Missed "The Office" - You're Fired! (2005-2013)

If you haven't seen The Office yet, then you missed a lot, a lot and should be fired for absenteeism - it's an absolutely wonderful show.

It would seem like a simple sitcom from a series of twenty minutes, where people are engaged in meaningless work and endure the stupid antics of their boss, who constantly makes fun of - and himself gets into trouble - but how it was invented, written, played!

Although the tyrant director who mocks his subordinates is very sad (and the first season of the show, which adapts the British miniseries of the same name in the American way, can really leave a heavy impression), everything changes when we get to know the characters better and understand that Michael Scott, played by Steve Carrell, is actually a strange, lonely and very kind-hearted person who sincerely wants his subordinates to be happy (after all, he has no other family).

“I’m a boss, a magician, and a bit of an actor,” - with a silly smile, Michael says to the camera and continues: “I want to be their best friend - well, except that I’m their boss and I can fire them at any time!"

True, though you can't say it's always goes well…
"That's what she said!"

The series was filmed in a pseudo-documentary manner: we see the characters in their natural environment, the cameramen follow everyone with cameras on their heels, right in front of our eyes filming a film about the life of an ordinary, provincial paper company of the middle hand. This (as well as the impromptu dialogues) creates an interesting effect of authenticity: we believe the characters, their actions, phrases and feelings look real, not staged, and thanks to the frequent ironic "have-you-seen-this?" In the eyes of many heroes, the fourth wall between action and the audience disappears.

The "Office" team plays a group of very different people who have to spend time together.

At the head of the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch is the aforementioned Michael Scott, a hot-tempered, unsightly and infantile man-orchestra, not very friendly with logic and common sense. This not matured child shakes up a stagnant swamp so often that he is used to hearing in his address: "Please, can I work?" - and has long dismissed it: what a job, you need to have fun and live, here and now!

And the two second male protagonists understand him: a simple guy and a joke lover Jim Halpert, who has long been staring at the sweet and young secretary Pam Beasley, already crammed with jokes from his bosses, and his worst enemy (as he believes), a village nerd ninja, super-salesman, sneaky careerist and charming bastard with a solid, albeit somewhat perverse, moral compass and the habits of a Nazi farmer, the one and only Dwight Schrute. This constantly frowning bureaucrat with a strange hairstyle dreams of removing his boss day and night in order to arrange his own dictatorship in the Office in the style of Mussolini - but he is afraid of Michael and constantly fawns at him, stuffing himself into best friends. Needless to say, Michael is reluctant to accept such advances?

Dwight is unsociable, arrogant, in his own opinion extremely cunning and deadly - but at the same time extremely gullible, which his neighbor on the sales table Jim constantly uses. Jim and Pam often play tricks on Dwight, who sees spy plots everywhere.
And not only them (here I will allow myself to quote the whole scene):

Jim (with glasses and a stupid hairstyle, copying Dwight): "Question, what kind of bear is best?"
Dwight: "That's a ridiculous question."
Jim: "False. Black bear."
Dwight: "Well, that's debatable. There are basically two schools of thought"
Jim: "Fact, bears eat beets. Bears, beets, "Battlestar Galactica"
Duat: "Bears do not..." (finally notices Jim's appearance) "What is going on? What are you doing?"
Jim (later on camera): “Last week, I was in a drugstore, and I saw these glasses. Four dollars. And it only cost me $7 to recreate the rest of the ensemble, and that is a grand total of (counts on a wristwatch-calculator) eleven dollars. "
Dwight: "You know what? Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. So I thank you." (Jim takes out the same figurine on Dwight's desk and sets it in front of him; Dwight gets nervous) "Identity theft is not a joke, Jim! Millions of families suffer every year! "
Jim (stands up): "Michael!"
Dwight: "Oh, that's funny. Michael!"

