Episode 15 - Sabre
9 February 2010
Review
Synopsis: The Scranton branch have been bought by Sabre. Gabe arrives to install Sabre policies at the branch and naturally Michael resents it. Sabre CEO Jo Bennett tells Michael to accept it and he races off to get advice from David Wallace. Wallace has become lethargic since losing his job. His new business proposals are so bad that it drives Michael back to Scranton determined not to lose his job.
The Good: Emotionally this may turn out to be a sound story. With yet another change in authority, it may be that the show needed to establish quickly that Michael was going to buckle under and not rebel. If seeing David Wallace turned into a shadow of his former self has convinced Michael to shut up and hang onto his job then this episode may have been important.
The Bad: But it was not a good episode to watch. Not that it was awful but at each stage it rubbed me the wrong way.
As Michael did one of his office interviews, clearly not enjoying the new changes, I felt like I had seen it all before. Whether it be sharing power with Jim, Charles Minor, merging with Stamford or dealing with Ryan or Jan. It just felt like the same story being rinsed once more. As I say, perhaps it was a necessary evil and I can’t fault it for consistency.
What didn’t help was the flimsiness of the details. Unlike all previous reorganisations, this is no longer Dunder Mifflin. A different company is now in charge. I don’t think the writers took adequate time to address this massive change in the life of the show. For example, they don’t sell paper. Apparently Sabre sells mainly printers. Gabe says “don’t think of yourselves as paper salesmen anymore, but as printer salesmen who also sell paper.” That’s about as pathetic a simulation of reality as you are likely to see. A real merger would have massive reorganisation and retraining of a branch like this. You can’t blithely inform people that they now sell a different product.
Angela and Meredith raise another good question, vacation. Sabre’s policies on everything from vacation to water coolers would be different from Dunder Mifflin. Michael himself doesn’t have a real job anymore. He is head of a branch within a company which doesn’t exist. All these issues would need to be sorted out and if Gabe had made some cover all statement about changes taking time to work through, that could have made this seem more credible.
As for David Wallace, I wasn’t happy with his portrayal. Although he clearly wasn’t as good a manager as he should have been, he was the voice of reason within the show. He was always presented in a competent and professional manner and to see him so apathetic and useless wasn’t an enjoyable sight. It’s not that it is an implausible development. But it just felt like Ryan and Jan whose characters both changed quite suddenly to suit the needs of the plot. Although this was much more believable it still had that ring to it. We had come to expect more from Wallace as a character than to start behaving like Michael and promoting nonsensical business ideas.
Jim and Pam meanwhile plumbed the depths of bad sit com ideas as they headed to find a good local day care. Jim walks in on a guy on the toilet and everything gets awkward. Not only does Jerry overreact to the situation but Jim begins insulting him. Nobody comes out of this situation looking good. And it was one of those occasions when the presence of the camera became a problem. Jerry glanced at it when Jim brought up their awkward introduction which raises the issue of why he would allow the camera in to film such a private interview. It’s not as if this had anything to do with Dunder Mifflin business. Just a bad story altogether.
Finally poor Andy and Erin get dragged into this quagmire of an episode. There fun flirtation has naturally led to them both realising the other was interested and it was fun to see them sing together, demonstrating their growing bond. But by the end of the episode the joke was that they were both waiting for the other to make the first move. So actually the sexual tension was gone, we know they like each other, now they are just being annoying. A minor quibble but it did not help elevate this episode.
Comic Highlight: The opening scene was a fun idea, with Michael tearing open a box which was meant for Gabe. Everyone pitches in to patch it back up only for Michael to have left his cell phone inside. Perhaps the funniest moment was loyal assistant Erin throwing Michael some scissors, twice, much to Pam’s understandable shock.
That’s what I said: It’s been a poor season for The Office so far. This is the fourth episode in a row (including a clip show though) to be well below the high standards the show set last season. Again the plot is focussed solely on Michael which has been a major flaw this season. But more than that no one seems to be reacting to the huge change which the merger should have brought and as a result this episode felt deeply unconvincing.
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