But The Office is - or used to be and is trying, with varying degrees of success, to be again - less sitcommy, and I can actually almost imagine a pretty good Dwightcentric spinoff. (Obviously, this theoretical successful spinoff would've come into existence before the ninth season.) When the news first broke about The Farm - the actual failed Dwightcentric spinoff - I knew almost immediately that this was not that spinoff. But was I being overly negative? Would it really hurt to give Paul Lieberstein the benefit of the doubt for once? After all, he was good enough when he was just a writer; he simply seems to have been promoted past the thing he excelled at, like a Mike Scully. (Or a Michael Scott, if you'd prefer your Office reviews to only use metaphors about Office things.) Perhaps he'd have an easier time reigning things if he had a project he was at the helm of from the outset? (Y'know, just like Toby's Scranton Stranger investigation came to a quick and decisive and strangly conclusion once he actually took charge of that.)
...yeah. Even though they made a modest effort to retrofit the pilot for The Farm back into The Office after the project was cancelled, let's not kid ourselves. This isn't really an Office review. This is a review of a different series altogether, one that never came to be.
One that was thrown into a casket, and then shot, just to make absolutely sure that it's not accidentally buried alive.
(Oh, yeah, beware of spoilers and stuff. And stuff.)
