‘The Office’ Turns 15 Years Old Today
Time for Dwight to pull out his “It is your birthday.” banner — NBC’s beloved workplace sitcom The Office turns 15 years old today. Filled with empathetic, quotable characters and laugh-out-loud situational comedy, The Office has since amassed a passionate fanbase across the country.
Once upon a time, The Office was a much different show. Hailing from British comedians Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the original version of The Office was much drier in tone. Running from 2001 to 2003 and winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Comedy Television Series, the British Office laid the groundwork for the American phenomenon that was soon to come. Greg Daniels’ remake of The Office debuted on NBC March 24, 2005, keeping the same mockumentary-style structure as the original but removing much of its bleakness.
The show’s stellar ensemble cast includes Steve Carrell as regional manager Michael Scott, Rainn Wilson as paper salesman Dwight Shrute, John Krasinski as smart aleck employee Jim Halpert, and Jenna Fischer as shy receptionist Pam Beesly. Other famous Dunder Mifflin alumni include Mindy Kaling, Rashida Jones, and Ellie Kemper.
In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and strict social distancing orders, there’s no better time to revisit favorite television shows that make us smile. While many of us have already re-watched The Office (or even re-re-watched it), pop on an episode today in Michael Scott’s honor. All 9 seasons of The Office are available for streaming on Netflix.
1. How I Met Your Mother – The Mother Was Dead All Along
Let’s be real; the How I Met Your Mother creators had only so much of the series planned in the initial pitch. And as time went on, fans would naturally question Bob Saget’s “Future Ted” telling his kids all about life in the city with Barney, Marshall, Lily and “Aunt Robin,” without ever hearing the mother’s perspective. The natural presumption was that Ted wanted to comfort the kids after their mother’s passing (why else would they sit on that couch for nine years?), but stranger still was the actual ending circling back to validate another bonkers theory from years’ past. Where Cristin Milioti’s Season 9 arrival dispelled theories Robin might somehow turn out the title character, the story really was all about her all along. Ted only talked up Robin so his kids would accept him running back to his old girlfriend after the real mother’s death a few years prior. Yeesh.
2. The Good Place – This Is The Bad Place!
No one necessarily knew The Good Place would leap from pleasant afterlife comedy to Machiavellian mindfork, but eagle-eyed fans caught at least a few clues. Both Eleanor and Jason made early allusion to the fact that they were either “in an alien zoo, or on a prank show,” while Chidi’s repeat anxiety and stomachaches called attention to the oddity of human suffering in Heaven. Best of all, Janet’s inability to lie offered abstract interpretations of her comments about the neighborhood, and sneaky second meaning to her refusal to discuss The Bad Place with Eleanor and Chidi.
3. Sherlock – The Third Holmes Sibling
Sherlock creator Steven Moffat has a … “complicated” relationship with fans, having repeatedly trolled explanations of Sherlock’s survival in Season 3. It’s fair to say that fan-fervor nudged him toward what little explanation we got, just as obsessive theories of a “third Holmes brother” led to Season 4 subverting that with Sherlock and Mycroft’s sister, Eurus. To be fair, Sherlock did make vague references to “the other one” of the Holmes family, as well as a non-canonical “Sherrinford” (many even anticipating Tom Hiddleston in the role). What really tipped viewers was the unwillingness to use male pronouns, as well as the show’s habit of skewing Sherlock’s childhood memories. No one necessarily guessed “Eurus is a mad, violin-playing super-genius who can control men by talking to them,” but by the time mysterious new women kept popping up in John Watson’s life, fans were very much anticipating the big reveal.
4. This Is Us – Jack Isn’t Alive in the Present
Boy, the pilot episode of This Is Us dropped a bomb whose wreckage we’ve been sorting ever since. Once we knew that Jack and Rebecca’s storyline took place in the past, it was only a matter of time before we caught up with Kevin, Kate and Randall’s parents in the present, old-age makeup and all. That said, the elder Rebecca marrying Jack’s friend Miguel set off immediate alarm bells for the family patriarch’s present absence, and viewers were well ahead when episode 5 revealed Jack as an urn on Kate’s mantle. We still have 8,000 other questions about Jack’s death, but this one was a no-brainer.
5. Mr. Robot – Elliot Was Secretly in Prison All Season 2
All too often, series predicated on first-season twists leave fans laser-focused on unraveling the second. Such was unfortunately the case with Mr. Robot, a series whose unreliable narrator and focus on the computer-savvy underground begged to be torn apart by Reddit. And while the first season reveal of Mr. Robot’s true identity wasn’t meant as some grand shock, Season 2’s attempt to obscure Elliot’s imprisonment was arguably apparent from the first episode. It wasn’t just that fans were eager to spot the twist, but also that logistics of Elliot’s isolation never added up. Even if he’d tried to distance himself from the hacker life by living at home with his mother, why would visitors like Darlene or Gideon appear one at a time, sitting at the same kitchen table under supervision? Why was Elliot allowed only sporadic calls from a wall-mounted phone, and why eat lunch at the same diner (with no waiters?) three times a day? Even if eagle-eyed viewers couldn’t discern the exact nature of Elliot’s incarceration, Season 2’s attempt to keep up the ruse over an extended run weighed heavily.
6. Doctor Who – Missy Is The Master
Rumors of The Master’s return swirled long before Peter Capaldi made his Doctor Who debut in Season 8, but it didn’t take long to sniff out something amiss with “Missy.” Michelle Gomez made her early debut as “Gatekeeper of the Nethersphere,” whose odd habit of referring to The Doctor as her “boyfriend” belied at least some gender fixation. It wasn’t a huge leap from there to realize Steven Moffat’s affinity for wordplay could make “Missy” short for “Mistress,” a female inversion of “Master.” Bringing a gender-bent Master back in response to the absence of female Time Lords seemed like a perfectly Steven Moffat thing to do, and that was exactly the revelation we got in Season 8’s penultimate hour.
