The Ottery
“If an otter can’t have fun doing something, it just simply won’t do it.”

Squee! Jim! Squeeeeee!

May 11th, 2006

Having just watched the season finale of “The Office,” I am rendered incapable of intelligible speech. All I can come up with is a word I learned recently from slightlyjillian: squee.

In fact, I was running around the house squee-ing until Porpoise did a blog search and showed me how many other blogging females across the country were squee-ing over Jim (John Krasinski). Ick. Very sobering to see how silly they are. I, on the other hand, have a completely rational and healthy admiration for my favorite Dunder Mifflin employee. Yes, indeed.

What has induced the squees? After two seasons of repressed tension, Jim confessed his love to Pam (who is engaged to someone else, which is a problem, because Jim and Pam are best friends and were clearly meant to be together). And then the episode ended with a somewhat ambiguous kiss.

Squee!

Now the episode was really gratifying for all us Jim-fans out there, but I’m worried about what they’ll do next season. We all knew something had to happen to stall the wedding, but I honestly didn’t expect this—yet. And that makes me fear that on-and-off relationship trauma between Jim and Pam will characterize the third season. There’s no way that could be fun–and we otters demand fun.

Maybe I’m just worried because Porpoise and I have recently watched (under partial compulsion) every episode of Aaron Sorkin’s dramedy “Sports Night,” a show that forgets that it needs to be funny and throws its characters into pointless emotional conflicts. Plus, all Sorkin’s characters speak identically, because the man can’t seem to write with more than one voice. (Sorry, Mr. Ectype and all you other Sorkin fans out there).

But “The Office” is not “Sports Night,” thank goodness. For one thing, lots of different writers work on the show, and most of them are also actors within it. Tonight’s episode was written by Steve Carell, undoubtedly the most famous cast member, who plays obnoxious boss Michael Scott.

Given Carell’s fame and many talents (one of which is singing “Age of Aquarius” while dancing around in pajamas), many of us were anxious to see how his screenwriting would fare. Now that I’m trying to think back to what happened before the “squee” moments, I recall lots of laughing by our assembled viewers. Lots of strange, eccentric, lovable things were said, but, as usual in “The Office,” one of the best characters was the camera, which, in faux reality-show style, makes silent commentary on the action simply by its timing and focus. Also, unlike Sorkin’s talky-talky shows, “The Office” knows what to do with comic pauses and facial expressions. And did I mention that it’s actually funny?

So, as long as the Jim-Pam plot hasn’t been set up for a train wreck, I think Carell did a pretty good job with his writing. Here’s hoping that Mindy Kaling (who also plays Kelly on the show) gets to do more writing in Season 3, because she’s written my two favorite episodes so far: “The Injury” (in which Michael cooks his foot in a George Foreman grill) and “Take Your Daughter to Work Day.”

Oh, and one more thing: Jim!

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