The GI line is the best, as is Pam's reaction.

They did an excellent job of repeatedly crushing Pam in S3 that I was surprised they didn't give a puppy that they later killed off.

I found Jim floundering to be fine in small doses, but they always took it too far. Miner not finding Jim amusing was one thing, Jim deciding he had to lie about being a soccer player was another. Same with the assistant manager bit.

Yeah, another mid-level sales job in Scranton would have been a more realistic choice. Of course Pam would have married Roy if realism was the criteria.

Yeah, the only real change he made was that he wasn't around Pam any longer.

S6 was worse than S9 and almost as bad as S8 in my book. Just so many wasted episodes that seem to be forgotten because of the wedding episode.

Mose's "He seems nice." caps that scene for me.

What they did to Ryan over the later seasons was a crime. He should have disappeared after S4.

Yeah, the enthusiasm for the free pretzels is pretty true to life.

I found the idea that Jim would get drunk while trying to do some sort of quarterly accounting task to be fairly foolish to begin with. I mightgo drinking with my co-workers after work, but if I'm required to work after hours (and why wasn't this task done during regular hours?) then I'm getting it done as quickly as…

It seemed to me that Darryl could have been easily distracted with something shiny or a squirrel so buying him as a criminal mastermind was difficult.

"although, to his credit, Michael Rapaport has been very good,
consistently finding an entertaining balance between menacing and just
plain weird"

I thought Roy magically becoming a huge success was a complete left turn for that character. It mainly seemed a cheat to tell the "Pam doesn't like change." story of S9.

I would have loved to have Karen stick around. Having a hostile ex-girlfriend around might have cut some of the sickly sweet Jim/Pam stuff from the later seasons.

But that vast majority of that turnover was in minor characters that were around for only a few episodes. The most significant change was swapping Plop and Clark for Kelly and Ryan.

You could imagine Jim with friends in these early seasons. Later on it was like he never saw anyone but Pam. And I still don't buy that Pam wouldn't have any friends outside of Roy. In fact she did have one as a bridesmaid.

If by emotional outburst you mean instantly trashed a bar and then days later attempts to beat up Jim. Putting both of those incidents back-to-back was what ruined it for me.

In addition to your spot on points and in answer to the article's mention of how the characters only dated other office mates, they really needed to give the characters more life outside the office. I know they boxed themselves in with the pseudo-documentary format, but they spent way too much time trying to invent…

I thought they did a nice job in the early part of S3 to show Pam growing as she left Roy behind and with Jim gone. Then they sort of took it all away later in the season to heighten the "will they/won't they" story.

Yeah, that shot makes me laugh every time. As Abu Ghraib fades from memory it won't have quite the same impact, but back in 2006 that was a pretty dark beat.