"The Office" 3.01, "Gay Witch Hunt"

And thus did Michael Scott and Oscar Martinez
end the homophobia of a divided America.

"[Pretending to cry] Jim is gone. He’s gone. I miss him so much. Oh, I cry myself to sleep. Jim. [Stops crying] False; I do not miss him.”
- Dwight

So right out of the gate, I immediately run into problems. Initially, I was set to review the Office’s third season premiere “Gay Witch Hunt” as an example of a show that didn’t really need to prove itself, calmly setting up a fairly dramatic shift to keep the sexual tension in its romantic leads going and still unafraid to show its star oscillate between bigotry, awkwardness, and genuine humanity. And while I do think that it works well in that regard - even if some of Michael Scott’s (Steve Carell) homophobic behavior had to somewhat awkwardly contextualized by even more overtly awful statements from his coworkers - I realized after starting to write about it that there is a far more important element in the show’s meta-narrative going on. Two particular elements are introduced in this episode and expanded in the next season - specifically, Andy Bernard and type of broader comedy he would later represent - would be the things that would slowly engulf, dominate, and ultimately destroy the show.

The transfer of Jim Halpert (John Krazinski) to Dunder Mifflin’s Stamford branch is in many ways a perfect addition for the show. It keeps the sexual tension between Jim and Pam Beasely (Jenna Fischer) that probably helped the show become NBC’s last comedy hit going in a way that felt fairly believable (using a plot point from late in the second season), and keeping them separated allowed the show to examine them as distinct entities. It was also the greatest example thus far of the show expanding its universe, generally a necessity in shows but done particularly well here. The Office in its first two seasons, like the British original, was a show partially about surveillance and confinement (the characters’ personalities comes partially from how they conduct themselves in front of the documentary, and the show generally keeps itself inside a single location). While an expanded view of the Dunder Mifflin corporate structure was inevitable (and important for keeping up the ongoing downsizing threat, which finally was made good this season), using a rival branch allowed it to stay (somewhat) confined while also allowing an intriguing parallel story structure in which we could get a more evenhanded view of Michael and his subordinates. Finally, it allowed the show to introduce guest stars in a way that still fell within the confines of the show’s universe, specifically Karen Filippelli (Rashida Jones) and Andy Bernard (Ed Helms).

While both characters and actors were integrated extremely well into the show’s universe, it appears obvious in retrospect that the show viewed them only as seasonal guest stars, albeit with the potential to join the main cast. Since Karen was essentially a way for the love triangle to be flipped in a much more evenhanded way (she and Jim actually work as a couple, while the show sometimes strained a little to show just how awful thuggish fiancé Roy was for Pam), I can’t imagine that the writers were considering her to join the cast after that plot ended. Andy, however, is a bit of a different issue, and one that I feel merits a more involved discussion. This is not to push Karen - or Jones for that matter - off to the side, but Andy is much more central to the changes that the show started making here.

We don’t really get to see much of the Andy of the third season in this episode, other than his aggression, potential for violence, and alma mater. However, if we assume that Stamford is meant as a parallel to Scranton (which I think is fairly clear), then he’s a clear foil for both Dwight (Rainn Wilson) (unpleasant alpha-male), and in a way Michael (needy, clueless, and with no self-awareness) that allows us to view both of them through a widened context. Michael, for all his potential for awful and stupid actions, still wants to be a good person (or his idea of a good person), so his attempts to understand Oscar, while wildly inappropriate and insulting, at least comes from a somewhat moral place. Andy’s attack on the recycle bin, while incredibly pedantic, is far scarier than Dwight’s comically fascist behavior. And because of their one-sided rivalry, to a lesser extent he also is something of a foil for Jim (or more accurately, what a person like Jim might be under less positive circumstances: a jerk who dominates and steamrolls all his coworkers). None of this, of course, would be tolerable in a character over the long-term, and I cannot imagine that the writers were banking on the idea of Helms staying past his initial arc.

All of these character beats are interesting, and Helms lives up to this type of character excellently. However, his staying after his humiliating breakdown in “the Return” created the problem that a major addition to the show, and one that would end up headlining it, is entirely defined by his relationship to pre-existing characters. As Andy continued through the years, he oscillated wildly over the seasons between rage-filled, semi-competent shark, eager to please bro, obsessive singer, and “lovable” doofus. The latter - a dumb but ultimately sweet and harmless boss - was almost a parody of what fans of the original Office incorrectly assumed the American remake would do to soften Wernham Hogg boss David Brent. And to a greater extent, Andy’s jarring personality shifts aren’t too dissimilar from Michael Scott’s. But while Michael’s shifts were generally from episode to episode, the strong writing, buoyed by Carrel’s exemplary performance, made him a “real” character and an incredibly strong lead for the show whose base humanity was never in question. Andy’s never felt totally coherent, his prominence increased in inverse proportion to the quality of the writing, and the attempts by the show to explain them made them seem even more artificial. Getting Helms - a respected Daily Show alumnus - before the Hangover turned him into a bona fide movie star was a great coup at the time, but it meant Andy was pushed further into the center for advertising purposes (although his Frankensteinian transformation into show lead may have been from writer/Toby Flenderson actor Paul Lieberstein, who took over for the eighth season).

