Slate asks What’s wrong with _The Office, and correctly, I think, points to the hour-long format of the first few weeks. I’ve said this before, but comedy should be very compressed. Write an hour’s worth of jokes and then throw out the least funny half. A joke a minute is always preferable to one every other minute, or even a funny one and then a not funny one. The writing staff could easily be saving some of these subplots and germinating them into entire episodes. _Slate is dead wrong, though, in saying:
PB&J are a disappointment for those of us who saw the couple as a worthy successor to Ross and Rachel, NBC’s will-they-or-won’t-they couple of yore.
Friends was a great sitcom, but it’s as typical a sitcom as you can get. The Office is not a traditional sitcom. It has no laugh track, no three camera setup, and few easy double entendre jokes. The original BBC Office did the will-they-won’t-they plot perfectly with Tim and Dawn, and then wisely got them together after twelve episodes. Hollywood has a hard time grasping the concept that couples can be funny, too—and bad writing hasn’t helped over the years—but if any show can find humor in a steady couple, it’s The Office. They’re already doing it with Michael and Jan’s bizarre relationship.
On the topic, Rolling Stone provides a list of The 25 Greatest Moments from _The Office_. Good stuff, but 1) 25 moments? The show’s only been on three years, and the first season was a shortie; and 2) Dear God, they broke a “top 25” list down into five separate pages?