EH, I'm enjoying it. It's got the dry humor of the Brit one...Although I don't think the acting is as good...but Steve Carell is nailing it.

I watched the first 5 minutes of the premiere and I quickly turned the TV back to the NCAA basketball tournament.

This version is a fucking disgrace compared to the original. I have officially watched my last show on broadcast television.

and Steve Carell's uneven hair thinning (the left side is definitely thinner) is really standing out

Not too impressive, but then I already knew every joke that was coming up. I'll wait for a couple of original episodes before making up my mind.

I don't know if America will get this show as-is, but I'll see how the "new" episodes pan out.

This pilot did feel stiff, though.

Loved the use of jello.

I wasn't very impressed with the American Tim.

Well, perhaps I'm enjoying it because I was expecting it to be a total piece of shit. Regardless of how good or bad it was or is, it's not like it was going to last on TV here anyways.

Old Network TV sucks more and more on a daily basis, with the exception of a few shows like Numbers, Medium, Boston Legal...I end up watching reruns of South Park before anything on the networks anyways...

I didn't really like this first episode. The secondary characters work ok, but I can't stand the way the lead is played. At least with the David Brent character, there was something kind of endearing about how pathetic he was in his inflated delusions of self-importance. Michael Scott is just completely unlikeable and not funny. I'll give this two or three episodes. Maybe the original plots will work better.

I was expecting the worst, considering I love the british series (i think it's the funniest show ever made)....howeve,r I laughed out loud a lot during tonight's episode. Carell was good, not as awkward enough like david brent, but still good. The actress playing pam sucked, not a big fan of jim either...the guy playing gareth was pretty decent. And the clip with the minority cards had me dying...so i actually have hope for this show now!

Oh my God that was awful.

I didn't like the British pilot episode either, but the subsequent episode caught a foothold and had me LOL a lot. Once I 'got' the David Brent character in later characters, everything clicked for me. Let's hope the Michael Scott character can make that turn as well.

It was ok. I'll wait until I see the new originals before forming a complete opinion. The preview for next week looked liked it could be funny. The only one who comes close to being as good as the original actors is the guy playing Gareth. Not too impressed with the others yet.

Yes, rather horrible.

I am an enormous fan of long, awkward pauses. The ones presented in tonight's episode just felt forced. The cast is a hodgepodge of unfunny people, and Steve Carell is terrible. I do enjoy his comedy (not a lot, but enough), but his performance in The Office was awful. Nothing felt right about his deliverance...

(I want to like it. I really do. I just don't see it lasting.)

the only potential saving grace is that I don't think it's normal time slot will conflict with anything I normally watch

I didn't enjoy it. It was fine though. Carell is promising (although I didn't love -hate if you will- him in this episode.)

Guess cause I LOVE LOVE LOVE the original.

I will watch the rest, though.

That shit was funny!

I've never seen the British version so I didn't have any hyped-up expectations but I can't believe anyone who watched the British version would have watched this. how dumb do you have to be? I could have told you that you'd hate it and I didn't know one thing about the damn show.

Yeah...

I've never seen the British version. And yet, this episode was a disgrace to comedy.

I will, however, be sticking around for a few more episodes, as I like to give each new show their fair share...

St. Louisan Jenna Fischer is more than ready for "The Office"

By Gail Pennington
Post-Dispatch Television Critic
Thursday, Mar. 24 2005

Most struggling actresses, pounding the Hollywood pavement in search of a
break, pay the bills by waiting tables. Not Jenna Fischer.

"I'm a really good typist," says Fischer, a Chesterfield native and Nerinx Hall
graduate who was still doing office work just two years ago. Now, she's back in
an office - or rather "The Office," the new NBC sitcom adapted from the British
hit about put-upon workers at a paper company.

Fischer landed the role of Pam, the downtrodden receptionist (and the show's
female lead), with her acting skills, not her clerical skills. But "The
Office," framed as a mock documentary, depends heavily on creating an aura of
realism, or at least surrealism. Even if Pam is never called on to type up a
contract, Fischer could confidently do it, and so another piece of the backdrop
falls into place.

Letting pieces fall into place is a specialty of Fischer's.

"A lot of breaks along the way led to me getting this opportunity," she says.
"It's a result of making the right choices, of working hard and being ready
when it came along."

It's also a result of dreaming big.

"Mom always allowed me to be a dreamer," Fischer says. "She taught me anything
was possible. She'd tell me stories about other people who made their dreams
come true, and then say, if you believe you were meant to be an actress, you
can do it."

Anne Fischer, Jenna's mother, is an eighth-grade history teacher who, when
Jenna was small, acted in plays at their church, Christ Prince of Peace. "We'd
sit at the kitchen table and I'd help her memorize her lines. I loved seeing
Mom perform."

Jenna and her sister, Emily, five years younger, would put on magic shows and
plays for the neighborhood and "dance around the house to show tunes." Anne
Fischer introduced them to all the great musicals and to classic movies
starring Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly and the young Elizabeth Taylor, who would
become Jenna's idols ("but my idol is really my mother").

The first seed of performing, however, was probably planted when Jenna, age 5,
participated in an acting workshop at Henry School, taught by her mother. In an
exercise in which the children were challenged to turn an object into something
it wasn't, Jenna spontaneously saw a toy mailbox as a microphone and realized,
"I can do this."

