Tale of Two Offices

Not a big fan of the way the American Office never really deals with its "fake documentary format".

For one reason or another, I recently felt compelled to revisit The Office Christmas Special, the finale to the original BBC programme. I've been watching THE OFFICE (US) for so long now, rewatching THE OFFICE (UK) makes it feel like an alternate universe. It also reminded me how vastly superior the BBC version was.

I love how the BBC series finale dealt directly with the fallout of the aired documentary. Gervais & Merchant take the documentary format seriously. In some of the interview segments, you actually hear an offscreen person prompting the subject with questions. The aired documentary has had a direct effect on the lives of these people, as you would expect.

In the American series, the fake documentary format is kept but the documentary is some phantom, perpetually-filming project. Characters do their separate interviews commenting on the action, and they respond to the presence of the camera in various situations, but there is never any speculation on WHAT IS BEING FILMED or how it is going to be used. How it may change their lives. The characters just take for granted that they're being filmed by a phantom documentary crew for some phantom documentary that needs to shoot constantly and for an indefinite period of years. Many times, the cameras are conveniently positioned to capture random incidents that they shouldn't have anticipated happening. Other times, multiple shots are set up wherein you SHOULD be able to see one of the other cameramen, but you don't: the documentary crew does not exist! It's annoying and more annoying that the producers went on to create PARKS AND RECREATION in the same damn fake documentary format.

The BBC version was a much shorter series so it may have been easier to explain the documentary format. It was good that they kept "the aftermath of the aired documentary" to the Christmas Special finale because you want the show to be about regular people at an office and NOT about "reality show stars"... which is the only rationale for a documentary crew to be filming a group of people over so many years.

And this is another reason I think the BBC original is so vastly superior to the American version. Rewatching it, the BBC characters were more "real". The sense of quiet desperation inherent in a dead-end office job is more palpable. The romantic leads are NOT the most attractive people about. Tim is a bit schlubby. Dawn has a few extra pounds on her. It isn't love-at-first-sight between them. The attraction that develops is the sort that grows incrementally by seeing someone DAY AFTER DAY: a person that makes a bleak environment more bearable.

Check out the last ten heartbreaking minutes of THE OFFICE (BBC):


American Office? Jim and Pam (Bizzarro Tim and Bizzarro Dawn) are way too cute. The tone is a lot sunnier. You don't really get the sense of desperation that people have in a dead-end job. Though there is a lot of eye-rolling, people in the American Office seem to enjoy where they work...

Here's the thing: I *like* how the American Office grew into its own and eventually found its own heart and identity (after an initial spate of episodes with premises lifted directly from the BBC original), but I really dislike the show evolving into a cartoon.

Take "Dwight". For a stretch when he was going through some relationship issues with a coworker, his character seemed to be written as a real human being. Contrast that with the opening to the last episode, featuring Dwight bounding about the office as a costumed character named "Recyclops" -- a fun gag relating to the corporate mandate to promote "green living" on all the NBC shows, but he's a complete cartoon at this point. How does this character work at a regular office? In scenes like this, he is completely insane.

During one of the commercial breaks, there was a preview of THE OFFICE music video, which just seemed to add a few more sharks for the series to jump over. (I watched the atrocity and it represents everything that's wrong with the show.) The appeal of THE OFFICE is that it resembles a real office environment. The American version is failing that vision miserably as it falls in love with its own quirk.

I *like* the show. I just think it's a whole lot better when the characters are written as human beings.

The BBC original had the advantage of having a far shorter run and thus less danger of running the premise dry. American tv shows, they just run into the ground.

I think this Tim monologue from the BBC version is so much more profound than anything from the American version:

"The people you work with... are people you were just thrown together with. You don't know them, it wasn't your choice and yet you spend more time with them than you do with your friends and family. But probably the only thing you've got in common is that you walk on the same bit of carpet for 8 hours a day. And so obviously, when someone walks in who you have a connection with... yeah, and Dawn was a ray of sunshine in my life and it meant a lot... but... if I'm really being honest, I never really thought it'd have a happy ending. I don't know what a happy ending is. Life isn't about endings, is it? It's a series of moments... and, um... it's like, if you took, if you turned the camera off, it's not an ending, is it? I'm still here! My life's not over! Come back, come back here in 10 years... see how I'm doing then. Cause I could be married with kids. You don't know. Life just goes on."