Maybe it’s just the string of truly awful and uninspired episodes of The Office that have gone on as of late, but for some reason “Jury Duty” was enough reason to make me want to go back and re-watch the whole series with some glimmer of hope, and made me even more hopeful for the rest of the episodes of season eight.
It was pretty apparent straight away that this was going to be a good night at Dunder Mifflin. Andy inexplicably goes into the warehouse and forces all of the employees out so he can dance around to “Footloose.” Random as it was, I absolutely love this song, I absolutely love Andy and I absolutely love how this reminded me so much of Michael Scott.
Andy has tried so hard to fit into the office framework, but he’s fallen out of it more often than in with the ridiculous number of bonding field trips that the cast has taken this season. Finally, “Jury Duty” gives us a work-related topic that actually pertains to the story of The Office and make sense for the characters in context. This was not a gimmick episode.
Plus they brought Pam back, which was just excellence in itself.
The greatest part of the show was how many one-liners were pulled off in 22 minutes. “He's more than substantial, he's a monster,” Erin says when describing Angela’s new baby.” “I am making a citizen's arrest. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to beg for mercy. You have the right to beg for judgment by combat,” Dwight says when he discovers that Jim took an extra few days off work.” Or when Andy says, “Have you heard of a connecticut coverup? You know why you've never heard of it? Covered it up."
Even smaller side characters of the plot had their moments to shine. When Kelly rips the drawing allegedly done by Cece in front of her face to see if she’ll react, the result was something terrifically terrible and sadistically amusing. Plus the episode was filled with almost inappropriate commentary like when Phyllis asks an empanada food truck owner “I’m sorry, do you have any American Mexican food?”
And aside from delivering some of the best lines in recent Office history, this episode was full of character exposition and plot exploration. Dwight discovers that he may be the father of Angela’s newborn baby when she reveals to Oscar (who then reveals to Dwight) that she actually had the baby out of wedlock a month before her wedding.
Especially poignant was the scene in which Pam arrives at the office trying to placate the other employees with Cece’s drawings and after some intense goading by Andy, Kelly and others, Cece begins sobbing. In a moment of heroicism and unlikely empathy in The Office, everyone decides to tell Jim to take the day off to care for his children. Seeing how difficult he has it with a wife and two kids at home as well as the responsibility of balancing a full work day makes them sympathetic.
There’s really nothing better than an Office that is truly funny. Recently, episodes have glided unsteadily along this really rocky path of little entertainment and a lot of drama. They have tried so hard to create stories out of the side plot of Erin and Andy’s romance that many times characters will either get lost in the shuffle or be apparently thrown in for kicks and then kicked out for story.
This episode brought everyone together in the true Office atmosphere (after all, God forbid they actually show their faces in an office in most episodes). It made the characters seem authentic, interesting and, above all, hilarious.
I’ve spent blogs and blogs and blogs griping over the loss of the old Office persona. In season eight we lost the antiquated (but tremendously awesome) notion that this is a real look into an over-the-top (but not ridiculous) office setting. That these characters could be a slightly stretched form of reality.
But “Jury Duty” was different. It took us back to that Office we used to know. It reunited us with the characters we love, with the kind of jokes we crave. And it made the entire series worth taking another look at.