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110 of 116 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hilarious, emotional, absurd, sweet -- and great on DVD, September 18, 2006
For new potential fans of "The Office," the DVD set of the break-out second season is a must-see. Start recording the third season now (premieres Sept. 21) and save those episodes, but don't watch them until you've watched the complete second season.
For devotees like myself, the DVD set is a just reward for loyal viewing. The show came into its own this year. I had watched fitfully until the stretch of episodes starting with "The Injury," "The Secret," and "The Carpet" hooked me for good. I am now going back to watch the whole season again and the shows hold up very well upon repeated viewing.
Strengths of the season: Steve Carell gets the award for Most Improved Characterization. It took about a dozen episodes (starting with 6 in the first season) for the show to settle on a tone for Carell's incompetent boss. For a while I wasn't sure what to make of him, which kept me from getting attached to the show. But this season he evolved from a mean jerk to a clueless, lonely man who really just wants everybody to be his friend. While the Michael Scott character still has plenty of totally inappropriate behavior and tons of cringe-worthy moments, his core of pathos and vulnerability humanizes him. I am even rooting for him to find love with Carol or Jan. As we saw this season, the fumbling results will surely be funny.
Now that Carell provides a solid anchor for the cast, the rest of the supporting actors can truly come into their own. From Rainn Wilson's complete dedication to the serious idiocy of office suck-up Dwight Schrute, to the smaller roles of wild-card Creed and eternally suffering temp Ryan, the ensemble has truly gelled.
And of course the slow-motion unfolding of Jim & Pam's romance provided the heart of the show throughout the season. Just about anyone over the age of 30 has been either Jim, Pam, or Roy at sometime in their life, and the bittersweet agony of the whole journey provided the summer's biggest cliffhanger. In my online poll to find the "Top Mom Crushes," both John Krasinski and Steve Carell have been nominated.
Finally, the DVD extras are truly great. The deleted scenes for each episode range from about 4 to 11 minutes and they are really funny. The discipline of 22 minutes works in the show's favor keep the stories tight, but the extra scenes are a worthy bonus for true fans.
This is a fantastic show, and a great DVD set. Even if you didn't watch the British version of the show (which I could never quite get into) give the American version of "The Office" a chance. What separates "The Office" from any other current "sitcom" is that much of the humor comes from what is left unsaid, rather than having a barrage of lame one-liners hitting viewers over the head. "The Office" is absurd, laugh-out-loud comedy with a heart--and if you are part of a couple, it's appointment TV that you can both love.
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28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An absolutely brilliant Season Two for what could well be the best comedy on TV, September 25, 2006
Warning: Some spoilers
Of all the half-hour comedy shows that I've ever seen, THE OFFICE is the one that I would have thought the least likely to be brilliant. The BBC original version of the show was a thing of genius. Trying to do an American version of it seemed to me to be akin to Andy Warhol doing a remake of Picasso's "Guernica." Watching the show in Season One I was astonished that it was not only not bad, but that it was in fact very good. Amazingly, in Season Two it became something utterly brilliant. Although I was a huge fan of the original show, I have to confess that the American show is every bit as good as the British original. It is the finest American adaptation of a British show since ALL IN THE FAMILY remade TIL DEATH DO US PART.
Two things make this a great show: the writing, which is persistently brilliant (though obviously aided by a great deal of improvisation on the set), and the cast, which is both talented and very deep. Steve Carrell at first was not completely at home in the role, failing to strike the right balance between an utter absurdity and being likable nonetheless. Ricky Gervais managed to get this perfect from the beginning and he was always someone viewers would find to be the world's biggest idiot while nonetheless inwardly rooting for things to work out for him. At first, Carrell was incredibly funny in the role, but he was not someone to feel much sympathy for. But as Season Two went on and some of his own insecurities were revealed, we came to understand that he was more aware of his own basic unlikability than his persistent bluster made clear. By the end of the season he was near perfect in the role and he fully deserved the Golden Globe he won. Nearly as many laughs were generated by his brown-nosing sycophant Dwight, played brilliantly by Rainn Wilson. But the heart of the show in Season Two was the obvious and endearing attraction between Pam (sweetly played by Jenna Fischer), who is engaged to marry a guy who works in the warehouse, and Jim Halpert (winningly played by Jon Krasinski). If the antics of Michael Scott dominated each individual episode, the non-romance between Jim and Pam dominated the season as a whole. The climax of the entire season comes in the final episode, when Jim confesses his love for Pam and they kiss, just before he transfers to the Stamford, Connecticut branch of the company. I have rarely seen so much anticipation over a summer for the start of a new season for a half-hour show as I did this one, with an army of fans of the show wondering how Pam and Jim would pick up in Season Three.
Although THE OFFICE started off fine in its first season, it got better and better throughout Season Two. Because it has already run for more episodes than the British original, it is beginning to exploit one advantage it has over it: the ability to develop more fully minor characters. In the second half of the season especially a number of characters who initially just took up space became known entities, such as Kelly, the Indian girl who is fixated on getting married and immediately having babies on the one hand and doing this with her coworker Ryan on the other. Or Creed, about whom we learn more and more odd details as the season goes along, culminating in the season finale where he informs us that he likes to steal things. (Creed, by the way, is played by Creed Bratton, who was a rock star in the sixties as lead guitarist for the famous group the Grassroots, which had a string of huge hits including "Midnight Confession" and "Let's Live for Today.") As we get to know the various members of the office and pick up on the intricate interplay between the various personalities, the show becomes more and more irresistible.
THE OFFICE follows a trend in the best American television comedy to move away from the situation comedies that has long dominated our comedy. Most shows have been shot in front of a live studio audience, filmed with three or more cameras, performing each scene more than once in order to have alternate takes for the final version. But wonderfully innovative shows like MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, and SCRUBS has abandoned the situation comedy format and opted for a more realistic format. Like ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, THE OFFICE takes on a documentary style, shooting the film on hand held video, which not only gives the show a more spontaneous feel, but avoids the expensive camera and lighting set ups that adds a lot of time to shooting. I think this is a great trend and I personally would love to see the live audience situation comedy disappear entirely.
With the unfortunate demise of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT (I still haven't recovered from that shock of its disappearance), THE OFFICE becomes the finest and most innovative comedy on American television (its only rival for the title being SCRUBS). There are still a few diehard fans of the BBC series that won't give this one a try. They should. It not only does great honor to the British show, it has become an absolutely wonderful show in its own right.
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Can't Wait for Season 3, August 27, 2006
I'm going to use this review as a forum to say Thank You to NBC for this absolute jewel of a show, and for finally giving your audience intelligent, introspective humor. Thank you to the ingenious writers for finding a style that manages to be engaging and smart while it's being silly. And thank you to every single one of these fantastic actors, who honestly make me believe they're in Scranton, PA, trudging through another day at Dunder-Mifflin as we speak. I didn't discover The Office until about midway through the second season, and I'm so glad I did. It feels so good to have 30 minutes of belly laughs every week at "The Office".
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