Previous comments about some of your moms notwithstanding, I probably don't know your parents all that well. Not knowing people has never stopped me from making assumptions, though, and little stops me from gambling, so I'll go right ahead and bet that they don't work in the same office, nor did they meet in the same office. In fact, think of someone you know, and let's call him or her, oh, let's say "everyone you know." Now everyone you know probably met their significant other under circumstances that involved little, if any, cubicles, rusty coffee machines, TPS reports, or casual Fridays. Actually, that last one might have had something to do with it.
While nobody uses an office to do anything but e-mail pictures of cats to one other, the good folks at NBC seem to think that the average American works at a '70s key party. Between Jim and Pam, Michael and Jan, Dwight and Angela, Andy and Angela, Kelly and Ryan, Kelly and Daryl, and let's not forget that whole episode between Jim and Karen, The Office is now one brandy-drinking Texan away from a full-fledged soapfest (and not the good kind Diddy has at his parties - the As the World Turns kind). The Office, to be sure, is still funny, but only despite this slumber-party fodder, not because of it. What makes The Office funny is Creed calling Ryan "brah" and Pam making up diseases like a "government-created, killer nanorobot infection,"and not Angela doing, well, pretty much anything she does.
The only logical conclusion to be reached here is that Friends destroyed everything pure and decent in the world. It's not that the show wasn't funny, although the show wasn't funny. It's that the Ross and Rachel saga was apparently enough for some people not to care whether or not it was funny, and now, otherwise entertaining shows on NBC are defanged in a painfully obvious ploy to recapture the Nielsen magic Friends inexplicably mustered. Maybe people did find it funny, and if so, I suppose it would be wrong of me to judge them. After all, what people like to do while they color stuff with crayons is no business of mine.
2008 Woodie Awards
