While watching last ...
Question: While watching last Thursday's Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant-penned episode of
The Office, I finally figured out one of the reasons why the show has been so good lately. When the show premiered, pretty much everyone agreed that the Michael and Dwight characters were the weak links out of the four leads. While Steve Carell steadily improved, Rainn Wilson continued to play like he's in a cartoon. Now along comes Ed Helms (Andy), who in my mind completes the quartet. By maintaining the right balance between annoying and entertaining, he blows Wilson out of the water. Plus, he has the same kind of little brother/big brother relationship with Jim that their British counterparts had. It almost seems like there are two Dwights now, and I prefer the new one. I say, get rid of Wilson.
Answer: It would hardly be a surprise for me to admit that I prefer Ed Helms' frat-boy spin on an unctuous suck-up buffoon over anything Rainn Wilson does as Dwight, but that doesn't mean I'd expect the show to dump one for the other. Let's not fool ourselves. I stand behind my opinion on the Dwight characterization — many weeks, he completely throws me out of the reality of this otherwise brilliantly crafted comedy. But I also know that I'm in the minority of
Office fans, who seem to consider him the second coming of Kramer (albeit without the personal off-camera psychosis, let's hope).
