Episode 5 - Spooked
28 October 2011
Synopsis: Andy frets over whether his Halloween party will be cool enough for Robert California. California is more interested in discovering the fears of his employees. Erin is upset to think that Andy isn't happy with her efforts in organising the Halloween party and struggles to make it scarier or sexier. Jim is unhappy to see that Pam still believes in ghosts.
The Good: I liked Dwight's costume. The idea of him bonding with a child made sense on this occasion. The Jim and Pam ghost plot was fine if basic.
The Bad: I don't really understand what the writers are trying to achieve right now. Not with Andy or Robert California or with Erin.
Let's start with California who still hasn't captured the glimpse of genius that the writers gave him in last season's finale. Back then he was trying to mesmerise the search committee and reduce them to compliance with his will. It made sense because he wanted the job. So far this season he has been lacking in a similar motive. The idea of him using his skills to improve Dunder Mifflin makes sense and it sort of worked in the first two episodes this season. Here however the writers were far too ambitious trying to cram the fears of everyone in the office into one ghost story. It felt to me like most of the employees would either be confused as to why their CEO was telling such a long convoluted story or the opposite and see his cheap attempts to include their issues in the narrative. I think the writers need to go the opposite way with his character and show him working with individuals rather than trying to cure everyone at once.
The idea of Andy fretting over whether his party was cool enough to impress Robert felt very much like a Michael Scott story. I can more easily imagine Michael caring about whether his party was cool or not. In Andy's case you can understand him wanting to make a good impression but surely a party isn't going to matter too much to Robert? That story got confused with the Andy-Erin tension and the Andy part of it drifted away.
Instead the focus was firmly on Erin who was deeply confused throughout. I found it difficult to care about Erin's plight which is, I assume, what I was meant to be feeling. The Andy-Erin story has been messed around far too much for it to be clear how either of them feel at this point. Watching Erin feel confused, upset and then distraught over the party and what Andy thought of her was all a bit unpleasant. The conclusion to the story sees Andy say he is now in a relationship and therefore they can both move on. It feels odd to introduce a relationship for our new main character so abruptly but maybe it will go somewhere good. I still feel strange watching them hug and move on though because the show spent so long making it obvious that they were meant to be together. If this was just an attempt to string their romantic story out even longer then it was pretty exasperating.
Elsewhere I just found myself a bit bored by what was going on. Oscar was pompous, Phyllis was slutty, Kevin was stupid, Meredith was horny, Gabe was creepy, Toby was pathetic. I know that established character traits are important but something about the jokes here just felt so obvious and tired. It's not just that those characters have been roughly the same for eight years, it's also that the jokes about them have become very static in the last few seasons.
Comic Highlight: Dwight's costume really did stand out and as he walked in I took notice.
That's what I said: As I hinted at in my earlier reviews, when the main story fails there isn't a lot to fall back on. The new Andy-Robert formula doesn't currently look like it's going to be able to revitalise the show.
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