Uh-huh.

Are you seeing it now?

Are you seeing it now?

I still love this show, and there's nothing that could possibly stop me from watching these last 12 episodes, but I will never understand the decision — I'm assuming, based on the interviews he's given, made by Greg Daniels himself — to suddenly pull the curtain back this season and make the presence of the…

I still love this show, and there's nothing that could possibly stop me from watching these last 12 episodes, but I will never understand the decision — I'm assuming, based on the interviews he's given, made by Greg Daniels himself — to suddenly pull the curtain back this season and make the presence of the…

Gah. Why, oh why, do people continue to focus on this meaningless aesthetic element when there are so many other things to complain about? The "documentary crew" has ALWAYS been acknowledged by the characters (when there's a joke to be made), and it has NEVER been plausible.

1. Okay, the meta-joke about Andy being insane to think David Wallace was back was kind of brilliant. (As much as copping to your own show's curdled stupidity can be considered as such.) It was even better than a few weeks ago when "Toby" threw his hands up and admitted he couldn't "do anything about anything".

Though it is better than "Stop fucking trying."

Can we all agree, after four episodes, that calling this "one of the best shows on television" is fucking absurd?

I never said there was a distinct going-off-the-rails moment. I didn't even say a drop-off in realism was entirely avoidable. And clearly, the economic conditions of the recession ended any chance the show had at real-world parallelism.

Really? Obviously it's always been a television show, but in the early seasons I feel like the writers made a commitment to plausibility that was unlike most other TV comedies. The cinema verite tonality was obviously a big part of that, but I'm hard-pressed to remember a come-on-are-you-fucking-kidding-me moment that…

Remember when this show felt grounded in something resembling reality? Remember super-believable David Wallace and his patient businesslike competence? Now David Wallace sold a vacuum patent to the government for $20 million and is about to buy… Dunder Mifflin? Sabre? Just the Scranton branch? I don't know?

I think one of the reasons this season has been lacking in creative energy is that it has (to a certain extent) stopped the expansion of the Pawnee universe in favor of just existing in it. For its first few seasons this show was sort of in a state of perpetual motion (both within the narrative and in terms of the…

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media…
edit: better http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

A lot of the criticism of this show focuses on the writing, and for good reason, but let's take a moment to consider the piss-poor quality of the directing as well. The visual grammar of the action sequences is abysmal. Did anyone have any idea what the hell was going on, who was where and where they were going, at…

Is there any show that paces its seasons as well as this one?

The Leap Day plot was to be expected. The soccer plot on a FIFA match day slightly less so. The reference to a tornado in Missouri was a little spooky. But the "Hey. We're the Monkeys" line? Downright terrifying.

Hey, dudebro, the fact that the writers have occasionally given the "camera crew" various degrees of agency within the plot doesn't really have anything to do with the broader question of whether their literal existence was ever remotely plausible in the first place. It is a goddamn television show. But thanks for…

I don't know what you mean; even in the earliest episodes it always strained credibility to think of them as a literal presence. If it didn't for you, you weren't thinking about it hard enough.

These are the worst kind of "The Office" complaints. The documentary crew is at best a metaphor and at worst a framing device; just watch the damn show.