Andy’s presence is matched by another shift in the show itself, which started to become a little lighter and broader. General “goofiness” was usually limited to margins in the first two seasons, which now started to become more common and central to the show. Most Office fans - myself included - consider the fourth season to be a sort of cutoff point ending the ideal comic environment of the first two seasons (I don’t find the fourth season bad at all, just weaker than the previous two partially because of the tone). However, in thinking about this episode I have come to a conclusion that this is where a lot of that tone started, and was only let out more prominently in the fourth season’s 45-minute premiere “Fun Run.” I can’t imagine any long-running comedy existing without slowly going more over-the-top to an extent, but if it had been executed in a more controlled way (which I felt its sister show Parks & Recreation was able to do better), I imagine that it would have worked much more strongly.

I don’t want this review to just turn into a discussion of the show as a whole, though, and as an episode “Gay Witch Hunt” works quite nicely. It sets up the new dynamic impressively well, even when taking into account how confident the show was at this point. While broader, it still exists within the tonal range of the series up to that point, which allows the show to introduce those elements while keeping the show contiguous. There aren’t as many great individual jokes, but it is able to expertly set up a climate of utter discomfort that the show’s signature cringe comedy needed. The documentary crew’s reduced presence feels less important with the character changes (although the show’s cinematography was still very strong; the shot revealing Ryan (B.J. Novak) in Jim’s place is particularly effective). Most important, its use of its characters shows the season’s interest in being more formally and strictly structured, with a larger number of parallel plots and character relationships that are subtly-handled.

To a certain extent, this episode is surprisingly metatextual: it answers the dramatic kiss cliffhanger from the last season with a kiss that may have been among the show’s most awkward cringe comedy moments, it starts the slow Pam-Jim-Karen love triangle that works as a parallel of the Jim-Pam-Roy triangle (with Pam now in Jim’s position), adds a new future main character who is a counterpart to two of the show’s male leads, brings producer Larry Wilmore back as the HR rep from “Diversity Day” (the 2^nd episode of the show, and the first good one), and the cold but efficient Stamford branch actually manages to make Scranton, which could seem at times almost nightmarish, pleasant in its own way (itself an argument that the environment of the show has a serious value of its own, and that people uncomfortable with its use of cringe comedy might still find some escapism in its tone). On the other hand, the show was always metatextual, and fittingly for a mockumentary, generally participated in a conversation with itself. Aside from the premise of essentially being a show within a show (although this was stretched increasingly in later seasons, our vision of the world is limited by the level of access that the documentarians have), the cast and crew regularly expanded the show’s narrative outside of the actual episodes (through, among other things, a webseries and fictionalized social media presence), and even the deleted scenes are part of the story (and in some cases contained entire plots or plot points used later). This would eventually kind of break the Office entirely (one Vulture article nicely argued that the directionless and maligned eighth season was essentially a poorly-told story about being directionless, and the documentary crew’s onscreen antics in the ninth often just seemed confused), but by the third season, it was still subtle and engaging enough to work well and allowed us to view the show from different perspectives.

I don’t want to give “Gay Witch Hunt” the image of a harbinger of the show’s demise, because it really doesn’t deserve that. However, despite leading off the most carefully-plotted season of the show, its relationship to the show as a whole seems a little more interesting to me, and that includes the elements it introduced that grew beyond the Office’s ability to control. On its own, it’s a perfectly fine, workman-like episode of the show, but contextually, it’s incredibly important.

Lingering concerns:

• Andy’s description of Jim as a “super-ambitious, cut your throat to get ahead type of guy” always seemed odd to me, probably because we’ve really only seen Jim up to this point as being essentially the opposite of that. But while it’s obvious that Andy’s paranoia is illegitimate, we do see that Jim is putting in more effort than at Scranton (i.e. more than the bare minimum). Just as Karen would later symbolize Jim’s potential outside of his Pennsylvania bubble, Andy might be inadvertently be more correct than we assume.
• While he had some small parts in earlier episodes, this is really the first meaty episode for Oscar Nũnez as Oscar Martinez, and while his wonderfully obnoxious intellectual side isn’t really present here, he sells the character’s resignation and discomfort really well. The A-plot is really much more about Michael than Oscar, so he needed to have significant presence in order for the character to not just feel like a plot device - especially considering that he leaves the show for half of the season immediately afterwards.
• Just to be clear, the tonal itself is not inherently bad, even for a show that was great partially because it was able to avoid a lot of the zaniness of traditional sitcoms. The fantastic “Michael Scott Paper Company” arc of season five would have been implausible to pull off in the second season, for example. At its best, the Office either supplemented the shift with strong character work or used it to tell different stories, and the weakness of the later seasons was not being able to competently pull it off (Andy and Erin’s romantic arc, for example, was a clear attempt to both reference and ape Jim and Pam’s, but with none of what made the latter so strong).
• While it is a little goofy, Dwight’s total calm in searching for gay porn at work, and his subsequent kick at Oscar, are really good small parts of the episode that I like quite a bit.
• On the other hand, while I also like Oscar’s resigned, “yeah, I’m gay” line, it does seem to be a sign of the show not being nearly as invested in the layers of deceit (and self-deceit) that permeated every aspect of the show prior.
• Finally, and this really is only borderline relevant in this episode, but this article did make me wonder if there was an interesting story idea in here about how Andy innately mimics the people he works under. Under Josh, he’s a more extreme and controlling type while in Scranton he slowly turns more comic and performative. It still doesn’t work - he’s more extreme in the former and neutered in the latter - and this would still not have worked as a lead, but it least it would have been an explanation that sort of fits with the character.

Next time: Mike and the ‘bots confront super-intelligent apes, an unending future of bad movies, and the concerns of fans in Mystery Science Theatre 3000’s eighth season premiere, Revenge of the Creature.