...Also the neighbors of the best friends-enemies in the office are remarcable as well. This is the crazy and thieving grandpa Creed Barton, who himself does not understand what he is doing; the nerdy accountant Kevin Malone, who can't count (!); pious and evil Angela with a completely non-angelic character; clever Oscar, hiding one shameful secret for him; boring personnel officer Toby, who …

- Hello Michael, I'm back from Costa Rica...
- NO, god! No, god, please, no! No! No! NO-O-O-O-O-O!

...in general, Michael hates him with all his heart - and this is very funny, also because it cannot be explained by anything at all. "Toby is nasty and he spoils everything, what else is there to explain!"

As in any office, there are extras here - Phyllis Vance, a balanced aunt with a craving for knitting and easy reproaches, and Stanley Hudson with crosswords, who just wants to be allowed to sleep or at least not interfere with working for these pennies, and shameless alcoholic Meredith, a fifty-year-old lover of hanging out and getting naked once again, as well as Kelly, an energetic Indian fool with an inexplicable craving for a new trainee Ryan, who has a lot of ambitions and a crowd of cockroaches in his head. And that we will leave behind the scenes of those who will join the team later, from the hyper-artistic loser Andy and the strange girl Erin to the monstrously beautiful headmistress Jen or the eminently murky hedonist philosopher Robert California (yes, that's a last name). which any abstract conversation thoughtfully change to sex …

This is a strange society of different people, from year to year engaged in boring work for the sake of a stable income and the safety of loved ones.

Selling paper during the economic crisis, when companies are closing one after another and it is not known whether you will be laid off or not - what could be more depressing? But they are important to each other and over the years have become a real family, "Dunder Mifflin" is people, not paper. And Michael Scott, the best boss in the world, understands this and values ​​each of his subordinates (except Toby - "Fuck you, Toby, go out, Satan!"). He is naive and not arranged, a romantic and impulsive person who falls in love with every woman who smiles at him is a director of a branch of the company who himself does not understand how he does anything at all ("One day I will write a book about my approach to work and call it" How I’m doing it ”), - but this global goal is still surprisingly good. Scranton will be the best branch of the head office and Michael will prove that for success and happiness (even if not in life in general, but within the framework of this optimistic story) you need some special brains or luck, a big enough heart, all-consuming humanity and a desire to become better, even at the cost of wild clownery, from which everyone, including Michael himself, becomes ashamed, that it is disgraced again and again:

- Well, what are you homophobes! He's your colleague!
- Michael, it's okay that you, everything is okay …
- Let me prove to you, I will show you by my example how not to be a homophobe! Come here, I'll kiss you!
- Michael, please, this is not necessary at all …
- Come here, I said! Here! Ugh … how disgusting … now, I did it! I'm not homophobic! I love you!
- And I love you, Michael … I need a vacation …

Poor Oscar

Nine seasons. I can't remember a single show that lasted that long and remained so funny, lively and original.

Usually, everything is boring, many successful projects end much later than they should have (how do you like the company of supernatural Sam and Dean Winchesters, detective Sherlock and android Dolores?) Even after the departure of the main character, on whom everything seemed to be held; is truly amazing and proves how well done this project. The first season may seem gloomy, but starting with the second, the tone changes, there is hope and another leitmotif: love.

"The Office" is, among other things, the history of office romances (at least three to the final), the main of which, of course, is the relationship between the good-natured joker Jim and the talented quiet Pam. They are an island of tranquility in an ocean of game and chaos, young and lovely guys who have everything ahead, but whose path to each other and forward together will be long and winding. And that's okay, it's part of the journey, whatever it may be.

Watch this show if you haven't seen it yet. It is homerically funny, light, sometimes dramatic and very lively. I promise you - you will fall in love, you will see a lot of acquaintances (I bet many could have had a boss - a funny tyrant on their own wave), and it will be difficult for you to break away from this sura. "The Office" is the perfect sitcom pretending to be a movie about a movie, a "slice of life" and an exaggerated picture of simple working America in the 2010s, in which everyone working in sales and services around the world will see something familiar.

"The dream of any parent is to see how his children grew up and got married among themselves, my heart is bursting with happiness!"