People ask me what shows I watch on TV once and a while, and the answer is pretty simple. There are really only two shows. During baseball season, I watch the Win Twins Win (Katie’s name for the Minnesota Twins). Due to the sudden interest in this household in all things Dora and Doodlebops, we invested in a computer and projector a couple years ago, primarily so I could do picture-in-picture and still watch Twins games while Dora is trying to save the mermaids or Deedee and Rooney are trying to find Moe. It’s been a great investment for the purposes of watching the Twins.
It’s also let me record my favorite show, The Office. Since we can’t always break away from the girls at 8pm on Thursday nights, we needed to make a priority out of taping the Office. I was excited for the show to begin 4 years ago and have been watching ever since it started. Becky started off a little cool on the show, but now has come to be as crazy about it as I am. Having worked in office settings for 12 years now, I can really see a lot of what’s happening on that show in real life. No one’s quite as crazy as Dwight or inappropriate as Michael, but they’re not so far from reality that it’s unimaginable.
I really like shows with ensemble casts because any show that relies too much on a couple of characters seems to get old after a while. They are not afraid to show other offices like when Jim went to Stamford or the corporate headquarters. There generally is a tension between the boss and HR, because no one likes all the rules HR has to enforce. At our company, we can’t have an event with anyone who is a vendor or non-employee because of a past lawsuit. So those people get deprived of opportunities even though a lot of times they do the same thing we do.
I think Becky enjoys the constant story lines and the relationship between Jim and Pam. I’ve spent the past few days consuming all the web content out on NBC.com (there’s a lot) and I think John Krasinki (Jim) says it pretty well when they try to make the relationship seem real. The show, the Dinner Party, last year was one of the best when they had Michael and Jan invite Pam, Jim, Angela and Andy over for dinner. I know it’s semi-juvenile, but I really enjoy the pranks Jim plays on Dwight at the office. The prank where he puts a nickel in his phone for 5-6 days straight so he gets used to the weight and then removes them all one day so Dwight can smack the handset into his head is pretty ingenious.
Season 4 has been my favorite so far – pretty much every episode was great. In the final episode when they introduce the new HR lady and Dwight convinces her that Kevin is "special" is a great theme that I hope they continue with next season. The "Fun Run" episode at the beginning of the year was classic – having Michael create a charity that no one would support, having him donate pretty much all the money and spend it on a big check – are all great ideas that you could see him doing.
There’s a lot of buzz around my work about The Office – from Office calendars to watercooler talk after pretty much every show. One of my newer co-workers hadn’t seen it yet, so I gave him the first two season DVDs as a homework assignment this weekend, so he can be caught up.
Hopefully the hits keep on coming next year. If I can’t watch them all, I will definitely be recording them.
Eric's space 