Two Paper Companies Are Better Than One In The Office: Season Five

This past Christmas, my brothers got my parents and me hooked on NBC's workplace sit-com The Office. We breezed through four seasons in a few months before playing catch-up with the fifth season online. It's the only season of which we saw some of the episodes as they aired. With 23 episodes, it's nearly twice as long as the strike-shortened fourth season, and although affable salesman Jim (John Krasinski) and sunny receptionist Pam (Jenna Fischer) are officially a couple and nothing comes along to threaten their relationship much, all sorts of other entanglements are happening around them.

In the beginning, the big question on the Jim and Pam front is when Jim will pop the question, since it's obvious he's been burning to do so for a long time and is simply waiting for the right moment. The inevitable engagement scene comes early in the season and is surprisingly underplayed, considering how much buildup was behind it. They're also forced to endure long-distance romance while Pam takes art classes in New York, though this doesn't last long.

Meanwhile, preppy warbler Andy (Ed Helms) remains engaged to prissy accountant Angela (Angela Kinsey), but he as he eagerly makes wedding arrangements, she has covert meetings with her old flame, the relentlessly eccentric Dwight (Rainn Wilson). Clueless boss Michael Scott (Steve Carell) finally gets his shot at true love with the new public relations person, the daffy Holly (Amy Ryan), but his life takes a turn for the worse when David Wallace (Andy Buckley) from corporate get wind of their romance, which breaks company policy.

The most surprising story arc of the fifth season involves Michael's rash decision to leave Dunder Mifflin after David hires the no-nonsense Charles (Idris Elba) as an intermediary between himself and Michael. Dunder-headed Michael has no idea how to get along in the world outside of his cozy position, and he seems likely to flounder, especially when he announces that he will be starting up his own rival paper company. However, Pam demonstrates initiative and loyalty by offering to join him in his new venture, and it isn't long before Michael tracks down former know-it-all intern Ryan (B. J. Novak), now working in a bowling alley, and convinces him to join the team. The three of them have an interesting dynamic, with Pam the go-getter who keeps the project from unraveling and Ryan the useless tagalong. Back at the office, Angela and flirtatious Kelly (Mindy Kaling) compete for the favor of the nonplussed Charles, and Dwight struggles to retain his clients in the face of the sudden threat from Michael.

Dwight is the most outlandish character in a show full of kooks, so many of the season's most memorable scenes belong to him. Crime Aid has him emulating Jud Fry in an amusing parody of Oklahoma!'s auction scene. In Moroccan Christmas, he brings to mind the Tickle-Me-Elmo and Furby crazes as he stocks up on the year's "it" toy and charges his officemates exorbitant rates for their children's satisfaction. Prince Family Paper is Dwight at his most infuriating, undermining Michael's soft-hearted decision not to use the information gathered on a Mom and Pop paper company during an undercover mission against them, as is Stress Relief, in which Dwight goes so overboard on creating a realistic fire alarm that Stanley (Leslie David Baker) has a heart attack.

My very favorite Dwight moment of the season occurs in conjunction with Andy in The Michael Scott Paper Company, in which the two, caught up in rivalry with each other even as they try to nourish a friendship, throw together a guitar-banjo rendition of John Denver's Take Me Home, Country Roads that is more like Dueling Banjos. It was a sublime surprise for this John Denver fan - particularly as they happen to be singing for the benefit of a character named Erin - followed by a disagreeable jolt when wet blanket Toby (Paul Lieberstein) cut the concert short.

We watched part of this season out of order, and it didn't really make much of a difference. It's best to watch episodes of The Office is the proper sequence, but it isn't critical to one's enjoyment or understanding. The shake-ups that occur in the fifth season are entertaining, and several developments in the final episode set us up for excitement in the sixth, which is already upon us. I can hardly wait!

The Office's Shortened Fourth Season Doesn't Fall Short

My brother was home from college for spring break a couple of weeks ago, which gave us the chance to watch the last of the four seasons of the NBC muckumentary sit-com The Office, which he got on DVD for Christmas. While it was considerably longer than the teensy first season, thanks to the strike, the fourth season spanned a mere 14 episodes, making it pretty easy to get through in a week.

