Sorry this is late. I fell way behind on the reviews I was planning to write after Thursday, so this is going to be a short one. Continue Reading

The Office
Aired 4/28/2011

I open with a confession. I never actually watched the UK The Office. I think I saw one episode, and simply never got around to watching the rest (by then I was already watching the US version). But based on what I know about the original series and how it ended, David Brent (the role that jumpstarted the career of one Ricky Gervais) did not get the kind of sendoff Michael Scott received last night. While the show has lost much of the magic that once made it the best sitcom on television, this season has managed to reinvigorate itself where Michael is concerned, especially in the last several episodes. “Goodbye, Michael,” Steve Carell’s final episode as a series regular, was a pretty subdued affair in terms of laughs, but hit all the right emotional beats as Michael said his goodbyes to the members of his surrogate family at Dunder Mifflin. Continue Reading

The Office
Season 7, Episode 11+12

There was a lot happening on The Office this week. It was a double-sized episode, a Christmas episode, and it marked the return of Holly. The expanded runtime has never really worked for me in the past, as a lot of the B, C, D, etc. stories that tend to make up these episodes rarely add up to anything more than filler. In the case of “Classy Christmas,” however, the writers were more successful than not, making for what is probably the best episode in a long time. Hopefully this marks the beginning of a return to form for the show, which has been really struggling in its current season. Continue Reading