Episode 10 - Christmas Wishes
9 December 2011
Synopsis: Andy dresses up as Santa and grants holiday wishes for the rest of the office. He invites his girlfriend Jessica to the Christmas party and Erin is clearly upset about it. She gets drunk and reveals too much of her true feelings to Andy. Robert, also recently heartbroken, tries to comfort her. Darryl invites Val to the party and she misunderstands quite how fancy the occasion will be. Andy tells Jim and Dwight that their pranks are bothering Cathy. He threatens to hand their bonus over to the other if they are caught pranking again.
The Good: If I were a new viewer who hadn't sat through sixty eight episodes of the Erin-Andy story then maybe I would have just enjoyed seeing her jealousy seep out.
The Bad: Can you believe it's been sixty eight episodes since Andy first expressed an interest in Erin? It's an astonishing length of time. And this isn't Sam and Diane or Ross and Rachel or Jim and Pam. There is no consistent arc to their relationship. He was interested for a while, then they began to date. They foolishly broke up and she ended up with Gabe. She clearly didn't like Gabe and flirted with Andy during it. He clearly wanted her and yet when she was single again he said he wasn't interested. There was no explanation given. This season she pushed again for a relationship and he shut her down saying he had a girlfriend. I said then (805) that it would be exasperating if this latest chapter was just another attempt to string the will they or won't they even longer.
Sadly it would seem that it was. I'm not angry I'm just tired of it. We actually saw Erin and Andy together (617-22) and they seemed happy. There is no part of me that feels what I assume the producers want me to feel. I have no longing to see them together. I have a longing for the writers to stop endlessly jerking them around and just end this silliness.
On a very basic level there was nothing wrong with Darryl's courtship of Val. But it was a dull story which didn't help us get to know either of them any better. She also looked a bit foolish for thinking that a party in the office would require such a nice outfit.
Similarly one week after meeting his wife we hear that Robert is getting divorced. I couldn't help but see this as a bit like the way both Jan and Ryan would appear one episode with different personalities. It's not quite that bad but Robert doesn't really have a personality yet. He is just opinionated, controlling and a bit eccentric. His divorce didn't serve to help us find out more about him.
I didn't enjoy the Jim-Dwight story. Their reactions to the threat of losing their bonus (and Andy's reputation) made it clear that it was an empty threat. Then they began, far too quickly, to actually prank one another in ways that weren't nearly clever enough. Dwight sends Pam two hundred dollar flowers using Jim's credit card. The big joke is meant to be that by doing something nice for Pam, Dwight couldn't possibly be held accountable for a prank. But that's still a prank. Jim could easily have reported that. If Pam were in the office then it would have been awkward but she isn't.
Then Dwight has a porcupine in his desk and the whole episode stops to discuss it. Surely the real comedy in this situation would come from watching the two men from a distance trying to outsmart each other. Instead it was perfectly obvious that the calm porcupine had been brought in by Dwight. To make matters worse Toby, who normally can barely mumble in front of a group, suddenly starts chattering about his novels. Are we supposed to laugh at the idea that he is so desperate to be cool that he made his fantasy detective black? Toby is such an ancillary character that you can't expect him to carry a detailed joke without any build up. Jim was also made to look like a jerk by defacing his own daughter's picture just to frame Dwight.
So much about the show has lost any sense of narrative or punch line. Robert asks Oscar to take over the bar at one point. Oscar announces loudly that he hasn't tended bar in years and then of course acts fastidious and knowledgeable for a few seconds. But that was it. We know Oscar is like that. Why bother with that scene unless there was going to be a further punch line? Why not use those seconds to actually build on a story elsewhere?
Comic Highlight: The closest thing to a joke was Robert admitting that it had been ten days since he had sexual intercourse. "You've come to the right place!" Andy cheerfully greets him.
That's what I said: Sixty eight episodes of this. Seriously.
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