Look, i don’t want to be one of those girls that just talk about TV shows and movies and singers all day, but i really love The Office.  I look forward to thursdays when it comes on.  and usually I watch it more than once that day.  it’s such a good show.

I agree that originally the show suffered from the presence of the UK version, particularly since the UK version was so heavily praised.  the first season of the US Office was pretty much a port of the series, and even included some of the same jokes and stuff, which, i’ll admit, was very lame.

But in season 2 the office really started to expand on its character and plot development beyond the UK show.  Obviously you had the tension between jim and pam, but you also has relationships between dwight and angela, which was new, the emergence of kelly, and some other notables like ryan, kevin, etc.  Individually these would be token developments, but together they really help the show to be more complete I think.

So, the bombshell in season 3 was that first, jim kissed pam at the end of season 2, leading to pam breaking off her engagement to roy.  then, jim moved to another branch of dunder mifflin in Conn, so he and pam were no longer together.  But, in the last episode and this episode, you learn that jim’s new branch closed and he is coming back to scranton, which also means him and pam will see each other again.  Now, as i’m writing this, i realize it seems pretty gay, but it was a really fun turn of events.

But, Jim has already started kanoodling with his coworker Karen, from the Conn branch.  He mentions that he is seeing her, but i think their relationship has barely developed.  So, what you have is the classic guy likes girl, but girl doesn’t like guy, then girl likes guy, but guy doesn’t like girl. I mean, this has been used over and over again in TV, but it really works here I think, although it is frustrating and feels unnecessarily contrived.  really, pam could have taken care of this a long time ago but whatever.

The thing too, is that karen is a really likable character.  she’s very attractive, and dresses in a more fashionable and modern way than pam, who always wears these country-looking knit sweaters and stuff.  Plus, karen is generally very humble and friendly, although she does have a bit of sarcasm that makes her character funny.  So the audience is really left wondering if they want jim and karen, or jim and pam.  i for one, am not sure.  but you are kind of used to the jim and pam paradigm from the beginning.  lIke ross and rachel.

The funny thing is that this whole relationship stuff is usually a subplot to what michael is doing, which in last night’s episode was an initiation thing for the new people.  as always, it was ill conceived and ended up being akward.  that I see as a potential problem for the show going forward, because once you expect michael to do the innappropriate and akward thing, it is less funny and more formulaic.  but whatever, last nite it worked pretty well.

Another thing about last night was that they introduced like 5 new characters.  This is really a new trend i’m seeing in TV in general, I think.  Just so many characters and so many subplots, like Heroes and lost.  I guess in some ways, it provides more material for writers, but also it dilutes the overall focus of the show, i think.  I mean, you have classics like friends, seinfeld, roseanne, whatever, that focused on a core group of characters…i dunno, we’ll see how this works.

So, these new characters are is girl, who was using a brest pump, and creed took a picture of that and made it his screen saver, a black guy, who turned to stanley did the fist to the chest black sign thing, to which stanley rolled his eyes (is this really a black pride sign?  i had no idea.  we need a jap pride sign, people.  think about this and submit your ideas), karen, a fat guy who got fired, and andy.  oh yeah, andy is an interesting new character too because he’s competing with dwight for michael’s attention, and he has a very michael-like personality.  that’s going to be a good subplot going forward.

anyway, blah blah blah, that was a long post, but really, watch this show.  this week was a special 45 min episode.  here it is:

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