I love inside jokes. I hope to be a part of one someday. -- Michael Scott

It has been said that "remember when is the lowest form of conversation." I understand the sentiment, but I do not fully agree with it. Our purpose in coming to Memory Lane is to reunite with old friends and to see if they have anything new to teach us -- or, failing that, if they are as witty and loveable as we remember them to be. Well, it has now been twenty years since THE OFFICE debuted on NBC, and in perhaps unconscious tribute to this fact, I have begun a rewatch of this beloved sitcom. Aside from slight intimations of panic that it has been twenty years since it premiered (seriously, where the hell does time go?), I have to report that all my memories of the show are true and correct: this sitcom is just as funny today as it was in 2005. What's more, rewatching it has told me a lot, not so much about the world of '05, but the world of today.

THE OFFICE, which was derived from a British sitcom of the same name created by Ricky Gervais, ran from 2005 - 2013, and chronicled the farsical doings of employees at a dying-by-inches paper company called Dunder Mifflin, located in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The large regular cast was supplemented by a number of recurring characters, so in the interests of brevity, I will stick only to the most important:

Michael Scott (Steve Carrell): The regional manager of Dunder Mifflin Scranton is a deeply delusional man-child with impluse control problems and subzero self-awareness, who spends most of his time in a stylized denial of reality. While posing himself as a ladykiller, astute businessman, and razor-sharp wit, he is in fact none of these things, and his true talent in life is making his employees, and pretty much everyone else he meets, acutely uncomfortable with his foolish antics. Having neither much of a family nor any real friends, Michael has forcibly adopted his employees in both roles, projecting himself as a kind of patriarch: it is among his delusions that the uninspired drones of Dunder Mifflin are in essence his children, and love him accordingly. What makes Michael truly interesting is his chronic loneliness, his periodic flashes of genius, and his fundmental decency, which is admittedly buried beneath layers of selfishness. Steve Carrell's performance in this regard is nothing short of iconic. He takes what could be a simple buffoon and gives him unexpected depth, so that he can bounce erratically between protagonist and antagonist without ever stepping out of character.

Jim Halpert (John Krasinski): The classic "slacker" character of the 90s - 00s, the young Halpert is a bored, uninspired paper salesman who clings to his job at Dunder Mifflin primarily because he has fallen in love with unfortunately-engaged receptionist Pam Beasley. Halpert comes alive only when interacting with Pam, pranking his nemesis Dwight, or subtly encouraging Michael's delusions for his own amusement. Ultimately his love for Pam, and his attempts to win her over from her obnoxious fiance Roy, becomes one of the central themes of the series, as does his gradual transformation from slackerboy into purposeful young man. Although his deadpan performance is excellent, Krasinski carries a lot of the comedy of the series simply through facial expressions which have become the stuff of millions of memes.

Pam Beasley (Jenna Fischer): the downtrodden office receptionist, stuck in a seemingly endless engagement as well as a dead-end job, Pam is endlessly the butt of Michael's sense of humor, and tries to navigate her growing feelings for Jim as the series carries on. Like Jim, she represents untapped potential. Fischer is an example of perfect casting. She's cute without being unrealistically beautiful, and can communicate even better than Krasinski just with her face.

Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson): arguably a more iconic character even than Michael Scott, Schrute is Tonto to Michael's Lone Ranger, Robin to his Batman. As one fan site puts it, this eccentric paper salesman "is notorious for his lack of social skills and common sense," but Dwight's weirdness goes far beyond these two unfortunate traits. Descended from German farmers who followed bizarre, Amish-like family traditions, he is obsessed with rule-following and is immediately intoxciated by any taste of power, however small, which comes from his mostly made-up position as "assistant to the regional manager." Forever trying to bully and boss his coworkers, he is the butt of innumerable inside jokes and in Jim's case, complex pranks, which he falls for each and every time. Dwight spends most of his time sucking up to Michael, who treats him with contempt, but is forever scheming to supplant him as regional manager.

Toby Flenderson (Paul Liebowitz): I place Toby fifth in the hierarchy because although the bland and boring HR representative of Dunder Mifflin is, well, bland and boring, his very existence throws Michael into frenzies of cruelty and hatred. Michael, it seems, cannot abide the fact that Toby answers only to Corporate, and is therefore "not part of the family," though Michael is quick to add, "He's also divorced, so he's not a part of his family, either." Some of the most iconic moments in the show stem from Michael's irrational dislike of this harmless and utterly unoffensive man.

