Osiris3657

I watched the retrospective last night, really good. Wish they could have gotten Steve Carrell's thoughts though. That and thoughts from the entire cast. Would have loved to have seen Stanley, Kevin, Erin, etc talk about their characters or the show.

JimRochester

So they can immediately give it up after the wedding along with BJ's and being silent about your habits that annoy them. Wait, did I say that out loud?

Barth

Not an Andy fan but when he said this it really got me. Maybe it's because I'm in my 40s now and have a lot of fond memories but it struck a chord with me.

windom

Dakota Johnson was at Kevin's old desk and there were two new men at Oscar's and Angela's old desks.

I started watching it a second time and the firing of Kevin and Toby was much funnier...

fujishig

I think it was that he came up with excuses to move the documentary panel to the weekend of Dwigt's bachelor party so everyone could make it.

The old clips were what got me. I miss the whole Jim courting Pam dynamic, though I understand why they had to evolve the relationship. They tried to rekindle that multiple times with Dwigt and Angela, Holly and Michael, Andy and Erin and then Erin and Pete, but along with Oscar's affair and Stanley's cheating, it seemed like no relationship was safe in that office.

Did it seem to anyone else like they intended that camera man arc to go further than it did? It kinda fizzled out there, and I wonder if they didn't change direction because it was so universally hated as a plot line?

Andy's arc was also really odd. He went from crazy psycho to lovable loser to pining for Erin and being the boss, to eventually being one of the characters I hated the most in this last season. I guess you could say that the way he dumped his fiancé to be with Erin showed how that relationship was doomed for failure, but the writers went from a season where they wanted you to root for him to a season where he became a jerk and you wanted Erin to cheat on him.

SpanishTechno

It seems like that happened a lot the past few seasons. Several storylines were dropped prematurely or abruptly shifted.

Matt

I'll always wonder what they would have done with the Andy character if The Hangover never existed. That came out in the summer between seasons five and six.

I loved psycho Season 3 'Nard-dog.

Sex Fiend

I do think you might be on to something about the boom mike guy (he actually wasn't the cameraman). It definitely seemed like they were setting him for a bigger role in the story thread and then he just unceremoniously vanished.

Also, the story lines with Andy just emphasize how haphazard and ridiculous the writing of the show became in the later seasons. After the finale, I started re-watching the early seasons again on DVD, and the deftness of the writing (and a lot of other elements) vs. the later seasons is like night and day. The show really did stink later on, and not just because Steve Carell left - it actually started before that. The writers clearly ran out of ideas and just started phoning it in.

It is still my considered opinion that the show started going downhill when Parks and Rec started up. I think Greg Daniels and many of the better creative people started to devote their best efforts to that show, as the feeling may have been that The Office was an established commodity and could sustain itself. Which it did, to some extent, albeit at a much lower level of artistic quality then it had previously.

fumanstan

Wouldn't all of these episodes be written and shot well before, enough so that they couldn't exactly change it based on audience reaction that quickly?

Decker

Things can be edited easily. They shoot a lot more than they use. I once went to a filming of an episode of Cheers and was surprised to later find that when it aired initially on TV, an entire "B" storyline was completely scrapped and yet the episode still ran for a full half-hour with commercials.

fujishig

What season of the Office was it when Parks and Rec started? That was a show that was borderline terrible in the first season, with unlikeable characters, and they turned that all around in short order.

Matt

P&R started in April 2009, during the tail end of the fifth season of The Office.

windom

Why did Pete stay in the limo when Dwight was shooting the bazooka?

Also, just noticed when Kevin sees Dwight in the bar he says "Well" 5 times, then "That's six 'wells'. Did I get that number right, Dwight?"

whotony

Why did they get a white limo?

Matt

My favorite little moment from the finale, that I don't think anyone has mentioned. Mose gazing longingly at the Schrute Farms scarecrow:

mkdevo

Didn't see it mentioned, but having Pam answer the phone in the finale was a nice touch and one of my favorite moments.

madcougar

I thought it was totally contrived. I'm assuming that Dwight didn't get married on a work day. I'm also assuming that it was definitely past working hours when the phone rang. The cherry on top was the fact that it was a call for Jim. What are the odds? I'd have been 100 percent fine had it been a wrong number.

CharlieK

You heartless bastard.

Chrisedge

Did they ever reveal who was making the doc? I thought that was going to be explained...

CharlieK

I think it was a public television production.

windom

It seemed Angela and her sister were really close but they glossed over the fact that they hadn't spoken for a 16 year period.

And what did they mean when they each referred to the other as her older (bigger?) sister?

majorjoe23

Whoever was older didn't want to admit it.

Maybe Angela has two sisters.

B.A.

I really enjoyed the last two eps, aside from the Andy crap.

Happy it is over.

madcougar

It's my way.

Meglos

The "Chuck Cunningham" of The Office.