One of her fellow students in the workshop happened to be Sean Gunn, who grew
up to be a successful actor and now plays Kirk on the WB's "Gilmore Girls."
"Sean apparently knew from the time he could speak that he would be an actor,"
Fischer says.

More about Gunn and his family later. But in the meantime, Fischer was doing
plays and musicals at Nerinx Hall, hoping for a career in dance. Realizing she
probably wasn't good enough to dance professionally - "I couldn't do splits" -
she headed off to Truman State University to study pre-law.

But Fischer soon had another epiphany: She didn't want to be a lawyer, she
"just wanted to act like a lawyer." So she changed her major to theater.

After college, Fischer worked for a year (as a secretary, natch) to save some
money and then, in 1996, at age 22, she moved to Los Angeles. Her parents may
have worried (dad Jim, she recalls, "was terrified"), but they were also
supportive, including chipping in financially when she got in a bind.

Fischer worked for a temp agency, doing office work and auditioning when she
could, doing every play and showcase and student film she could land, and
always looking for an agent.

"Act because you love it, and love it while you're doing it," she says, quoting
advice wise people gave her, "and eventually someone will notice."

After she'd been in Hollywood several years, she was home for a visit when she
ran into Sean Gunn, who was then preparing to move to Los Angeles. Fischer
suggested he look her up, but when he called her parents to get her number, a
protective Anne Fischer wouldn't give it to him.

It's a story they laugh about now that Fischer is married to Sean's brother,
James Gunn, another St. Louis success story, the screenwriter of the "Scooby
Doo" movies and "Dawn of the Dead." They met through Sean, and in October,
they'll celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary.

Sean Gunn also helped Fischer make another important connection, with the
person who would become her one and only manager. Focusing on work in TV
comedy, Fischer landed roles on such shows as "Spin City" and "Undeclared" and
has filmed an episode of HBO's "Six Feet Under" for the upcoming season, but
"The Office" will bring her more exposure than ever before.

Meet Fischer, though, and you have to wonder how someone so bright and
beautiful transforms herself into the drab, vaguely depressed Pam, whose
obnoxious boss (Steve Carell) regularly crushes her self-esteem with bad jokes.

"Usually when you get a casting call, they tell you, look hot," Fischer says.
Not this time. "The casting director told me, don't look pretty. She said,
seriously, play it down."

Fischer responded by channeling her high school days in St. Louis, when she
struggled with her curly hair, letting it dry naturally into little worms.
"That's the easiest thing to do anyway," she says. In fact, everything about
playing Pam is easy. "I wear so little makeup, at least they'll never put me on
'Stars Without Makeup' because there wouldn't be that much difference."

NBC's announcement that it would remake "The Office" was met with hand-wringing
by many critics and fans of the British original, recalling what a mess the
network made with the Americanized version of the British comedy "Coupling."

Fischer was "a huge fan" of the British "Office," but she wasn't worried that
her version would go wrong after she learned that creator and star Ricky
Gervais would be involved with this one as well.

Gervais approved the cast and spent time with them. "We picked his brain about
everything, the characters, the process, how they shoot," Fischer says, adding,
"He's very dry and deadpan, just like he is on the show."

After shooting five episodes in a row last October and November, Fischer's work
on "The Office" is done, for the time being. Depending on ratings, NBC will
decide by May whether to bring the show back for fall.

"It's hard to be different, but I feel hopeful," Fischer says. "It's a show I'd
watch."

As someone who's mostly unfamiliar with the British show, I thought it was hilarious.

i thought it was funny.... steve carrell is freaking hilarious

It was ok. My main beef was the guy played the boss way too over the top. He's much more subtle in the British version. In this one he comes off as intentionally being a jerk and stupid, purposely causing trouble and saying the wrong things. In the British one, its more like he doesn't realize he's coming off that way, like he thinks he's completely normal. And I think thats part of the charm - you can laugh at him for being a fool without trying. Whereas in this one, you just cringe because he's trying to be a fool and failing.
But it was still decent.

This is my biggest complaint of this version. The British show was very naturalistic and uncalculated. This one seems too "acted;" the actors behave too much like actors and not enough like normal people. I can't tell yet if this is from miscasting or from the direction, but it doesn't work, yet. There were a lot of funny moments, but more that stuck out as phony.

Felt like I was watching a skit comedy show doing a bit that was just waaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy too long.. I did crack a smile here or there and the show gets ++++ points for not adding in a BS laugh track.. I'll watch a few more eps to give it a fair shot..

even if I still tend to think one should not have to work at liking a comedy show.. It's good out the gate or at least whatever --you find to be-- funny or it's not. Unlike say dramas where you can watch and sort of get into a show you might not like at first.. Don't think I have ever had a comedy show grow on me over time.

I loved the part when he got the phone call and put it on speaker phone in that meeting...

A similar thing happened to me a few years back. Not so funny then...

I thought it was great, of course, I have never seen the original. I guess I wasn't too critical of the choices for each character, it was just my type of humor.

I can see where some people are coming from, Steve Carell, does seem a bit "phony" and over the top at times, but I think he always comes off that way.