The Office used to be the funniest and sharpest Thursday-night show in NBC's arsenal; now, it's getting its comedic arse kicked every week by surrounding sitcoms Community, Parks & Recreation and 30 Rock. Has the suddenly-kinda-dark Office become the modern corporate mirror of ... Mad Men? ---
Uh, no--but the all-too-real shadow of the economic times is playing out big-time in the current season of The Office. As the lone branch of the Dunder-Mifflin paper company that actually made money (?!), it somehow survived a corporate meltdown and has now been bought by a mysterious outfit called Sabre (that's Say-ber, not Sob-ray, as Michael and the rest of the Scranton branch believed). Aside from resistance to even the smallest changes (Michael would rather keep using 20 paper cups a day for water instead of switching to a more-green Sabre aluminum beverage container) and Michael's realization, after seeing the home-bound zombie his old D-M hero David Wallace has become, that keeping his job is at least as good an idea as pretending to save the planet, not much funny in last night's episode.Certainly nothing as good as Kickpuncher on Community.
The best bit from last night's Office: A corporate-orientation video starring Christian Slater (as Christian Slater) and Kathy Bates (not as Kathy Bates):