Dizney Court

Midterm
Binge & Comedy: Why is the Office Still Relevant?

Why is a television show that finished airing in 2013 still not only relevant, but
incredibly popular today in 2019? I wanted to look into why the American TV show The
Office still has a huge fanbase to this day. The Office aired on NBC from March 24th
2005 till May 16th 2013 and has 9 seasons. The show is set at a paper company in
Scranton, Pennsylvania, and has a similar documentary style to that of the Ricky
Gervais-led British original by the same name. It features the staff of Dunder-Mifflin, and
largely includes characters based on successful characters from the British show.
There's Jim, the likable employee who's a bit of an everyman. Jim has a thing for
receptionist-turned-sales rep Pam. There's also Dwight, the successful co-worker who
lacks social skills and common sense. And there's Ryan, who has held many jobs at the
company. What answers this question is the basis that the show has strong writing and
is known for being a hilarious comedy show, and the availability of content through
streaming services.

What made me question the popularity actually came from a friend of mine
saying “why are young people still making Office memes?”, as a response to me
sending him short meme videos I find on Tik Tok. I really haven't thought of it because
personally the show is already a part of my daily life. I started my first watch through in
2014 after one of my college professors showed a clip from The Office and I thought it
was hilarious. After that, I was hooked and finished the entire show on Netflix only a
couple months later. For me and many others, the humility, hilarity, and accessibility of
the show keeps us coming back again and again. It’s such a phenomenon, that it’s well
known among most fans that the question of whether or not you’ve seen the show isn’t
discussed, but rather, how many times you’ve binged the entirety of it. I personally
stopped counting after my 11th or so watch through.

So why is The Office so funny? This is a mostly subjective question, but does
have support from writers of the show, as well as some analysis of comedy in TV. In his
Youtube Video “Efficiency in Comedy: The Office vs Friends”, YouTuber Drew Gooden
evaluated and determined that the highest rated episode from The Office- “Stress Relief
Part I” (Season 5 episode 14)- has 166 jokes during the 22 minutes of content. That is
approximately 1 joke every 8 seconds. An average viewer may not laugh at every joke,
but I believe this is enough comedy for anyone looking for a funny show. In an interview,
one of the writers for the show, Greg Danials, talks on why these characters are so
compelling. He stated, “A lot of humor comes from characters who don't know
themselves or have weird problems and a lot of heart comes from them learning about
themselves or solving some of their problems.” Another thing Greg mentions about
writing is how important joke telling is, and says “I don't like jokes that are jokey jokes,
that could have been in a gum wrapper - I think what it is is natural dialog and back and
forth and the joke is in what a character says to whatever prompt he’s given.” The Office
has actor writers; which is when one of the actors in the show also writes for it; like BJ
Novak and Mindy Kaling. BJ talks about his experiences writing for the show, and how
on other shows he’s seen the writers and actors are kept seperate, which can lead to
writers not having faith in actors to deliver the comedy, so they will write punchlines in.
But for The Office, the writers have a lot of faith in the actors because they work with
them. BJ mentions that one of the things that happens because of this is when the
writers write something for a character, they can't wait to see what that actor will do with
it. It’s clear that, to the writers, comedy was very important, and that they wanted to
have good writing for their show.

Not only do most fans of the office love it for its writing, but the stories and
characters are very compelling. There are hundreds of videos and commentary about
characters, easter egg,s and theories about The Office, so clearly many people are
compelled by all of these elements from the show. Writers Michel Schur and Greg
Danials talk a lot about what went on in writers meetings behind the scenes, and some
of the concepts that were very important while writing the show. They said that the main
theme and feel of the show is “A concrete industrial park, just dull and dreary, and in the
middle is a single flower. We want to focus on that flower.” A big story in the first few
seasons deals with the 2 main love interests, Jim and Pam, in sort of a “will they, won't
they” situation because Pam has a fiance at that point. The writers compare this to a
carefully weaved spiderweb with bits of dew, and when you look at it from different
angles sometimes it caught the light and looks beautiful, but other times it might look
different. Overall they wanted to write a show ecnologing that it's all of us vs the world,
and even though the world is a horrible and scary place, they wanted to have a show
that says here is a path through the pain, here is something we can do to make it better.

Now I feel we have ample proof that The Office is a great show, but it wouldn’t
have had the opportunity to thrive without accessibility to this new wider audience. I
believe it owes a lot of its success to Netflix, and binge culture. Netflix currently has over
151 million subscribers. And what is the most watched show on Nextlix, ever? That's
right, it’s The Office. This means that hundreds of millions of people have access to The
Office, and often more than once through. This is also a huge reason why it now has so
many new and younger fans, more than just the original fanbase who watched it while it
aired on TV. However, there’s another side to that accessibility, that’s very critical to the
way we consume not only streaming services, but specifically The Office. On June 25th
2019 Netflix tweeted, “We're sad that NBC has decided to take The Office back for its
own streaming platform — but members can binge watch the show to their hearts'
content ad-free on Netflix until January 2021.”. Once this was announced, the internet
almost exploded, with fans of the show freaking out over this statement. This speaks
volumes as to how important the show remains to its many fans, and I'm sure most of
us will scramble to make sure we have a way to continue to binge this show in the
future.

So it's no question as to why The Office is still not only relevant but incredibly
popular still today. There is a lot of craft that goes into the writing, making audiences not
only laugh hysterically, but be moved by the stories and the characters. We can also
thank our streaming friend Netflix for making the show accessible to so many people,
exposing them to become new fans. Even though The Office is moving to a new
streaming service, I have no doubt this fandom will continue to grow.

Citations
https://www.statista.com/statistics/250934/quarterly-number-of-netflix-streaming-
subscribers-worldwide/

https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1143643776637792257?lang=en

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfdqSpvgmgY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTRC_FMzLoo&t=807s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwu7hfFmx1I