They'll officially "Jump The Shark" when they bring in their cute kid to say funny things who ages 3 years between seasons.

Yeah, it's hard to say the wedding is a JTS moment when the romance/romantic tension between them has been a part of the show since the first season.

A wedding is a JTS moment when it's completely out of character for what made the show good, e.g. if Jerry and Elaine got married on Seinfeld.

20ag07 and Worm01,

You make valid points about Jim's career progression. But like you said, we don't see serious Jim in action very often. Especially if you cath up with the show through re-runs like I have. I've never seen the episode where Jim admits he has to get more serious. So for me his transformation to being a mature and serious boss last week seemed a little too quick.

I also have to ask if the tension from the last episode with the raises will still be there during the wedding. Everyone seemed pretty upset in that episode and it wouldn't make sense if they weren't still upset in at least the beginning of the wedding episode. Maybe Jim and Pam's happiness will bring everyone together or at least make them forget. But I feel it should at least be mentioned or addressed or last week's episode will seem worthless to me in the overall season.

it's sad because the wedding signals the network is admitting that the show is winding down.

they're right though, the show is on its way out.

I would imagine NBC would do all it can to keep the Office going. They have absolutely no sitcoms even close to the quality of the Office. In fact, the Office is their only non-football related show in the top 25 for ratings.

http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/09/29/tv-ratings-sunday-night-football-house-win-week-with-adults-18-49-ncis-ncis-los-angeles-with-total-viewers/28905#more-28905

I realize it is early in the tv season, and most of those are premiers, but what else in NBC's schedule is going to crack the top 25?

30rock.

[This message has been edited by J Peterman (edited 10/6/2009 2:43p).]

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WestTxAg06
posted 11:07a, 10/06/09



Yeah, it's hard to say the wedding is a JTS moment when the romance/romantic tension between them has been a part of the show since the first season.

A wedding is a JTS moment when it's completely out of character for what made the show good, e.g. if Jerry and Elaine got married on Seinfeld.

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you're wrong. plenty of shows faced "JTS" moments when trying to decide whether or not to have characters with long term romantic tension finally hook up (from good tv like cheers, to average tv like moonlighting to bad tv like who's the boss). that said, i agree with 2007ag that for the office, this wedding isn't a JTS moment.

I do not see the problem here. Like many others have said, there is not much going on that is out of character for any of these people.

1) Early Jim stated that if Dunder Mifflin became his career, he would jump in front of a train. Then he came back from the other branch as the #2 guy at Scranton. This is when he made a small attempt to stop messing with Dwight. He then took over for Michael one day and cancelled the endless string of birthday parties (unpopular just like his pay increase plan). David Wallace, like Jan before him, has always known Jim was capable of more. Now he has a family starting, and was promoted.

2) Jim and Pam had an unspoken love for each other back in season 1. When Pam's mom visited the office on sexual harassment day, she asked, "Which one is Jim?" implying that Pam talks about him too. The timing for them to both be single finally came about in the season 3 finale, and they are now getting married in season 6.

3) Michael has always been selfish. Think back to when he had to pick a health insurance plan for the company, or changed the Christmas party format in season 2. There was also his birthday party where he tried to send home Kevin, who was waiting to find out if he had cancer, because he was bringing the party mood down. Nothing he does now is different than it was in the old days.

I actually think the strangest story arc for a character is Ryan. He went from temp, to salesman, to VP, to fired, to temp, to Thailand, to salesman, back to temp.

Yeah the birthday party episode was the worst behavior of Michael's career. His antics this season don't even compare to that, because there was a serious health issue involved there and he was trying to get rid of it so he could enjoy his party.

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I've never seen the episode where Jim admits he has to get more serious.

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Survivor Man and Benihana Christmas come to mind off the top of my head. There are others as well.

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I also have to ask if the tension from the last episode with the raises will still be there during the wedding. Everyone seemed pretty upset in that episode and it wouldn't make sense if they weren't still upset in at least the beginning of the wedding episode. Maybe Jim and Pam's happiness will bring everyone together or at least make them forget. But I feel it should at least be mentioned or addressed or last week's episode will seem worthless to me in the overall season.

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Well, the first episode of this season had Michael essentially ruining Stanley's marriage, and Stanley in turn trashing his car. Nothing about that has been mentioned since, and Stanley is still at work every day. They do this from time to time. It's kind of Simpsons-ish.

Weren't there two parts to Benihana Christmas? I know I've seen both so I guess just missed Jim stating that. I guess for me I just came to like Jim as the slacker/prankster guy.

Good point with Stahnley trashing Michael's car. So I guess they can do whatever they want.

I enjoy the show and hope it goes on for awhile. I just hope they don't take it farther than it should. It almost seems as if this season would be the perfect time to wrap it up and let it go.

Many of their story lines are for only one episode.

Benihana Christmas was originally an hour-long episode, but it gets split into two episodes for reruns.

