How I repaired my television marriage (or how I stopped worrying and learned to love The Office again) – Part 4

Here’s part four of five for guest clacker Julia Hass. Be sure to check out part one, two and three if you haven’t already.

My Fourth Concern: Finding Michael Endearing
There are some celebrities who I think live purely to give me my weekly recommended injection of joy and faith in humanity, and high up on that list is Steve Carell. The man is the rare celebrity who seems to really use their money and fame for good. He never seems to get a swelled head no matter how much praise gets heaped on him, instead remaining, as far as I’m concerned, the world’s most huggable incarnation of what giggling feels like. I do not think that, if anyone else played Michael, I would manage to find him endearing or watchable. The genius behind The Office is half the amazing ensemble and half Steve Carell’s unique genius for making Michael Scott, the ultimate blowhard and unintentional douchebag, lovable and pathetic and human and, most importantly, real.

I think the best way Steve Carell manages to do this is through the ingenious invention of what is referred to as, for those of you not in the know, a “talking head” (or, rather, when a character or characters sits and has a monologued confessional directly to the camera). And thank God for these. If we didn’t have these delicious insights into Michael, I doubt anyone could love him. But when it’s just Michael and the camera, there’s something uniquely hilarious and heartbreaking about Michael’s levels of loneliness, delusion, and childish logic, and that’s where the magic happens. But lately, the magic had been lacking.

Instead of being endeared to Michael every time he tried to perform for the camera, I was starting to feel how I imagine a Dunder-Mifflin employee is supposed to feel: wearied. Michael had seemed increasingly like a cartoon character, and the written-in ploys to tug at my heartstrings felt overboard and forced. But two weeks ago, something changed. Perhaps it was because Michael had regained confidence when given his lecture circuit, perhaps it was that the lecture circuit brought to the surface of his character’s psyche the heartbreak of losing his lady-love Holly Flax. But whatever it was, Steve Carell was spouting pure gems, like his mnemonic devices (“…one nation under God! With a woof-woof here and a woof-woof there…”). And raise your hand if, when Michael told Pam not to say “bucks” because it wasn’t ladylike, you had flashbacks to your grandfather telling you the exact same thing. ‘Cause I did.

And the last few scenes with Michael and Pam were charming. I’ve always been fond of their wacky back and forth parent-child relationship (the roles change — constantly) that we got to see so beautifully in episodes such as “Business School.” Pam is the only one who is willing to listen to and talk to Michael seriously, as if he is a human being, and Michael, in turn, really takes her advice to heart when it counts, like driving off to Nashua to get closure. It’s like a real-life Thelma and Louise, only I’m hoping both of them manage to not die and neither of them sleep with Brad Pitt.

But that may just be me.

Clacked by Keith McDuffee
on Feb 17, 2009 @ 15:00 EST5EDT