I think he just played himself.
Either way I'm considering dropping this show completely. More and more I'm coming around to your point of view that trying to stretch the humor over 25 episodes is just insane. Everything has to go your way for that to happen. I haven't enjoyed this season of the office at all and probably won't start up again next year. Carrell was too important and right now all the characters have gone off the deep end.
I'm also comparing and contrasting all the sitcoms I watch with Cheers as I have been slowly watching it from the pilot onwards. Haven't watched it in years, but the distance really makes you take notice of how great it is...and how long NBC has been trying to make ensemble comedies work. Cheers...man. What a great show. Each episode had a story, not a setup for a hilarious set piece. Though now I'm running over in my head other recent sitcoms that are great: Modern Family, Raising Hope, Better Off Ted....here's the real difference. The Office started as a parody of our lives, a way to get some catharsis about nutty co-workers and an unbearable boss. But over the years its turned more and more neurotic: every character (well, maybe not Creed) is fixated on a relationship, a position of power, or just being anti-someone else in the group. It's not that the characters have become caricatures of themselves, its that the writers have been lazy about setting up their motivations. So behind the laughs and pratfalls there's this uneasy, constant paranoia. If that was done on purpose and handled well, the show would be totally different and a kind of dark mirror for our own lives, but instead it's just a cubicle-shaped playground.
Guess I'm ranting now, but, really, think about the Office of the first few seasons where the characters aren't really fleshed out and discovering their idiosyncracies was a fun part for both the writers and the audience and even if the situations got farcical, Jim and Pam were there to keep us down to earth. Now, how's it been for the last two or three? Romantic or professional failure plays a prominent role in almost every episode, Jim and Pam have fully bought into the system, and Michael is constantly absolved even though his gaffes become more and more destructive. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the Office gives me a headache. It's like being shoved in a busy playroom for twenty minutes only the children are wearing ties. Bleah. I've just convinced myself to put this show on personal cancellation.
