words, Jamie!

      You mean the episode "Customer Loyalty", right? And not my thoughts on the basic concept of the customer loyalty business model? Because I can do both. :P

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