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I just hope they don't take it farther than it should. It almost seems as if this season would be the perfect time to wrap it up and let it go.

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NBC will run this show long past it's death. It's the one commercial bright spot left on it's schedule and is a dream for advertisement sales for 2 reasons:

1) It's on Thursday- one of the nights were ad rates are the highest, primarily due to movie advertisements for the upcoming weekend.

2) It's also the richest skewing show on TV. It's index among young adults (18-49) in households making >$100K is 159, meaning a viewer watching the Office is 59% more likely to be "upscale" than a viewer of the average show. Young rich people are advertiser's target demo, and they'll pay a premium to get them.
http://www.thewrap.com/ind-column/eat-rich-abc-dominates-upper-income-demos-7998

The second fact alone, combined with the fact that NBC is going down the tubes, means they will try to get at several more seasons than they should out of this thing. I'd put money it has at least 4 more seasons on the air, regardless of quality level.

Jim's professional development is hardly anything new. In Conflict Resolution, he posted Dwight's resume online as an attempt to get him out of Scranton. During a session moderated by Michael, Jim listens to all his pranks played http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq4Rl2DS9rk&feature=related[/url] and realizes that they are actually quite pointless. Afterward he reconciles with Dwight and they come to the consensus that the job his resume was posted for was actually a good opportunity. With the fun of pranking Dwight gone and Pam's impending marriage, Jim realizes that he has no future in Scranton and interviews with Jan for a promotion.

At Stamford, there are several bits about Jim looking up to and wanting to be more like Josh.

In Benihana Christmas, Jim is struggling with his new role as the #2. He feels he shouldn't abuse his position to prank his coworkers underneath him, and refuses an opportunity presented by Pam. However, at Benihana's Jim tricks Dwight into explaining to the waitress how to correctly slaughter geese. Realizing that there is little difference in this and the opportunity presented by Pam, he convinces Dwight that the CIA needs him to destroy his cell phone. Additionally, in a serious moment Jim mentors Michael about rebounding from being dumped, which is oddly parallel to advice Michael gave Jim on the Booze Cruise.

In Survivor Man, Jim is left in charge of the office while Michael turns his pants into a tent and then back into pants again. He struggles with the leadership position and finds that as simple a thing as getting birthday cake can cause big issues. The episode ends with Michael returning and resolving the crisis Jim created. In this, Jim realizes that Michael was actually once a whole lot like him and that alot of Michael's antics are more useful than they appear.

There are plenty of more instances of Jim displaying a professional side.

[This message has been edited by Bobcat06 (edited 10/6/2009 11:41p).]

i'm pretty sure i read somewhere that there's going to be at least 8 seasons

I saw Jim as out of character in this last episode. It was solidifed when he did the "rewind dance" after announcing that only the salesmen would get a raise. It was very Michael-esque. Jim has always been strong and not intimidated.

Although, this is exactly how he acted when Charles was running the office at the end of last season. He was like a little kid trying to make Dadddy notice him. But he was doing it very self demeaningly.

I thought both of these character developments were out of character and not followed thru on.

Out of character, yes, but I think that's on purpose. Remember, Michael has said at least once that he used to be like Jim, when he said the same thing as Jim about never having thought he'd stay at Dunder Mifflin.

I think it's showing sort of how Michael became Michael, or just how Jim can at first think he knows the right thing to do, but when it's unpopular, he reacts in a very Michael way, because that's what he's seen.

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I saw Jim as out of character in this last episode. It was solidifed when he did the "rewind dance" after announcing that only the salesmen would get a raise.

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That's called a joke... Jim made a very Michael move, then purposefully attempted to take a Michael approach to getting out of it when his move failed miserably.

Tough crowd.

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It was solidifed when he did the "rewind dance" after announcing that only the salesmen would get a raise. It was very Michael-esque. Jim has always been strong and not intimidated.

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He did the same sort of things in Survivor Man. This is nothing new.

I suspect we will see a very "Michael" interview segment from Jim in the future.

Bobcat -

Again, some of us have not watched the show from the beginning and have relied on reruns. We haven't seen every episode. Therefore, we can't go back and recall every word said or situation because we haven't seen all of them. Impressive research, but it doesn't help those who are new to the show or haven't seen it all.

Alan Sepinwall, TV's best critic, on why this isn't a "jump the shark moment".

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There has been a school of thought in TV for a few decades now that any show built around Unresolved Sexual Tension (UST for brevity's sake in the rest of this post) will be ruined the second the UST gets resolved and the couple gets together.

This school of thought is misguided at best, idiotic and self-destructive at worst.

The theory is based on the idea that "Moonlighting" died as soon as David and Maddie got together, but as I've pointed out in the past, and as Linda Holmes did a good job of summarizing recently, that's completely incorrect. By the time David and Maddie got together for real, "Moonlighting" was already dead. If anything, I'd argue the show might have kept some of the viewers who wound up fleeing if they had just given everybody a David/Maddie relationship earlier, since the comic dynamic between the two characters would have been about the same.

