‘The Office’s Jim Halpert Sucks, There I Said It
Let’s get this out of the way now: The Office is one of the best sitcoms (if not the best) of the early 2000s. John Krasinski’s Jim Halpert is also one of The Office’s most likable characters, and you can’t help but root for Jim and Pam (Jenna Fischer) to make it. That being said, Jim was also a selfish jerk a lot of the time, and simply saying that is basically inviting fans of The Office to rip you apart, not unlike what Dwight (Rainn Wilson) did to that CPR dummy. Sure, compared to all the others he works with like Michael Scott (Steve Carell), Dwight, Angela (Angela Kinsey), and pretty much everyone else, Jim is the “normal” one, the everyman like the audience. When he looks into the camera and gives us wide eyes or shrugged shoulders, he was often expressing what we at home were, too. But because of all this, Jim looks even worse whenever he did wrong, and sadly, he did a lot of wrong in the nine seasons of The Office.
Jim Halpert Teased Dwight and Andy Too Much on ‘The Office’
If Jim and Pam were the couple everyone was rooting for on The Office, then Jim and Dwight were the enemies we loved to laugh at. While Dwight is just redeemable enough for fans to like him, he is also a pretty awful person. He lives in his own world of self-importance, thinking he is smarter and better than everyone else. He is a suck-up to Michael, making him explode at times, but whenever Dwight does have a chance to shine, he usually fails. Regardless, Jim pranks him relentlessly, from that first prank of putting Dwight’s stapler in Jello, to dressing up and acting exactly like him. Jim even went so far as to use Morse code to trick Dwight into thinking there was a bomb in the office, or slamming his brakes to make Dwight hit his head in the backseat.
Jim gets away with it because he is portrayed as the “nice guy” harmlessly fighting back against the mean bully, but in actuality, it was Jim who was the bully. Dwight would do something to annoy him, and in response Jim would prank him, often to an extreme level. For a sitcom, it’s hilarious, but in real life it would be seen as needlessly cruel. It’s obvious Dwight has issues and insecurities, but Jim keeps exposing them and pushing Dwight further away from the path of sanity. The best way to handle Dwight would have been to simply ignore him. That doesn’t work for a sitcom, but Jim’s response as a result is what makes him the real jerk. And if that’s not bad enough, he often gets Pam to help him. He enjoys belittling Dwight so much that he wants to share it, despite the fact that Dwight respects Pam.
When Jim begins working with Andy (Ed Helms), Halpert seems all too happy to begin pranking him as well. This started after Jim transfers out of Dunder Mifflin Scranton. Dwight’s not there anymore, but with Andy (someone more gregarious, but just as frustrating as Dwight), Jim is far to eager to terrorize him too, and to get his new friend Karen (Rashida Jones) to join him. When Dunder Mifflin’s Stamford branch closes, Jim returns to his old stomping grounds and Andy is forced to get acclimated to his new office environment. In what had to have been a scary transition, Jim takes his pranks too far by hiding Andy’s phone in the ceiling and refusing to give it back, no matter how much Andy begins to fall apart and beg. It leads to Andy snapping and punching a hole in wall, resulting in him being forced a way for a while for anger management. Jim did that to him.
Jim Pursued Pam Beesly on ‘The Office’ When She Was Still With Roy
The will-they-won’t-they of Jim and Pam is charming and one of the main reasons why they are one of TV’s best, most timeless couples. The two have great chemistry and thankfully get together in the end, but how they got there isn’t exactly ideal. In the early episodes of The Office, Jim pines for Pam. He’s madly in love and she doesn’t even know it. There’s nothing Jim can do about it though, as she’s engaged to another man named Roy (David Denman). Yes, Roy is absolutely awful, a self-centered prick who treats Pam horribly, but who she puts up with because she has no self-confidence. We want Pam and Roy to break up, we want Pam to be with Jim, who respects her and is fascinated by everything about her.
When Jim confesses his love for Pam in Season 2, there’s nothing wrong with that. He does it in private, and he’s not mean and pushy about it. It’s something he has to get off his chest because he can’t go the rest of his life not saying it. It’s a beautiful moment, but also a heartbreaking one when Pam rejects him. So what does Jim do? He waits a few minutes, then finds Pam, walks right up to her, and kisses her passionately on the lips. She’s an engaged woman who just shot him down, and he ignores it, kissing her without consent. Yes, Pam kissed him back, but to kiss a taken woman who just rejected you speaks to how Jim only cares about his own feelings.
Rashida Jones’ Karen Filippelli Didn’t Deserve Jim’s Bad Behavior
Pam does grow some self-confidence soon after. She doesn’t leave Roy for Jim, but instead decides to be on her own. It’s a smart move, but instead of Jim accepting that and being understanding, he instead transfers out of Scranton. He’s unable to face his pain and work to earn Pam’s trust, so he bails on her, leaving his heartbroken and lonely best friend behind. When Jim transfers to the Stamford branch of Dunder Mifflin, he meets Karen Filippelli. Karen is no “Karen,” a mean woman who will only make us pine for Jim and Pam to be together even more, but a kind and good soul. She’s happy and funny and quickly falls for Jim. She’s good to him, but Jim never fully gives his all to her because he’s still in love with Pam. (Let’s also not forget the way he treated Amy Adams’ character on the show, either.)
