Jun 14, 2021
Why NBC’s ‘‘The Office’’ is the greatest television show of all time.
The iconic comedy series starring Steve Carell, is a television treasure, and for a lot more reasons than you think.
Opinion By: Mo Gerstley
In March of 2013, as the iconic television show, ‘‘The Office’’ concluded its ninth and final season, Executives at NBC, critics of The Office, and even fans never thought the series would continue its streak of high ratings and never thought the top entertainment brands in the country would ever fight, for months over the show, nearly a decade later. No one knew that a decade later ‘‘The Office’’ would top the charts as one of the number one streamed shows on Netflix. An entire new generation of people are streaming the show and enjoying it, as if its brand new. What makes this 2000’s show so entertaining, and why are new generations constantly renewing interest in this near two-decade old series? In an interview with Kelly Clarkson, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey who played Pam and Angela in the Office, discussed how they've recognized the evidently clear new traction their receiving due to their roles in the office. They even comedically related how they cant allegedly go into their children's school without being surrounded by Middle Schoolers trying to get a selfie with them. At the onset of the show, for the first few seasons, the characters have flip-phones, and discuss popular celebrities like Hillary Swank, and Paris Hilton, despite the fact that both Hillary Swank, and flip-phones are virtually irreverent and foreign to current viewers of ‘‘The Office’’ the show still receives extraordinary ratings. Because, viewers are able to sacrifice the small references to the time the show was filmed, for their enormous enjoyment of the classic documentary style comedy series, ‘‘The Office.’’ ‘‘The Office’’ has been praised as giving viewers a sense of realness on television. People can relate to the show, many saying that unlike many other shows, ‘‘The Office’’ offers genuine characters to relate to. In a TIME magazine article from 2014, writers Charlotte Alter and Eliana Dockterman accurately depicted the unrealistic expectations the popular reality-tv show ‘‘Friends’’ makes for people. It mistakenly rely’s on viewers to relate to the fact that their friends are always around and never have anything better to do but hang out with you, which is obviously false, along with the false pretense that claims working is more of a suggestion than a requirement, and many more unrealistic factors, that thousands of other television series do. The Office, however does something different, it risks the chances of making you feel sad, depressed, and even awkward for full minutes at a time, pushing the boundaries in an attempt to really make you feel like its real, while also offering you some of the funniest content ever on TV, and somehow makes it coexist together, something that writers and television producers have failed to do, for decades. ‘‘The Office’’ is unequivocally the greatest show that has ever aired on television, and even if you disagree, you ought to recognize the accomplishments the show amounted to, and the great type of television they crafted.