The Office spent three seasons getting salesman Jim (John Krasinski) and receptionist Pam (Jenna Fischer) together. After all that romantic tension, the season four premiere finds them a couple. Thus, season four marks a fundamental change in the show, much like season eight of Frasier, in which Niles and Daphne finally get together. While Frasier's lovebirds still must clear several hurdles at that point, over the course of the season, nothing really comes along to threaten Jim and Pam's relationship. For them, it's a season of bliss.

Not so much for their office mates, however. Toby (Paul Lieberstein), the human resources representative so reviled by off-his-rocker boss Michael (Steve Carell), always got along well with Jim before, but now he bitterly views him as a romantic rival. Jan (Melora Hardin), Michael's former boss, moves in with him, but their relationship continues to deteriorate as she displays increasingly erratic behavior. Eccentric farm boy Dwight (Rainn Wilson) repulses Angela (Angela Kinsey) when he mercy-kills her cat instead of administering her complex treatments; dorky Andy (Ed Helms) wins her over with a dramatic romantic gesture, but she finds she can't stop thinking about Dwight.

Kelly (Mindy Kaling) is miserable because her boyfriend Ryan (B. J. Novak) dumped her and ran off to be a corporate bigwig. While he loves being able to lord his power over his old officemates, Ryan soon discovers that life in the fast lane has its downsides. Grumpy Stanley (Leslie David Baker) flirts with the idea of transferring to Utica and befuddles Michael with an aggressive show of insubordination. Meredith (Kate Flannery) starts off the season in traction when Michael accidentally runs her down with his car, and lethargic Kevin (Brian Baumgartner) finishes the season flattered by the considerate attention of Holly (Amy Ryan), a new addition to the office, not realizing that she thinks he is mentally challenged.

Although the season is abbreviated, there is still plenty of fun packed into it. Highlights include a fierce salesmanship battle between Dwight and Dunder Mifflin Infinity, the company's just-set-up website; the employees' creative efforts to put together a more interesting television commercial than the one proposed by corporate; Michael's attempt to prove that he can survive in the wild; Ryan's hyperactive antics when Michael and Dwight visit him in New York; Kevin and Andy confronting the other office park bosses about one company's encroachment into Dunder Mifflin's parking lot; and Phyllis (Phyllis Smith) finally getting her big break as head of the party planning committee, leading to the most spectacular going away party the branch has ever seen. Of course, some of the funniest moments still stem from the characters' straight-into-the-camera confessionals.

Obviously, the writers' strike affected the course of this season, but I'm not sure to what extent. The only plot development that feels really rushed is Andy's courtship of Angela, and that seems to be largely a reflection of his overbearing personality. Ironically enough, the season's biggest weakness is probably the unfettered happiness of Jim and Pam; though it's what most viewers were rooting for and it's wonderful to see them so content, that tension drove a lot of the show's comedic conflict. Still, season four is a solidly entertaining chapter in Dunder Mifflin's ongoing saga of silliness.

The Office DVD Board Game Is Fairly Fun for Fans

Over the past couple of years, my best friend Libbie had mentioned to me that she got a laugh out of The Office, so this Christmas I decided to get her The Office DVD Board Game, which tests players' knowledge of the show with a variety of challenges. The only trouble was that I'd never seen more than a snippet or two of the show myself, so I wasn't sure how soon I'd be able to play it with her. Imagine my surprise when my brother got the first four seasons of The Office on DVD for Christmas. Perfect timing!

I know of at least one other board game relating to The Office. This one, which comes with cardboard stand-up figures of all the major characters, includes only tidbits from the show's first three seasons. The first time I played it, there were still several episodes of the third season that I hadn't seen, so I was at a mild disadvantage, but there's a pretty good mix of questions from different points in the series.

While the questions are divided into several different categories, identifiable by the icon (Stapler, Beet, Sheriff's Badge, Dwight Bobblehead, Pepper Spray, Mug, Dice) on the screen that corresponds to the one on the game board, most categories lead to some type of trivia question regarding the show. For instance, you may be asked to finish a particular quote or identify the character who said it. Other questions are only very tangentially related to the show, like asking for the director of a movie mentioned by one of the characters.

