Kill Jim and Pam

“The Office” sucks. And this is all the more unfortunate because it used to be one of the best shows on TV. 

Instead of being a poignant – and more importantly, funny – commentary on the absurdity of the modern workplace, it has disintegrated into an artless, endless romantic comedy focusing on the relationship between two uninteresting and increasingly self-righteous coworkers, Jim and Pam.

When their never-ending game of cat-and-mouse started somewhere way back in season two, it was a kind of cute distraction from what the show was supposed to be about: making fun of how America goes to work. 

Well, I’m here to inform you of what all die-hard fans of the original seasons of the American “Office” already know: The Jim and Pam saga has gotten unreasonably corny.

I’m tired of the show focusing on Pam’s spineless mousiness and Jim’s complacent apathy and laziness. Enough with the furtive glances back and forth across the office. Enough with the shared smug smirks with each other about how stupid their fellow coworkers are. We don’t care.

How the show’s main protagonists switched from Steve Carell’s character to two nobody actors, I don’t know.

Perhaps it was an attempt to make the characters of the show more likeable. If so, the producers need to stop it; half the point of the show is that Americans spend vast amounts of time at their workplace with people that they have nothing in common with and really can’t stand.

It’s fine if they end up being likeable in the end, but that shouldn’t be the goal of the show.

Personally, I wouldn’t hang out with any of the show’s characters, except for maybe Creed, who should probably have a show of his own. The writers and producers need to stop trying to make us like the characters just for the sake of humanizing them, because they clearly fail at that.

What makes “The Office” so great is that it shows us how modern office work isn’t about what the producers have tried to make it; rather, the modern workplace is often dehumanizing and bizarre.

“The Office” should get back to being about this.

The irony of this situation is that it was the Jim-Pam relationship that made the show so popular and successful with a widespread audience, but at this point it has spiralled completely out of control and is now threatening the show’s future.

If the producers want “The Office” to stay one of the most popular shows on television, they need to quickly conclude this unfortunate saga and bring the show back to the roots we love.  

For humor’s sake, kill Jim and Pam. Or at least make them less annoyingly central to the plot of what once was the best show on TV.