'The Office': As Season 5 Wraps, It Looks Like Character Counts

by Linda Holmes

As the fifth season of The Office comes to a close (there are three new episodes left, including tonight's "Casual Friday"), it's beginning to look like this is going to be the series' most successful season ever for character-driven stories, if not for hilarious comedy.

If Season 1 (which only had six episodes) was the season where Michael Scott's precise level of social clumsiness was being calibrated, and Season 2 was the season that set up the relationships that would drive the show, and Season 3 was the season that focused most heavily on resolving the Jim/Pam romance, and Season 4 was the season that was impressive just for surviving the writers' strike and the resolution of the show's most prominent sexual-tension storyline, Season 5 has been the one that has most satisfyingly paid off the stories that the writers have been telling all along.

Why this is the best season ever if you like your characters built to last, after the jump...

Right out of the gate, the season found an MVP in Amy Ryan, who came on as the new HR representative, Holly Flax, and finally gave Michael someone to be legitimately attached to. It's always been hugely important to the show that Michael have real feelings, even if the way he expresses them is pure buffoonery.

Michael has always wanted to be loved and has never been loved — only tolerated. "Someone loves Michael exactly as he is" is an idea they must have had all along, and according to the "every pot has its lid" (one of my friends always says "every trash can," but that sounds cynical) theory, it makes sense that someone would.

But it never happened until this season, and even though Holly was taken away from him after a few episodes — or perhaps because she was — Michael seemed emboldened somehow; a little less ridiculous, although ... still ridiculous, of course.

And that brings us to the outstandingly executed storyline that was Michael's (temporary) departure from Dunder Mifflin to start the Michael Scott Paper Company. The writers and the actors absolutely hit this story out of the park in a bunch of different ways:

• Idris Elba was fantastically unlikable as Charles Miner, Michael's replacement;

• Pam progressed professionally and personally in a believable (for The Office) way

• Ryan came back as a third kind of weasel that was some combination of Early Ryan The Temp Weasel and Late Ryan The Power Weasel

• Michael demonstrated that it's not for nothing that he used to be a great salesman before he was a terrible manager

• Jim learned that Michael's need to be liked — Michael's belief that Jim is cool — has allowed Jim a lot of leeway for prank-pulling and nonsense that other managers would not tolerate

• Andy Buckley as Dunder Mifflin executive David Wallace continued to be one of the show's greatest low-key assets

• and a different physical environment at the MSPC provided a little jolt of adrenaline — even though it was an almost supernaturally drab physical environment.

That story could have been a complete gimmick and a failure, just as Jim's third-season transfer to Stamford essentially was (aside from introducing Ed Helms and Rashida Jones, the latter of whom has moved on to Parks & Recreation). It could have been a slog, just waiting for everybody to get back together. But it wasn't. It was marvelous.

Better: Even with new things happening, the stories that have always mattered were not neglected. Some Jim/Pam fans will tell you that the really important episode in their story was "Casino Night" (where he heartbreakingly announced that he was in love with her and where they first kissed) or "The Job" (where he saw a simple message of friendship from her and dropped everything to come home).

But it was the scene in this season's premiere episode — a scene that's under a minute long, in which he proposed at a service area off the highway, in the rain, between the gas pumps — that was where the ups and downs and sad feelings and missed opportunities gave some gravity to a genuinely earned moment of sheer joy.

I don't know that there are that many episodes in this season that I will watch over and over, as I do with early classics like "Office Olympics" and "Health Care" (I never get tired of the phrase "hot-dog fingers").

But I'm going to insist that this has been the show's strongest season for pure story, for taking people whose quirks and whose relationships to each other have been patiently developed over time and letting all that history lend actual dramatic weight.

It's a funny show, so of course it's also it's been a funny season. But it's absolutely been the best opportunity yet for The Office to air some truths about work and love and friends and loneliness and happiness. And that makes it much more satisfying than it would be if they were only going for giggles.