The Office

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About

The Office is an American comedic sitcom that began airing on NBC in March 2005. The series is a mockumentary about a group of employees at the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

History

The Office UK

British actors Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant created, wrote and directed a 15-episode sitcom titled The Office^[1] that ran on BBC Two from July 2001 to December 2003. The mockumentary series detailed the lives of employees at a branch of the fictional Wernham Hogg Paper Company. The show focuses on the peculiarities of the characters' personalities, including regional manager David Brent's (played by Gervais) unconscious sexism and racism to Tim Canterbury's (played by Martin Freeman) penchant for practical jokes. In 2004, The Office was the first British comedy to win a Golden Globe Award.

US Adaptation

Former Saturday Night Live writer Greg Daniels launched an American adaptation of The Office^[2] as a midseason replacement series. The pilot was directly adapted from the British pilot, making some minor adjustments to "Americanize" the script. It premiered on March 24th, 2005 to 11.2 million viewers and outperforming all of the competing shows in the 18-49 demographic.^[3] After the success of star Steve Carrell's film The 40-Year-Old Virgin at the beginning of the second season, the series began to see a large jump in viewership through iTunes sales. It was then moved to a Thursday night slot where it stayed for the rest of its run, which ended on May 16th, 2013.

Revival

On December 18th, 2017, Hollywood Reporter^[29] reported that NBC was looking to revive The Office. It was reported that Steve Carell, previously on record as saying an Office revival was a bad idea,^[30] would not return for another season. As of December 21st, none of the cast has yet been set, and rumors circulate as to which actors may return. Angela Kinsey tweeted that her and Creed Bratton would be excited to return (shown below).^[31]

Twitter users were divided in their reaction. Some were excited about the comeback while others felt it was unnecessary and would ruin the show. <a href=https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/your-ecards-someecardscom^[32] covered the Twitter reaction. Twitter user @KhleoThomas^[33] tweeted a GIF of Dwight Schrute screaming, expressing their excitement. The tweet gained over 140 retweets and 350 likes (shown below). Twitter user @backlotreview^[34] tweeted a GIF of Michael Scott saying "Don't Like That," expressed their distaste of the prospect of rebooting the series without its original cast (shown below, right).

Reception

Despite its large viewership, The Office was initially met with negative reviews from critic who found the characters trying to hard to emulate their counterparts in the original BBC series.^[4] By 2005, however, the show had begin to come into its own, seeing more positive reviews and being named one of the best television shows of that year by TIME.^[5] The Office averaged 7.6 million viewers for its first eight seasons, with season five from 2008 to 2009 bringing in a total of 9 million viewers. After main actor Steve Carrell (regional manager Michael Scott, shown below) left the series in April 2010, many critics believed the show should end.^[6] The last few seasons were cited for lacking quality^[7], but the final ninth season was much more well-received.^[8]

Accolades

Throughout its run, The Office has been nominated dozens of times and has won a number of awards^[9] including four primetime Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, Three Television Critics Association Awards and three Writers Guild of America Awards, among others.

Online Presence

Though the show is no longer airing as of May 2013, the show continues to maintain an active online presence on Tumblr^[10], Twitter^[11] and Facebook^[12], where they have more than 10.5 million likes. Throughout the series, a number of official parody blogs were launched as viral marketing including blogs for Creed Bratton (played by Creed Bratton, shown below, left) and Dwight Schrute (played by Rainn Wilson, shown below, right). Though Schrute's blog ceased updating in November 2012, Bratton's blog was updated from May 2007 through May 2013.

Webisodes

Separate from on-air content, The Office released nine sets of original webisodes^[13] between 2006 and 2011 focused on the show's background characters. The first series, The Accountants (shown below), was released online between July and September 2006 and won a Webby Award for Comedy Short and a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Broadband Program.^[14]

Fandom

The first The Office fan fiction community^[15] was established on LiveJournal on November 23rd, 2005. The following year, a second fanfiction community^[16] was created as well as Scranton Times^[17], a journal that also served as a newsletter about happenings in the fandom that ran through November 2009. In February 2006, blogger Jennie Tan launched Office Tally^[18], which would go on to become the largest Office fansite and would result in Tan earning a speaking role in the show's finale.^[19] In 2007, a fan named Maggie compiled a number of fan interviews for a YouTube project about The Office fandom titled Fandomicity.^[20]

In November 2008, an Office subreddit^[21] was established, accruing more than 8,400 readers as of May 2013. Dunderpedia, the unofficial fan wiki, launched in February 2009^[22] and contains more than 1,000 pages as of May 2013. Beginning in August 2010, fan blogs about The Office began to appear on Tumblr including The Office Screencaps^[23], Fuck Yeah The Office^[24] and We Love The Office.^[25] As of May 2013, there are more than 2,300 fan works about The Office on Fanfiction.net^[26] and more than 3,600 search results for "The Office" and "TV" on deviantART.^[27]

That's What She Said

Though the phrase "That's What She Said" did not originate with The Office, it was one of regional manager Michael Scott's catchphrases. Scott (played by Steve Carrell) was known for his awkwardly inappropriate and often ill-timed sexual humor.

Schrute Facts

Schrute Facts is an advice animal image macro series inspired by Rainn Wilson's character Dwight Schrute, who has a reputation for being a know-it-all with poor social skills. These image macros employ captions that will typically begin with an idiom or commonly-accepted fact followed by a buzzkilling or hyperrational explanation for why it isn't true. The series appeared on Reddit as early as April 2011. As of May 2013, there are more than 20,600 instances of Schrute Facts on Quickmeme.^[28]