And before there was "Moonlighting," there was "Cheers," which put together its own UST couple, Sam and Diane, by the end of its first season with no one objecting. Now, "Cheers" would spend the next four seasons frequently breaking those two up and putting them back together, but the writers never artificially tried to delay a hook-up because they felt the audience wasn't ready for it yet.

But because of The "Moonlighting" Fallacy, far too many TV writers and executives have come to believe that resolution=doom. "NewsRadio" creator Paul Simms more or less destroyed his relationship with NBC by having Dave and Lisa sleep together in the show's second episode - they wanted him to tease it out forever, so they'd have an angle to promote - even though he wound up getting several seasons of material out of their affair.

"Ed" was a show more or less destroyed by its belief in The Moonlighting Fallacy. Its creators were so terrified of having Ed and Carol Vessey hook up long-term that they kept throwing one increasingly stupid obstacle after another in front of them. That show betrayed two separate misunderstandings of "Moonlighting." Beyond the obvious one, it ignored the fact that Dave and Maddie, like Sam and Diane, were interesting as a UST couple because they were so seemingly incompatible, yet had an irresistible attraction for each other. Chemistry aside, they made each other miserable and probably shouldn't have been together (and Sam and Diane ultimately weren't), so the constant delaying made sense on some level, even if the show dragged it out too long. Ed and Carol, on the other hand, were two perfectly nice people who got along well and had common interests and temperaments. There were no sparks when they fought, and no logical reason for them to not be together once they were both unattached, and the increasingly-contrived reasons to keep them apart made that show's middle seasons more or less unwatchable. In the final season, they were together, and the show just treated their relationship as a fact of life while telling other, more amusing stories, but by then too many viewers had left out of impatience.

Which brings me to Jim and Pam. Because it took "The Office" writers a while to figure out how to write for their main character, Jim's yearning for Pam quickly became the show's ongoing hook, and the subject of many an NBC promo. (NBC loves to promote its comedies as if they were soap operas.) And based on previous experience, I feared Greg Daniels and company were going to drag out their inevitable coupling beyond all good reason.

And though it took until the end of the third season (really, the end of the second, since season one was only six episodes) for them to get together as a for-real couple, the waiting period never felt forced. Pam was in a relationship with Roy (inspired by the Dawn/Lee relationship from the British show), and then when by the time she wasn't, Jim was plausibly so hurt by her rejection that he moved to Connecticut, and into a relationship with Karen, and the writers mined some good comic and dramatic tension from Pam and Karen having to work together. It felt real, and it felt right.

More importantly, in the two-plus seasons since Jim and Pam started dating, then got engaged, then began preparing for a baby, "The Office" has not been ruined. Jim and Pam didn't stop being funny, or interesting, just because they were together and happy, nor did they begin to dominate the show. There was good material about their (understandable) desire to keep things a secret from their co-workers, and we've seen the staff either resent or make jokes about their relationship, and we've even seen on occasion Pam and Jim competing with each other in spite of their one true love.

And that's why I'm not worried that they'll suddenly become boring after they're married, or after the baby comes. Anyone who's been in a long-term relationship knows there are plenty of things about it to make fun of, and plenty that's dramatic. Keeping two meant-to-be characters apart for a long time isn't just misguided, it's lazy. It's born of the belief that anticipation is always more interesting than fulfillment, or that getting together is the destination, rather than a continuing part of the journey.

So I'll be very happy to watch the wedding episode tonight, not just because I've become attached to these two kooky, fictional kids, but because I hope some writers of future TV series are watching, and taking notes, and thinking, "Hey, maybe I don't need to keep my two many characters separate forever and ever and ever."

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http://www.nj.com/entertainment/tv/index.ssf/2009/10/the_office_why_jim_and_pams_we.html

That about sums up my thinking without seeing the episode yet.

Jim and Pam's relationship was natural and typical progression. The marriage isn't forced, it seems along the same timeline as most people. The show isn't pulling a stunt for ratings.

They've also been a couple for most of show. If they continued to stretch things out, it would be forced and silly. The New York sabbatical was nice tension, but that's the only 'gimmick' the writers have played.

I predict this will be one of top 5 Office episodes ever, full of belly laughs and some poignant moments.

Since I've turned into a huge sap I'm fully prepared to cry

THis might be the worst Office episode ever.

I've laughed pretty hard in some parts of this episode

The howling at the moon shirt from amazon that got all the attention!! Priceless

I laughed when Andy tore his scrotum as well

Genius!

This was a pretty fair episode, but Dwight kicking that bridesmaid in the face was great.

I thought it was one of the top 3 or so from the last year....lots better than I thought an hour wedding episode would be. Lots of "old Office" humor.

I thought that it was an awesome episode. I had actually seen the youtube video so it made it even better. Great show.

this new season has exponentially helped this show.

after last season, i thought the show was done for. now, not so much