The most oddball category requires contestants to work together to accomplish a physical task such as making paper dolls. This could be fun, but it's also time-consuming, especially since we don't know ahead of time what materials are needed. When Libbie and I land on this category, we generally choose another category to play instead. Additionally, there's some confusion about how the betting works in the one category that requires it. You're allowed to put down more than one Schrute Buck, but there doesn't seem to be any incentive to do so, since as far as I can tell you're only supposed to get whatever the other person laid down. Nothing in the rules seems to clarify this issue.

The board itself, and especially the currency, reflect the season three finale in which Dwight Schrute has reason to believe that he is now the manager of the Scranton branch of Dunder-Mifflin. As an incentive program, he institutes Schrute Bucks, which feature his face in the middle. In the game, answering questions correctly yields these bills, and collecting enough of them will ensure that when you land at Michael's desk, you'll win instead of being booted back to another area of the game. Because it takes a while to accumulate a winning number of Schrute Bucks, it usually makes more sense to take the long way around the board, but if you want to take the short cut, you'll have to deal with Dwight, whose desk serves as a roadblock for every player taking that route. Given its unique position in the game, I would think the Dwight icon would yield an especially challenging question, but these queries tend to be about as basic as the others.

Seasoned fans of The Office should enjoy the chance to test out their trivia knowledge, but it's not what I'd call an intensive game. Most of the questions aren't terribly tricky, and while the world-weary narration by H. R. man Toby Flenderson (Paul Lieberstein) is amusing and helpful as you're learning to play the game, it gets a bit old when he says the same things over and over. Same goes for the small rotation of clips that often are not directly related to the questions being asked. I'm sure Libbie and I will play this game again, but it's not the type of game that can be played for hours on end. It's fun, but it definitely could have been better.

The Office Gets Down to Business in Season Two

This past Christmas, my brother received the first four seasons of The Office on DVD. He didn't have to head back to college until mid-January, so we got a fair bit of viewing in during that time, and he managed to get us completely hooked. While the first season is a fun introduction to the characters, it's so short, at only six episodes, that it seems more like a mini-series that kicks things off than a full season. Season two really plunges into the characters, letting us scrutinize all the quirks and foibles of the employees of the Scranton branch of the Dunder-Mifflin paper company.

The fearless leader is Michael Scott, played to the zany hilt by Steve Carell. Michael is a boss who is desperate to be liked by all of his employees, though he often sabotages his efforts to ingratiate himself by cluelessly making inappropriate remarks. He excels at wasting time, and the logic behind his thought processes tends to be truly baffling. In this season, one of his primary preoccupations is Jan Levinson-Gould (Melora Hardin), a hard-nosed superior with whom he unexpectedly shares a tender moment. Convinced that there's more to their relationship than one tipsy encounter, he pursues her for the remainder of the season, even as he puts the moves on Carol (Nancy Walls), the real estate agent who sold him his house. Meanwhile, he manages to wreak havoc with his staff time and again, whether he's proving himself inept at keeping a secret, leading uncomfortable seminars or handing out office awards that nobody really wants.

Michael's second-in-command is Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson), an aggressively anti-social beet farmer whose off-the-wall remarks are among the strangest on the show. While Dwight is often maddeningly self-serving, he becomes more sympathetic this season as he embarks upon a covert relationship with uptight accountant Angela Martin (Angela Kinsey), a devout Christian and cat lover who relishes her role as head of the party planning committee, and reveals greater depths of geekiness, making allusions to the likes of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and LOST. In the fourth episode, The Fire, Dwight demonstrates the extent of his oddness when Jim initiates a "What three books would you bring with you to a desert island?" game. His answer? "Physician's Desk Reference - hollowed out. Inside: waterproof matches, iodine tablets, beet seeds, protein bars, NASA blanket and, in case I get bored, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. No, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." This was the moment when I declared my allegiance to Dwight for the rest of the series.

Perhaps the most normal people in the office are salesman Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and receptionist Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer). They make the drudgery of their jobs bearable by collaborating on elaborate pranks, of which Dwight is almost always the victim. They're young, attractive and totally into each other. There's just one problem: Pam is engaged to the boorish Roy Anderson (David Denman), a warehouse worker who isn't really a bad guy but who certainly doesn't seem like a good match for Pam. The gradual resolution of the romantic tensions between Jim and Pam reminds me of the long-deferred Niles-Daphne relationship on Frasier; in both cases, the heart of series lies largely in wanting these star-crossed lovers to finally have a shot at real happiness together.

