The Office: “Roy’s Wedding”

When Scrubs entered its eighth season, a season that creator Bill Lawrence expected to be its last, the show took a step back from its characters and took the length of the series’ run into account. Rather than continuing the same storylines from the previous season, Lawrence had the characters confront the fact that they were now well into their medical careers, no longer the young doctors they were when the series began. The characters’ retrospection was paired with a return to the basic storylines that defined the show early in its run, a return to form for a show that had fallen off the rails.
“Roy’s Wedding” is a continuation of last week’s focus on Jim and Pam’s relationship, something that The Office let fall into a holding pattern last season. Whereas their wedding or the birth of their first child were logical milestones for a relationship that was central to the series’ early seasons, the second child felt like an afterthought, and whatever qualities made their relationship so memorable had disappeared. Last week, though, Greg Daniels’ script reiterated that the fictional camera crew/audience surrogates are there to follow Jim and Pam as much as they’re interested in the office, and Jim’s decision to enter into a partnership with his friend behind Pam’s back is the first legitimate point of tension in some time (provided you don’t count the ridiculous flirtations of the magically disappearing Kathy, which I don’t).
In “Roy’s Wedding,” the series offers a meta-commentary not unlike that seen on Scrubs, as Jim and Pam realize that they have no excitement or surprise left in their lives. Pam fully expects Roy’s wedding to be a reflection of the man she once knew, and yet Roy now appreciates finer foods, owns a sizable home after opening a gravel company, and has learned to play piano to serenade his wife. Pam expected him to stay the same because she’s stayed the same, settled into a life with Jim that she loves even if it carries no surprises. Jim and Pam spend the rest of the episode testing their relationship, which is incredibly strong on one level—not all spouses would know or remember so much about one another—but lacks spark on another.
It’s the couple’s strongest storyline in a long time, and it’s also giving the show the kind of arc structure it lacked last season; heck, it’s even retroactively giving last season meaning, with Jim and Pam’s boring storylines now becoming a period within their larger arc (which was underserved, and often outright ignored, in season eight). No matter how cynical I might be about other parts of the show, I’m too invested in Jim and Pam as characters to not respond to this new characterization, one that asks big questions the show seemed too chicken to ask over the past few years. Greg Daniels may not be launching a direct critique of the seasons following his departure from playing an active role in the day-to-day running of his series, but he’s certainly utilizing the devolution of Jim and Pam’s relationship as a launching point for its return, working to call attention to the passage of time and how it would change someone like Roy and how it hasn’t seemed to change Jim and Pam in the same way. As a viewer who has always been more invested in the dramatic side of the show than others, Jim’s decision to keep his new job a secret and the introspective (for the characters) and retrospective (for the audience) qualities of the storyline are resulting in the strongest emotional connection I’ve felt with the show since Steve Carell’s departure.
That being said, though, the episode also built some nice humor around their revelations. Jim and Pam largely remain straight man and straight woman within the office dynamic, but there’s a nice collection of character moments like Toby creepily knowing details about Pam’s childhood crushes or Oscar choking on his coffee after Angela suggests the (State) Senator still has a sense of mystery. By allowing Jim and Pam to serve as the point of dramatic interest, the rest of the characters are loosened up to simply riff off of one another, a dynamic that felt bogged down by Andy’s ascension to the leadership position last season. This storyline was designed to evoke the show’s past, but it was also written in a way to allow those qualities to shine through despite the elapsed time, building on the strong foundational elements introduced for Jim and Pam in the premiere.
Of course, the reason Jim and Pam’s storyline worked so nicely is that the show’s two largest problems were isolated in other storylines with minimal interaction. Nellie is a character without purpose, left to flail about for reasons that remain entirely unclear. I like Catherine Tate in the role, and in all honesty, I liked parts of Nellie as a character last season, but her crusade to win people over with charity is aimless. That she eventually somehow works her way into a situation where Dwight is bound by Taliban law to chop off her hand is the kind of ludicrous storyline that people who didn’t watch the episode will believe I made up, and yet despite its political overtones it’s too slight to make any sort of impact. Despite Tate’s best efforts, as I thought her performance was rather subtle and charming compared to some of her past work on the show, there just wasn’t enough substance to give Nellie a sense of purpose or identity. Whereas Jim and Pam’s storyline is offering new meaning to previous failings, Nellie’s role in the ninth season seems like a leftover idea that the writers didn’t have the heart to get rid of. The result is harmless but lifeless comedy, a C-story that just puts two characters together and believes that to be sufficient plot development.
There is more evidence of the show trying to develop something of substance in the storyline surrounding Erin’s fake news audition for Clark, but it has to contend with the insufferable new version of Andy. I had my issues with Andy’s characterization last season, which was trying too hard to fit the character into the Michael Scott-sized hole in the series, but this version is just unappealing. I’m open to arguments this is more in line with the series’ cringe humor signature, but the character isn’t cringe-worthy so much as plain unlikeable. This has always been part of Andy’s character, but for his naïve optimism to so quickly bleed away in favor of selfish opportunism has proven to be a bad case of whiplash. The show still feels like it’s in search of a happy medium between the characters different personalities, and this particular version of Andy made it difficult to imagine a scenario where I will have any interest in the character by the end of the series.