The Office-"Threat Level Midnight"

The people do the Michael Scarn on "The Office"
Credit: NBC

My thoughts on this week's stop on the Michael Scott farewell tour and the current state of the Office are after the jump.

The Office has had a really uneven year this year. It's had episodes that were really bad, episodes like this one which were OK, and fantastic episodes. What's made it so good over the past few episodes are that they are starting to wrap parts of Michael's story. They brought Holly back, they put them together, they had Carell meet Gervais (in the best teaser in the show's history), and now they show his completed movie.

The episode played like a clip show with only a few shots from the present day and most of the episode being made up of the movie. I had no real problem with this. "Threat Level Midnight" was comically bad and very fun to watch. It was solid entertainment and it was fun to watch Michael's dream come true. Sure elements of it were completely stupid (Creed as the "Cherokee Jack"? Really?) but it all contributed into a fun movie that I admit I laughed at.

The movie functioned as a way for Michael to achieve part of his dream and have his movie released. It was a big step for him, to see his movie on screen and to have everyone "enjoy" it. Even Holly seemed to be enjoying it at the end. It was a big step for his character and for his farewell tour.

The show is preparing for Michael to leave, which is something that they will be continuing for the rest of the season. It's these episodes that seemed to work the best and that's because it's the episodes that the writers care about. Episodes like the Christmas episode and the Valentines day episode have been very good. I hope that future episodes leading up to Michael's departure are as good if not better.

The rest of the season, where they're not preparing for Carell's departure, has been pretty terrible. The first half of the season was on the verge of unwatchable. All the character growth had stopped and they were trying to make it about this group of characters. The problem was that these weren't characters they're caricatures. The character who's suffered the most from is Dwight. He wasn't that funny to begin with and now that the show is exemplifying the worst in the character he's awful. His character makes me cringe more then any other.

The Office has its problems, and many people I've talked to say that the show should end after this season. That's never going to happen, it's NBC's highest rated show and it's not going anywhere. I think that the chance to hit the reset button after Carell leaves is a good thing. It could allow for the show to make it more about this very talented ensemble. If the show does that successfully it could be a great show again. 

I haven't loved the season so far of the Office but this episode was very fun to watch.

What did everyone else think?