the office vs. the office
I find it difficult to idly watch a television show – or watch anything, for that matter, or read anything – without knowing everything there is to know about it. This marks me as part of the Wiki generation, maybe. Maybe it’s my excuse for not getting out more.
In any case, about a year ago, Andy Grabia sent me a link to possibly the funniest cold open in the history of The Office (US) – perhaps in the history of television. I lost four hours of my life that day, trawling YouTube for other clip compilations (emphatically not fanvids, the ones that tool out 90 versions of Jim Halpert’s Cutest Face to the subtle harmonies of a Nickelback powerballad), but it took me about six months to pluck up the courage to actually watch an episode in full. I’d heard, from reputable sources, that it was screamingly funny – if you like “awkward” television. Gaffes, long silences, frozen smiles, that kind of thing. All very un-American. Being a purist, however, when I did start, I started at the beginning.
It’s a good thing I’d watched the clip compilations, because the pilot would have turned me right off the show. There I was on my sofa, cringing against the horribleness and more than six times hiding my face in my knees. I could acknowledge its quality easily; I could tell myself “This is a good show,” but I found it impossible to enjoy. Thanks to the miracle of torrents, though, I’d downloaded the entire first season (not a politic thing to say during the writers’ strike, but I’m shafting the producers, yeah, not the little guy so much… nope, there’s no excuse) and had to barrel through.
I’ve now watched every single episode of this show at least eight times. No, really. I can watch the pilot and laugh. To anyone who hasn’t seen it: watch it. (But don’t read any further if you don’t want to be spoiled.)
Whenever I bring it up in conversation, though, I immediately get the scrunched eyebrows above shortened eyes: “Which version are you talking about?” I tell and get an eye-roll, because if you’re not watching the British one, you know nothing, just nothing. There is a significant constituency that sees it differently: “They’re different; they’re both great; let’s all get along!”
About a month ago I was shopping for a birthday present in HMV. (Specifically, I was looking for The Bourne Trilogy, a DVD compilation that was apparently – of course! – for Christmas only. Fuckers.) What I found instead was a complete UK Office box set, on sale, with Ricky Gervais’s reproachful, horrid face staring up at me. I paid for it and ran before I could question what I’d done. I am, after all, working for peanuts, and buying DVD box sets is not something I should be doing on a regular basis, and only ever on a sure thing. This was far from a sure thing.
Mike wouldn’t watch it with me. I’d had enough trouble convincing him to chance on the American version (which he now loves as much as I do, though I don’t think he’d sleep with John Krasinski). He overheard me watching the first few episodes, and judged by the long silences that he would rather be Elsewhere.
I gave up trying to persuade him pretty quickly.
Five hundred words in, I get to my point: I like the American one better, and I’m finished apologising for it. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say that I don’t like the British one at all.
There are a number of reasons for this, and the rejoinder to each reason would be identical: “But, dude, that’s what makes the British one more real.” Being in England only makes this stickier; I’m accused of “not understanding” British humour or, for that matter, British everyday life.
Perhaps that’s true. I’ve only been here seven months, after all. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t really like British television – it’s the form I object to, not the content. Until fairly recently I thought that my favourite British television shows – the Blackadder series, the Jeeves & Wooster series – were miniseries. I didn’t understand that a British programme runs six episodes a year. It seems like an obscenely low number to me; I don’t understand how people stay interested.
That aside, I watched the staggering number of Office episodes – one through twelve, golly, what a haul – and had trouble staying interested even in those circumstances. American episodes I now listen to while I’m doing something else – hanging laundry, washing the dishes, tidying &c, because I know them so well. But I had to resort to doing chores just to manage to keep the British version on during my first pass. It wasn’t that it was awkward, though it certainly was that. It also wasn’t that the characters weren’t done up. I understand that by British standards, the American cast all look like movie stars, but by American standards, they’re very dressed down, very imperfect-looking. The look of the British version was part of what sold me on buying it.
Here’s an objection to which the snotties will answer, “But that’s British life; that’s what makes it great”: there isn’t a single solitary likeable person on that entire show. No one with a redeeming feature. You really just want them all to commit suicide. It appalled me to read in an interview that during the second series the writers tried to make David Brent a more “sympathetic” character – what, exactly, passes for sympathetic around here?
Moreover, I don’t want my entertainment to be a fucking object lesson. Especially not something that’s billed as “comedy”. I think that, in order to laugh at this show, you have to be at least as hateful as the characters themselves.
In the American version of the show, you identify the characters’ flaws more easily and surely than you do their virtues. Michael Scott is so socially backward that he’s almost certainly got a learning disability; he’s an unassuming bigot with an almost-total lack of self-awareness. Jim and Pam are passive, lacking ambition; their characters only evolve when they make forced leaps (which happens, conveniently enough, about once a season). Kevin is a 12-year-old boy. Angela says “Don’t touch me” to gay people. Dwight is Dwight.
But if you keep watching, you can flip them over and see something to cheer for (except for Ryan – I hate that guy). And I don’t think that’s unrealistic; I think it’s far more realistic than having a group of backward, bigoted, spiteful people with no redeeming features all working in the same room.
Tim and Dawn end up together, hurrah hurrah. What? Really? I got to the end of the second Christmas special and I had already decided that they should both rot – they deserved their misery, but I suppose, failing that, that they deserved each other. Lucy Davis and Martin Freeman gave interviews after the series ended, speculating that their characters wouldn’t, in fact, move to make career changes, wouldn’t motivate each other to go forward in the direction of their dreams. I suppose it’s just as well that we’re not being forced to watch them anymore.
Of course, the same can be said for Jim and Pam. They’ve been going out for eight whole episodes now, several of which have been hour-long specials, and their relationship is on the show’s back burner, but American viewers need crisis and closure, and so the fact that Pam isn’t a professional illustrator yet and Jim isn’t a sportswriter in Philadelphia will, actually, come up. If the shows writers are ever allowed back to their desks again.
Also, I will say this, even though it has little enough to do with anything: I don’t like Ricky Gervais. I don’t like him as a human being. You watch the blooper reels for the American version, and Steve Carell is always the last to break character: he’ll laugh when other people start laughing, but he doesn’t lose it on the set, and only occasionally tries to sabotage the other actors into fits of the giggles. Ricky Gervais is genuinely proud of how much money he’s cost the BBC in lost takes. The blooper reels for the British version aren’t even funny, because nobody other than Gervais himself is laughing. He amuses himself: let’s congratulate him and put him in a corner where he won’t bother anyone.
Have I said enough? Do I sound like a philistine? I’m sure I do; I’m not fussed. I like funny in my TV. I find it deeply ironic that I haven’t paid a penny for the show I’ve become so deeply attached to, and the one that I only watched to satisfy morbid curiosity cost me the equivalent of, like, four packs of cigarettes.
I welcome your comments on anything I’ve said. But Michael Scott is the better dancer, and you won’t ever convince me otherwise.
Till next time, if God wills it, &c &c.
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