The Office: Jim Grows A Pair

(spoilers for the Season Finale of The Office below.)

Well.

That didn't take long.

A friend once revealed to me that, back in high school, this girl I dated complained to him that I was the most frustrating person in the world to argue with -- because every time she thought she'd score a point, I'd nod and say, "Okay. You're right about that. I concede the point."

Then, I'd reframe the argument or move on to something else. Apparently it was very frustrating. In my book it's called listening, and it's also the way you argue -- present political climate to the contrary.

That's a long-winded Saturday way of saying that I take back the statement I made below:

Has there ever been a "super sized" episode that was better than a normal episode of the same series, rather than just bloated and unnecessary?

Yup. Thursday's season finale of The Office.

The charm of the American version has always been (even more than its British parent) the wonky rhythms of its storytelling.

We talk about surprising people with our Act Outs, and of never letting the audience guess where the story is going. But a lot of the time those "surprises" are just cheap suspense, or a logical function of the story. What The Office has managed to convey is a genuine off-kilter appeal where you just don't know what is going to happen next. You know Michael is a train wreck and clueless, and you dread him in the room with Jan and her boss -- and he comes through by being decent, taking heat, and protecting her with a decency even she didn't think was there. You track Dwight trying to catch Oscar takig a fake sick day, and then out of nowhere comes the punch: Oscar's gay, living a perfectly happy secret life which none of his Office-mates know about. (And honestly, would you tell these guys?)

And then there's Jim and Pam.

When you think about it, The Office has already done more episodes than the brilliant Gervais original. Which means that Jim and Pam have been sniffing around each other longer than Tim and Dawn ever did.

I've written before about the subtle deviations from the British source material that make the American Office work: chief among them the fact that Jim doesn't hate his job quite as much as Tim did. But the progression of the Jim/Pam relationship has also brought some intriguing differences that speaks to national character.

I always got the sense watching the UK Office that the main obstacle keeping Tim and Dawn apart was good old fashioned repression. Dawn knew how Tim felt (he told her: twice!) and she just couldn't bring herself to change her situation. She soldiered on. (In Office-time, after all, it took her leaving for more than a year to finally bring them together.)

Jim and Pam, on the other hand, have followed a similar but very different trajectory. Pam is utterly clueless about Jim's feelings -- but more importantly, her own. As the season wore on, and Pam planned her wedding, the comic straight-to-camera interviews became more and more bittersweet, as you realized just how much Pam was deluding herself.

And Jim, decent guy that he is, kept coming up to the line of telling her, and backing away. There they were, trapped in the no-man's land of being "best friends" who really weren't best friends at all.

I love Tim, I do. Don't get me wrong. But I get Jim. I've been Jim - more than once in my life.

So for the endgame, the 'very special-ness' of the season ender to just come out of nowhere like that -- it was almost over before you knew what was happening -- well, that was a great use of 40 minutes.

From Salon's treatment of the wrap-up:

At the Casino Night (held in the company warehouse), Pam flirts through a few hands of poker with Jim before cleaning him out. Jim seems ready to give up on the night when a conversation with Jan about his plans to transfer out of the company's Scranton office, a move obviously connected to Pam's upcoming nuptials, catalyzes something within him. Finding himself alone with Pam, he decides to show her his hand, dropping his defenses so suddenly it comes as quite a shock -- both to her and us:

"I'm in love with you."

"What!?"

"I'm really sorry if that's weird for you to hear, but I need you to hear it."

Watching Jim's face through the scene, you can't help feeling sorry for the guy, and Pam almost makes you hate her when she says Jim just "misinterpreted things." But then, just when you're about ready to write her off, Pam is back in the office, talking to her mom on the phone about what has just happened. Suddenly, Jim saunters in -- you have to admire his persistence here -- and plants a big one on her. She tenses up at first, but then returns the kiss with a passion that says this is the moment she's been waiting for, too. The show ends with the two of them looking at each other with a mixture of elation and confusion: Now what?

If this is where comedy on TV is going, can we all just agree to climb on board now?