Other major characters included Kevin, a dull-witted, child-like accountant; Oscar, a closeted gay with a superiority complex; Kelly, an utterly vacuous customer service agent; Angela, the office bitch and Dwight's secret lover; Meredith, the office slattern; Phyllis, a frequent butt of Michael's cruelty; Creed, an enigmatic weirdo who never entirely seems to know where he is; Stanley, a humorless drudge who detests Michael; Daryl, the long-suffering manager of the warehouse; and Ryan, a shallow, self-serving temp who becomes the focus of Michael's creepy obsession. In later seasons, the cast is also joined by Andy, an emotionally unstable failure looking for an identity; Gabe, an obnoxious suit who struggles unsuccessfully to be taken as anything but a joke; and Erin, a naive woman-child with a bizarre past who limpets onto Michael as a father-figure.

THE OFFICE was first and foremost a satire of both the American workplace and the American worker. Like THE SIMPSONS, which reveled in depicting Americans as lazy, disinterested clock-punchers who simply want to avoid being fired, THE OFFICE makes a point of showing the effects that dull, dead-end jobs have on what might otherwise be colorful and interesting human beings. Aside from Michael and Dwight, who both revel in selling paper, Jim's spirit of fun is half-crushed by the monotony of his work and the stupidity of his colleagues, and he refuses to excel simply because "right now this is just a job, but if I rise any higher, it's my career...and if this were my career, I'd throw myself in front of a train." Pam is likewise unhappy, noting that "little girls don't dream of growing up to be receptionists." Stanley refers to the gig as a "run out the clock situation," and Ryan's main fear seems to be getting hired on full-time. The workers cling to their jobs out of economic necessity and apathy, not passion.

The show is not less brutal with its depiction of corporate life. Michael's boss, Jan, is shown as an emotional train-wreck whose problems almost amount to insanity, and the shareholders in Dunder Mifflin, when we meet them, as cruel and callous capitalist robber-barons who don't give a damn how many workers get laid off provided they get to keep their dividends. Indeed, Dunder Mifflin's financial instability, its tendency to close branches, downsize offices, and always look to cut costs, is a recurring theme in the show. An entire episode is devoted, for example, to the necessity of firing an employee; another, to cutting benefits to the bone. The employees are always teetering on the edge of a pink slip, and the company they work for, on the edge of bankruptcy.

It would be a mistake, however, to view THE OFFICE simply as a humorous attack on the silliness, or horror, of cubicle culture. It is first and foremost a romance story, or rather a series of romance stories, the most obvious of these is the long dance between Jim and Pam, which culminates ultimately in their marriage and the birth of their children in the later seasons. This romance is as much about the growth of the characters from passive slackers to active winners, "winning" here meaning not riches or fame but discovering the courage to go through life on terms, more or less, of your own dictation. There are also romance stories between Dwight and Angela, Andy and Erin, Kelly and Ryan, etc. In time, however, we begin to understand that the real story of the show is not the Pam-Jim romance but whether Michael Scott will ever find happiness. We are made to understand early in the series that Michael is terribly lonely and that the thing he most wants in life is a wife and children, but his many deficiencies of personality make his love life a embarrassing disaster. And because Michael despite his limitless flaws is ultimately likeable, we the audience become invested in his quest. The resolution of this problem in the seventh season is one of the more satisfying emotional closures in the history of television.

THE OFFICE had another dimension, which was family. As I stated above, Michael regards his employees as both friends and children, and in the end, it is shown that this is the actual relationship the two sides enjoy (or do not enjoy, as the case may be). As idiotic, selfish, delusional and immature as he is, his love for his people is real: he is the only person who bothers to attend Pam's art show (aside from Oscar, who makes snide criticisms) and even buys one of her paintings. He likewise counsels Jim never to give up on winning Pam's heart, and rescues the treacherous Ryan after his criminal conviction by rehiring him as a temp. Those weird flashes of business acumen he periodically displays (for he is a superb salesman, if a hopeless manager) save the company, or at least the branch, more than once, and he even sabotages Jan's lawsuit against Dunder Mifflin, which could have netted them millions, out of loyalty to the company.

Like all long-running television shows, THE OFFICE can be divided into various periods: in this case, the simplest would be cutting it into "Michael" and "After Michael." Carrell left the series toward the end of the seventh season, believing Michael Scott's character arc complete with the consumation of his romance with Holly, and seaons eight and nine comprise this post-Michael era, which revolve mainly around who will replace him as regional manager. It's fair to say these two seasons have many outstanding episodes and plotlines, but it's equally fair to say the show had no real purpose after Carrell's departure, except to keep allowing admittedly wonderful characters like Dwight room to entertain us with their idiocy. Like other successful shows whose studios couldn't bear to shut them down lest they slay a golden goose, THE OFFICE was permitted to meander longer than it should have, almost into irrelevancy: fortunately, a somewhat awkward final season was capped by a highly satisfying series finale. By a margin that was perhaps narrower than it should have been, THE OFFICE managed to exit the stage with its dignity and relevance intact.

