Spoilers for last night’s Office coming up after the jump:
So I’ll just ask you, because I’ll bet you were thinking about it too. Was Pam lying? Did she make up the story that Holly still had feelings for Michael?
I’m going to guess no. It seems out of character. Not that Pam would want to protect Michael; that I could see. But reading a private letter, then misrepresenting it in a way that gives him false hope after having his heart broken? I don’t see it. Not to mention it would be a terrible idea: I mean, this is Michael we’re talking about—how do we know it wouldn’t send him rushing back to Nashua to make another dramatic gesture?
The fact that we can wonder and argue about this, though, says a lot about how The Office has grown as a show. It’s a comedy, maybe the funniest on TV right now, but we engage with it on the level of drama. By which I don’t just mean that serious stuff happens, but that we have to remember people’s past actions and infer the subtext of what they’re saying.
But as for the serious-stuff-happening part: I’m really impressed with Steve Carell’s work in this two-parter, following on his performance in the post-Super Bowl “Stress Relief.” He gets across what makes Michael insane and irritating and what makes him sympathetic—often in the same scene. Besides the letter scene, his visit to Holly’s desk—cutting an arm off her sweater and choking up at her picture of Ed Grimley—was note-perfect.
(Of course, it doesn’t make for a sitcom in the traditional make-me-laugh-and-forget-my-troubles sense. There had to have been plenty of people who watched The Office after the Super Bowl and had no idea what to make of it—as evidenced by its lack of a ratings boost after the special episode. The Office is doing fine for NBC, but I think at this point its audience is what it’s going to be.)
As for the subplots, for some reason I actually found Kelly’s party funnier than last week, largely because of Mindy Kaling, who does a great job conveying how she can swing from deeply hurt to delighted over something as small as a Chiclet on her birthday cake (with her name misspelled). Her mood swings over her party were like her mood swings in a relationship, in miniature. And her girlish look of delight over her hourlong nap present—”I’m too excited to sleep!”—was priceless.
But back to the Holly debate. Was Pam telling the truth? Does Michael have closure? And is anything really over?