The Office is a veteran television program in its fifth season and, for better or for worse, it’s evolved. But has the Scranton gang gone daytime soap opera on us? “Baby Shower”, this season’s third installment, says no. At least, not really…
Babies, affairs, betrothal and clerical shenanigans – all in a day’s work
SPOILERS!
Season five’s opener was a bit on the sketchy side; it almost made the Dunder-Mifflin crew completely intolerable. Sure, things have cooled down since then, but all is not yet well in Scranton.
“Baby Shower” revolves around a prenatal party for Jan who, as we find out, is already postnatal. Michael, ever the child-lover, has decided he’d like to be a part of the baby’s life and acts on that “feeling” throughout the episode. During the shower, Michael completely blows off poor Holly, but by the end of the episode realizes he doesn’t connect to Jan or her baby the way he connects to the newer, more attractive HR rep.
In the meantime, Pam and Jim are doing their own thing. As fiancées, their relationship is relatively secure, but the whole long-distance relationship thing is starting to set in. The shower lands on a day when Pam and Jim are particularly inept at contacting one another. The time they spend on the phone together is drowned out by background noise, and what Pam can communicate is meaningless to Jim, who isn’t an art school student.
Besides that, nope, not really much plot stuff going on.
That’s great, but is it funny?
Sure it’s funny, and we expect nothing less of The Office. The writers squeeze out a few good jokes (golden showers, anyone?), and there’s that classic awkward vibe going on, but when it comes down to it, “Baby Shower” is fairly sub-par in the comedy arena.
Even Dwight manages to attain relative un-funniness, considering the heights he and Jim reached in last week’s episode. He spends literally the entire episode throwing around a stroller to test its durability. Funny the first couple times but just lazy when Dwight starts running over the stroller with his car. Oh well. Guess you can’t split sides every time.
What’s next?
The future of The Office is, at best, ambiguous. This fifth season has seen three entirely different episodes, each with their own revelations. But the end of “Baby Shower” isn’t a twist or revelation – it’s a drama. Michael awkwardly embraces Holly, then asks her out on a date against Jan’s order not to. Holly is crying, but says yes, she will join Michael.
Then it cuts to Pam and Jim leaving messages on each other’s phones. It’s the writers’ way of saying “Yeah, they’re engaged, but in a long-distance relationship. You didn’t think we’d make things easy, did you?” It closes the show on a bad note. Other episodes have ended in dramatic scenes, but none so crudely as this one.
So it wasn’t very funny, there wasn’t much plot-wise, and it ends strangely. But that probably won’t turn into a trend. The Office is still changing, and there are too many questions to be answered before we can decide whether or not it’s degenerating into a daytime soap.