With the main players already well established, season two delves more deeply into the less prominent but still crucial characters. The only other woman in Pam's age bracket is Kelly Kapoor (Mindy Kaling), a customer service representative of Indian descent who is scarily skilled at speaking at Micro Machine Man speeds. She has her eye on Ryan Howard (B. J. Novak), the fresh-out-of-college temp on whom Michael fawns, much to Ryan's discomfort. Kelly is ditzy, while Ryan has plenty of book smarts and a pretty high opinion of himself, though when it comes down to it his value to the company is rather limited, especially since he considers himself above many of the tasks Michael assigns him.

Sharing the accountants' corner with Angela are articulate, well-coiffed Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nunez), an underused character who has a moment in the spotlight late in the season, and pudgy, lethargic Kevin Malone (Brian Baumgartner), who reacts to the shenanigans of his office-mates with an elementary school mentality. Back in the annex with Kelly is sad-sack Toby Flenderson (Paul Lieberstein), the human relations guy who is constantly butting heads with Michael over his management style. Consequently, Toby is the one employee who Michael detests, which adds to the pervasive exhaustion reflected in the bags under Toby's eyes.

Middle-aged saleswoman Phyllis Lapin (Phyllis Smith) generally brings a kind, maternal presence to the office, though party planning encounters with Angela bring out some less admirable aspects of her personality. Her demeanor tends to be quiet but cheerful, while fiery-haired alcoholic Meredith Palmer (Kate Flannery) comes across as sour and oversexed. Creed Bratton (Creed Bratton), the oldest member of the staff, first makes a big impression in Halloween, when he talks Michael, who has been pressured into laying off an employee, into letting him stay. In charge of quality control, he rarely plays a significant role in the workings of the office, but this creepy, out-to-lunch renaissance man can often be counted on for a hilariously random aside.

Down in the warehouse with Roy is Daryll Philbin (Craig Robinson), a no-nonsense black man who is leery of Michael interfering with his team's productivity and enjoys yanking Michael's chain by feeding him phony ghetto phrases. Up in the office, the only black employee is Staney Hudson (Leslie David Baker), a grumpy bulldog of a guy whose rolled eyes and terse statements make it very clear that he doesn't take kindly to Michael's interruptions, which could cost him sales. When that interference comes in the form of mandatory meetings, Stanley expresses his disdain by ignoring the presentation and working crossword puzzles.

This season gives all of these characters opportunities to interact with one another in ways that are sometimes meaningful and always amusing. The mockumentary style of the series allows for frequent instances of characters directly addressing the camera; some of the funniest bits of dialogue and most revealing character details come out in these short soliloquys. Several episodes take characters into a different setting, whether it's the Chili's where Michael hands out the annual Dundies awards, the ice skating rink where he holds his birthday party or the warehouse he so gleefully infiltrates. The office itself takes on a different flavor at times, too, particularly when Jim institutes a competition consisting of all the games that people have made up to stave off boredom and when various employees bring their children and step-children to work with them.

No matter what the circumstances, this show is full of surprises, with every episode guaranteed to have loony lines that will catch you off guard. With 22 episodes, there's a lot more to chew on here than in the first season, not to mention that there are more - and funnier - deleted scenes for each episode than for any series I've seen on DVD, with the possible exception of Freaks and Geeks, the other series produced by Paul Feig. Other special features like PSAs presented by various characters and a series of short scenes dealing with an accounting mystery add to the set's value.

When I started watching The Office, my friend informed me that season two was her favorite, and I can understand why. In terms of establishing character, it's the cornerstone of the series, and there is still plenty of new territory to explore at this point. It's also pretty easy to pick up the series here without having watched the first season, as my dad did; in later seasons, there are some pretty substantial plot twists that might throw new viewers for a loop, but if you want to dive into The Office with a full set of episodes, season two won't leave you confused. Still, I recommend catching it from the beginning, especially if you're a Netflix member, as the first four seasons are not only rentable but also available for instant viewing. Just be warned: It's mighty addictive!