Episode 24 - The Chump
14 May 2010
Review
Synopsis: Michael continues to see Donna despite the condemnation from the rest of the office. Andy takes him to meet the cuckolded husband and eventually he breaks up with her. Angela tries to hold Dwight to their parenting contract and Jim and Pam are sleep deprived.
The Good: Michael doing the right thing is hard to disagree with. The most pleasing part of the story was Andy standing up for the husband because he had been in a similar situation himself. Just like Michael, when Andy is being sweet he is easier to enjoy.
Dwight and Angela's story is pretty far removed from relatable emotions at this stage. But her desire to get pregnant by any means necessary seems to fit her stage of life and disposition. His attempts to make himself less fertile had some broad appeal.
Michael throwing orange slices at Oscar was predictable but sometimes a nice joke is.
The Bad: The Office has lost control of its characters this season. Or more specifically they have lost the ability to make the characters emotions relatable to the audience.
Dwight is the biggest victim of this and as the show leans on him for much of its humour the show itself is suffering. Dwight has always been a pedant, someone determined to show off his own intelligence and utter conviction in unconventional things. But he was always a man with emotions too. He looked up to Michael and was in love with Angela. Those emotions were relatable and dictated his behaviour. We have reached a point now where his arrogance has somewhat severed ties with Michael and his romantic interests have become confused. He got the idea to have a baby on a whim and then appeared to realise that having one with someone he no longer loved was a bad idea. But instead of focussing on that relatable emotion the show has focussed on his belligerent, arrogant and foolish side. So in his situation with Angela are we supposed to feel sorry for him? He actually looks at the camera with a smirk to imply that on some level he does think Angela is like a farm animal. I don't know what to make of that. Is he being silly? Is he being serious? It's a mess and the show has tried to use Dwight in too many roles this season to the point where he is almost weird for the sake of beign weird and not following a consistent pattern of behaviour.
The scene where Ryan propositions Erin fell into this category too. Who is Ryan anymore? What is he at the office to achieve? Is he still unpaid as an intern? The joke seemed to be that he is a cold bastard who can hit on Erin despite being with Kelly - then to be too cowardly to accept her rejection and then claim he isn't cold enough to pull it off. It felt like we were supposed to have a fixed idea of who Ryan is and laugh at his pathetic attempt to be an alpha male. But from what I have seen Ryan is somewhat pathetic already and though he may be delusional about his own worth, he has always struck me as being aware and resentful of his lowly status. Again it feels like a mess.
Michael's story was a bit more straightforward. He tried to ignore the consequences of his actions but eventually gave in and admitted he was doing the wrong thing. The trouble with the story is that we didn't really see Michael feel guilty. It was written as if he just gave into peer pressure rather than genuinely feeling the immoral aspect of it. The show has done a good job in the past of demonstrating how Michael's childlike emotions steer him down the right path but that was missing here. The scenes with Andy at the baseball game just felt like a waste of time in the end and Michael's time as a take-what-I-want kind of guy was all too brief to mean anything.
The opening joke where Michael debated shooting Toby was another sign of the shows confused writing. The whole office (Stanley aside) seemed far too content wasting time and ignoring Toby's real concerns. Much of the shows humour demands that at least some of the coalition of reason to react with irritation to Michael and Dwight's antics. The show is becoming sloppy and if it is going to go on and on it needs to tighten up.
Comic Highlight: The final scene neatly kept the Sabre printer situation in viewer's minds as the important ongoing story. I liked the basic idea that Michael is so susceptible and self involved that he reacted to the cameras as if it was normal for the outside world to care about his personal life.
That's what I said: In general this just wasn't very funny. There was a lot of talking and arguing and not a lot to enjoy. The cause of that situation is a confused writing team who have had a thoroughly mediocre season.
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