So where does that leave us, twenty years down the road? Is THE OFFICE still relevant? What if anything can we learn from its time on television and the legacy it is left? Well, to address the last first, it turns out the answer to this is, "Quite a bit."

Whenever I discuss the show with others nowadays, the very first thing which is said -- always, inevitably -- is that "there's no way they could make a show like that today." And this, sadly, is the truth. THE OFFICE followed an ancient axiom of sit-coms, to wit, that the greatest humor is often found in the most uncomfortable situation. THE OFFICE followed a school of comedy practiced by Ricky Gervais, and before him, by John Cleese and others of similar outlook, that the core of humor lays in the act of slaughtering sacred cows. Michael Scott is funny in very large part because everything he says and does is highly inappropriate in a work setting (or in some cases, any setting). Although he is almost always free of malice unless Toby is involved, Michael is nevertheless constantly spewing opinions and comments which deride or demean the very groups progressives and wokeists regard as sacred: namely, gays, people with disabilities, and people of color. This constant pressing-down on the raw nerve of political correctness was hilarious in 2005 and it is not less funny in 2025, but what has changed is Hollywood's willingness to let comedians do what they do best, which is attack sensitive subjects without mercy or even good taste. Take one of the most hilarious, and infamous, of all episodes of THE OFFICE: "Diversity Day." In this story, Michael is punished by corporate for his repeated use of the N-word while imitating Chris Rock. In retaliation, he hosts his own "diversity training" which encourages employees to be as offensive as possible about every imaginable racial and ethnic stereotype. Many fans regard this as among the best episodes the show ever produced. However, a few years ago the brave souls at NBC decided to pull the episode from streaming. As the interwebs tells us:

The "Diversity Day" episode of THE OFFICE, particularly the extended cut, includes scenes and jokes that were removed from the original broadcast due to potential sensitivities related to diversity training and related topics. The "Diversity Day" episode was removed from syndication and some streaming services..."

And:

"Some versions of the episode, particularly in syndication and on some streaming platforms, were removed due to concerns about offensive content. This aligns with a broader trend in the industry of re-evaluating and sometimes removing content from the past that may be considered offensive or problematic in today's cultural climate.

"Problematic in today's cultural climate" is of course code, albeit code nobody with anything above their spinal cord needs to exert any energy to crack. THE OFFICE could not be made today any more than ALL IN THE FAMILY could be made, because the courage required to approve scripts of this daring a nature has evaporated from the gray souls of studio executives. Most humor today falls in the category of "safe edgy," meaning that it eviscerates nonsacred groups and entities (white people, men, Western culture, capitalism, Christianity) while avoiding by light years the sensitive toes of the sacred ones. If you want to grasp how truly low we have fallen in the creation of comedy for television, it is probably not necessary to go farther than Mindy Kaling's unwatchable take on the SCOOBY DOO franchise, called VELMA. Kaling, who ironically wrote 26 episodes of THE OFFICE, served as a producer on the show and also played the dimwitted and shallow Kelly Kapour for the entirety of the series' run, could presumably be trusted to understand the key principles of comedy as well as anyone in the game. Yet in VELMA, all she managed to do was apply "today's cultural climate" to a venerable cartoon character, and prove once and for all that there are no Woke comedians -- cannot be, by definition, since the whole goal of Woke, of the progressive movement generally, is to render huge swaths of the population immune from ridicule. (It's worth noting here that in dictatorships, the jokes considered funniest are always at the expense of the dictator, which just goes to show that humor and risk walk hand in hand. The hilarity of a joke is often in direct proportion to how risky it is for you to tell it.)

The legacy of THE OFFICE is therefore multifold. The show will always be relevant so long as people work in cubicles and mindless dead-end jobs continue to exist. The humor will always bite so long as people can unplug themselves from their Need To Be Offended long enough to see the humor in the sort of stupidity Michael displays. The witticisms and bumblings of Michael, Dwight, Kevin, etc. will continue to supply the internet with endless streams of GIFs and memes, and some of the show's more iconic physical comedy, such as Kevin dropping the cauldron of chili on the office carpet, will probably survive everyone reading this. And the "mockumentary" format, where the camera crew is part of the story and actors routinely break the fourth wall, is now now part of the sit-com toolkit. But the lasting legacy of THE OFFICE, the one that towers over all the others, is that it arrived at a time in Hollywood when comedy, really fearless comedy that played no favorites and spared no feelings, was still possible. It may be that when we were watching the show during its original run, we were witnessing among the last moments of genuine comedic freedom on television, without realizing it. And so I close this installment of Memory Lane with a fitting quotation from that hopelessly inept Dunder Mifflin salesman, Andrew Bernard, who put it best when he said, in the series finale:

"I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them."