Episode 4 - Garden Party
23 February 2012
Synopsis: Andy throws a garden party to impress his parents and Robert California. Dwight hosts it at his farm and hopes to use this opportunity to expand into the upscale party market. Jim publishes a fake book about garden parties to trick him into silliness.
The Good: There's certainly a pattern emerging with the new direction of The Office. Andy wins sympathy from his co-workers and the audience by being nice. It's simple and pleasant but this wasn't the best example of it. Bringing in Andy's parents and his difficult relationship with them was consistent with his character though.
The Bad: There just wasn't much effort put into developing that relationship beyond the "favoured son" aspect of it. Andy's parents treat him poorly and that's about it. The rest of the office see that and sympathise with Andy. It was as simple as that. The actual execution of the toast scene and the father-son duet was sad but not very interesting. Although I wasn't always fond of it, Michael's inappropriate behaviour was usually entertaining and unpredictable. As the writers are just plugging Andy into the same role they need to work on making his interactions more interesting than this.
Most of the inter-office dynamics were just flat or dull as well. Pam and Angela's competing pregnancies just feel like the same joke over and over again. If there were a focus on the horrible situation Angela might be heading for (with the Senator's sexuality) then her story would have more of an edge. Gabe remains an awful character and seeing him fail at sucking up was miserable viewing. Robert California was fine but didn't add much to proceedings. Mose messing with the cars didn't do much for me. He is meant to be crazy and so he would have to do something pretty weird to get my attention. Kevin overeating, Ryan being a bad boyfriend, Erin being hopeless. Meh.
The Jim and Dwight stuff was again beyond ridiculous. When did Jim have time to write that book? Seriously? He got a whole book manufactured to trick Dwight into doing a bunch of silly things at a garden party? How did he know Dwight would be hosting one anytime soon? How did he know he would be invited? Are we supposed to believe he came up with this in the time between Andy telling everyone about his and the day itself? The worst part is that he didn't exactly humiliate Dwight did he? Was anything that Dwight did actually that dissimilar to stuff Dwight might have done anyway? The silly group choreography stuff was so well organised that some guests probably thought it was decent entertainment. The whole thing felt like a big waste of time.
Comic Highlight: The opening teaser sequence was pretty cheap humour. But it was humour.
That's what I said: As I've said in all my reviews this season. The show isn't funny anymore. We are in Simpsons and Futurama territory: when everyone is crazy where is the normal person to see their actions as funny? If the serious story fails you are left with twenty minutes of nonsense.
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