Ever since Pam and Jim got together at the end of the third season of The Office, I’ve heard the same complaint from many people I’ve talked to: It’s gotten boring. Some people think that the Jim/Pam arc shouldn’t have been resolved until the series finale; some think that the show’s lost its humor now that Jim and Pam’s dynamic has changed so dramatically. But no one really seems to like them together, or think that it adds much to the show.
But here’s the thing: The writers really didn’t have a choice. A friend of mine compared Jim and Pam together to the period in Friends when Ross and Rachel were dating, saying it was boring as well. Okay, but then Ross and Rachel broke up, and the writers proceeded to spend seven full years contriving new and increasingly complicated and frustrating reasons for keeping the two apart, so much so that by the time they reunited in the series finale, it couldn’t help but feel forced. I don’t give a shit if they’re soulmates, after all the drama they went through, there is no plausible way I could see those two staying together or even wanting to be together any more.
The Office clearly decided to take a very different direction. Instead of dragging the “will-they-or-won’t-they” aspect of their story on for an absurdly long time, the writers allowed the characters to unite once their story had naturally, organically reached that point. In the three years prior to that, they had established the characters’ bond as being incredibly strong, so much so that rending them apart after they had finally come together would have rung false.
And so, they let the story move on to its next, inevitable stage: Pam and Jim got married. And people lost interest.
Now that their relationship has reached this point, the writers have limited the number and type of stories they can tell with the characters. The solution to this would be to do what David Simon did in the fourth season of The Wire. For the first three years of that show, Jimmy McNulty acted as a de-facto protagonist for the series to revolve around.
When McNulty reached a natural resting place at the end of season three, however—he’d quit drinking and got together with Amy Ryan’s character—Simon put the character in the background. During season four, you could go episodes on end without seeing McNulty once, and when he finally did show up it would be for a brief second as you see him arresting some dealer Herc wants to talk to.
Of course, Simon brought McNulty back in a big way in the fifth season, but by that point enough time had passed that he could convincingly change McNulty’s status quo from the more domestic, stale position he was in for most of the fourth season.
The writers of The Office, on the other hand, allowed the central dynamics of their show to shift in organic and meaningful ways, but then they continued to follow the same characters and the same interactions. The A plots of the last 100 episodes have all focused on Michael Scott, and most of the B plots have centered around Jim and Pam.
Once they’ve locked themselves into this structure, they’re unable to move Jim and Pam out of the spotlight. They haven’t allowed the structure of the show to change as the characters and their dynamics have changed. By allowing other characters to take up the A and B plots, they could spice the show up and give Jim and Pam a break while their relationship has time to grow into a more interesting place.1
As it stands, unless something really drastic happens to the show and they decide to bump some of their more secondary characters up to a more prominent position, we’re in for two or three more painful, dull seasons of The Office before it eventually dies a belated death.
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