Kiss Him You Fool!

The British television show "The Office" touched my heart like no other show ever has. This is most likely because the last show I actually saw all the episodes to was "Quantum Leap." I began watching it a year ago, there are only two seasons and then a last bonus episode that wraps everything up in the end. Many times as I have thought of why or what it is that makes this show so attractive to me, I keep coming to the same general, easy answer, it's just less American than everything else that's on. This is not a bash against our culture, nor is it a platform allowing me to point out all the problems of our culture and then go onto conclude that I reflect none of it. Rather, I think my wife and I are just, in a very quiet, non-eccentric way, counter-culture.

This is not self applied, it's simply what I've been told we seem to fit with. For a while, I just shrugged the suggested zealotry off and went about my way. However, a few months ago Sarah and I were introduced to a Swedish couple whom the wife Sarah now tutors in English After meeting, the mutual acquaintance who put us all in touch in the first place reported to us that the foreign couple liked us. "Actually, they said you seemed very 'Un-American.'" We took it as a compliment, though at the time and not speaking for Sarah here, I had no idea what that meant or implied. However, since it was relayed to me in the order, "they like you" followed by, "un-American, " it was only logical to see it as a positive cause and effect relationship, that being the liking and at least in part said liking branching from a counterculture air we, to some extent, emanated.

This idea kept coming back to me. Was un-American good because they were not American, therefore we reminded them of something familiar in a strange place? If this was so, though, how or what was it about us, what did we say or do, or not say or not do that gave us this front? I'll never figure it out. There is no point either. Qualities others find good or pleasant within me are better left untampered and unexplored. The worst thing that could happen with such qualities is to figure them out, attempt to isolate them and then end up over synthesizing them, which always, always, always produces an ass.

"The Office," perhaps why I like it is in some way bound up in the same reasoning for the sweet Swedish couple originally liking Sarah and I, therefore, it will forever remain mystery. The show revolves around the classic narcissist boss who has, ironically, no self-awareness or control for that matter when it comes to how ridiculous he allows himself to become. He states humor as his strong point yet nothing he says is funny. Though sometimes laughable,employees are never laughing with him, but at him. I find him entertaining because in a way his qualities comprise, though obviously pushed to their maximum, qualities I have witnessed in bosses I've had over the years. I am just dazzled by how the acting and writing was able to key in on a lot those characters many times found in those in management who probably really shouldn't be.

The show also has a quiet air to it. The use of silence is something that is not seen often on American television. Many times in the episodes at moments where in a typical American comedy something would be said, a last line, one more quotable phrase, in the office silence ensues. Much is communicated through the characters by looks. Facial expressions say more than any line could in some moments of the show. Even something as simple as a characters momentary posture is utilized as well.

Character development throughout the series is also something that takes one by surprise. Much of television's character development roots itself in plot and direct action or situation. Characters of popular shows are remembered for what they did in a certain scene of a certain episode. Or they're remembered for what they said or figured out. In the office, characters develop because of sheer time. The development is not set up in that, you're introduced to a clean character and they slowly gain face and momentum by what they say and do and the decisions they make. Rather, you are shoved into a world that has been going on long before you showed up to watch and whatever you see that may be classified as development is really just what has already been, you're just able to identify more patterns as time progresses.

The show does have a love interest level to it. One of the sales reps is deeply attracted to the receptionist, but again, this is something that is just seen through a lot of silent looks and small gestures as the show moves. Throughout the course of the show the two can never get together. Again, not because of unforeseen circumstance or because one keeps saying the wrong things or ends up turning out to be a poor lover, but simply because they've just trapped themselves in what is. They consistently misfire with each other simply because they just cannot bring themselves to be that honest. The receptionist is engaged (one of those three year long, we're never getting married, engagements), and the sales rep is just, as one sees through the show, afraid of progress. Actually, in the last episode the sales rep, finally, in a triumphant moment walks the receptionist into a side office, sits her down and, from what it looks like, levels with her. Notice I said, "from what it looks like." He takes his microphone off for the moment and as an observer you're left simply to watch hearing absolutely nothing. He straps the microphone on afterward only to follow up with, "she said no by the way." Talk about one of the most amazing moments in television.

The series ends in an amazing quiet slow moment where everything just seems to be wrong. Nothing went wrong, but, then again nothing really went either, it just was. As a viewer you get your hopes up about this or that, but when it closes everyone is still just trapped in their personalities. The boss is still an idiot, the receptionist and the rep are not together.

I was happy. I'd finally found the show without frill. I could watch this and not feel embarrassed. However, it came later that there was this infamous last episode floating around, the one that was to wrap it all up. I sneered at the thought. "Wrap it all up" I thought, "how American." Always wanting an answer, an ending, the tie up, the close so I can leave knowing and not thinking when it ends. Just tell me, put it on a spoon and shove it down my throat damn it, but please, do not leave me to wonder about it and do not, mind you, make me feel bad.

I remained skeptical and one day my roommate saw this last episode and said it was good. I didn't buy it. He was obviously more American than I was (he's not). I finally saw the episode and it showed me a few things. First off, it showed me how amazing these writers are in that with an ending so amazing, they could write one more episode and make it just as good as the rest of the show. The characters are revisited and found the same as when left. The surroundings have changed a bit but not the people. They remain stuck in their persons, doomed to reinvent themselves over and over again in an amazing, beautiful, repetitive personality hell. I loved it.

However, at one point in this last episode something begins to happen. Something moves and the characters change. Some slowly, some through a momentary something that they just needed all along. The boss finally meets this woman who is amazing and finds him tolerable. Some how his edges just curve out around her and he's seen to be, for the first time in the show, truly content and happy, where before it was an endless struggle of insecure bantering. Also, the rep and the receptionist, they, don't get together. There was pressure before but now, like your common TV idiot I'm on the edge of my seat, "why don't you just love each other" I yell at the screen as if yelling at a soap opera. I break down, she leaves, it's over, she comes back, "kiss him you fool" I yell audibly at the computer, "kiss him" I scream reduced to that annoying trixi who won't lower her volume while on the phone on the train behind you. They embrace and kiss and I exhale.

Perhaps I just live in double standards and this is simply my latest in that all shows are dumb except mine because mine is different even when it ends the same as yours. Or perhaps I just want to see effort. This show was nothing but effort. The characters endured themselves for the lot of it and in the end, one can't help but feel they deserve to be rewarded with the release only hinted at in the subtle looks and awkward gestures which, under your nose, somehow built into a final moment that could only be diffused by everything working out in the most ideal fashion one could think up. The classic, cheesy, first kiss. Anything else would simply be un-American.