The Office: #22 -- "The Surplus"

22) The Surplus

Season 5, Episode 10

Every Thursday during the final season of The Office, I'll be counting down the best episodes of the series' previous eight seasons. Follow me on Twitter @StiglitzMovies to see my thoughts on the ninth and final season. Below are links to previous entries in this retrospective.

Intro

50-25

24 - "The Deposition"

23 - "A Benihana Christmas"

Pre-Title Sequence:

In the cold open – which ties in with the A-story –Oscar tries to explain to Michael about an office surplus that must be spent at the end of the day or it will be deducted from next year’s budget. Michael, not sure how this actually works (Carell does a great job of looking totally confused), asks Oscar to explain it to him as if he were eight years old. When Michael still doesn’t get it, he asks Oscar to explain it to him as if he were five. Oscar tries to convince Michael that the office needs a new copy machine, but Michael remains confused about the surplus.

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The Office: #23 -- "A Benihana Christmas"

23) "A Benihana Christmas"

Season 3, Episode 10

Every Thursday during the final season of The Office, I'll be counting down the best episodes of the series' previous eight seasons. Follow me on Twitter @StiglitzMovies to see my thoughts on the ninth and final season. Below are links to previous entries in this retrospective.

Intro

50-25

24 - "The Deposition"

Pre-Title Sequence:

Dwight brings in a dead goose declaring it a “Christmas miracle.” Toby’s reaction (“Dwight, we’ve talked about this…”) is great, and I’m always a fan of Dwight when he’s trying to do something nice for the office but remains socially inept as he’s completely unaware of how ridiculous (or in this case, kind of disgusting) his nice gesture comes across as.

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The Office: #24 -- "The Deposition"

 

24) "The Deposition"

Season 4, Episode 12

  

Every Thursday during the final season of The Office, I'll be counting down the best episodes of the series' previous eight seasons. Follow me on Twitter @StiglitzMovies to see my thoughts on the ninth and final season. 

Pre-Title Sequence:

Pam explains that Michael once received a message while he was in a meeting and told Pam that he’d call them back. Since then, Michael has always wanted to relive that moment, so he tells Pam to interrupt him whenever he’s in a meeting with a note so he can say, “I’ll call them right back.” Pam explains that he doesn’t get that many calls, so we get a montage of her bringing Michael random messages on post-it notes (my favorite being the little impressed look Jan gives the camera) until we see the plan backfire when Michael is in a meeting with super jerkass, VP Ryan, and when he tells Pam he’ll call the fake person back (this time in the guise of hot dog saying “hi buddy”), Ryan insists he takes the call. Cold Opens often have nothing to do with the main storyline and feel like little bits the writers pitch and love but struggle to find a place for, and this was a perfect example of one those amusing bits. 

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The Office: 50-25

My countdown of the 50 best episodes of The Office begins with a look at numbers 50-25. Starting Thursday, a new episode will be unveiled in conjunction with episodes from Season 9. Read the intro to this series here. This will just be a quick list with some quick thoughts on each episode listed. A more coherent format will begin on Thursday with individual selections. Enough yakkity yak yak, on with the list!

List after the jump...

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Goodbye, The Office

Blog Note: It’s been hard tracking down a copy of The Electric Horseman since it’s no longer available on Netflix Instant. The Pollack Retrospective will return shortly once I’ve corralled a copy of the film and can continue on. For the three of you reading it, I haven’t given up on it.

When NBC decided to finally pull the plug on The Office and make this upcoming season its final one, I knew I wanted to do some kind of retrospective on the show. However – as you can no doubt tell with all of these blog “projects” I “do” – I don’t really have the time to go through and do a retrospective proper, so I figure I would fall back on the simple list. Since there are a lot of great episodes of The Office, I figured a top 50 would suffice. So, when the new (and final) season starts up on September 20, I will post an episode per week until the series’ final episode. Look for selections 50-25 to be grouped into one post and then I’ll post each subsequent selection in conjunction with the airdate of the new episodes from the final season.  More thoughts on the series after the jump…

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The West Wing -- Season 5

TV fans are a funny folk; we have a tendency to revere certain writers and producers to the point where they become infallible. The worst of this bares itself out when should the writer/producer not continue to write for the show they helped create – and that show continues to produce new episodes under the guidance of another producer – we completely dismiss the show’s new voice. Perhaps I am describing you – I know I am describing me; it’s one of my biggest faults when it comes to getting invested in a television show. Perhaps I am not describing you, but it does seem that this does, to some extent, describe the fan of the Aaron Sorkin-penned/produced seasons of “The West Wing.”

What is easily one of the great television runs in modern history, Sorkin’s first three seasons (and part of the fourth) of an idealized, Capra-esque White House – and the staff that inhabited it – was always funny, rapid-paced, capable of sparking great discussion, and highly dramatic. Season one contains one of the great television theses on the death penalty (an amazing fete in how Sorkin tones down his liberalism and considers the hot-button topic from an array of points of view). Season two and three were so packed with great episodes that I often go back and forth deciding which season stands as my favorite. In season four, however,  Sorkin would write and produce (let us not forget about Thomas Schlamme who was just as important) his last season as his differences with the production company (read: Sorkin had a tendency to go over budget and take forever with his shoots) were getting so divisive that even though Sorkin cited season four as “a return to form,” he and Schlamme decided to split – leaving one of the best written shows in the history of television in the hands of the more-producer-than-writer John Wells. 

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Some Quick Thoughts on Justified, Season 2

Note: these are just my quick thoughts on the second season; this is not a recap of the season. So, I will be referring to characters without really going in-depth on who they are in the context of the series. In other words, this is full of spoilers and should only be read by those that have finished the second season.

Graham Yost and company have found their own voice and rhythm in the second season of Justified, and they’ve really found the correct tone and setting for the show, too.  Based on a short story by Elmore Leonard (“Fire in the Hole), the first season felt like Yost and the writers doing their best Leonard karaoke routines. Only a few episodes from the first half of season one really felt fresh and energetic (I really liked the one with Alan Ruck as the dentist), and those were the ones that were more stand-alone, Leonard-esque episodes. But something started to happen with the last four episodes of season one: the show started to find its own voice, and the writers started to realize what they wanted to do with their two great characters, Boyd Crowder and Raylan Givens. Some quick thoughts after the jump…

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Some Quick Thoughts on "Boardwalk Empire"

Thanks to my hometown's propensity for closing everything down when an inch of snow and a little bit of ice accumulates on the street, I don't have to work today. My school is closed for the day which gives me the opportunity to catch up on some episodes of my new favorite show "Boardwalk Empire." Once again, for great, insightful (and more detailed than what you'll find here) weekly recaps visit Ed and David (and of course Alan) at their sites. Spoilers abound if you aren't caught up with the most recent episode. Thoughts after the jump...

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Revisiting “John from Cincinnati”, Part One: His Visit Day One and Two

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