"I've had several e-mails complaining about a suggestion I made in this column that we should give cannabis to anorexics so they get the munchies. This was a satirical joke and was not meant to offend. I do not advocate the use of illegal drugs and I do not find any eating disorders amusing."-David Brent, writing in the WERNHAM-HOGG NEWS
Sometimes you laugh because it's funny, and sometimes you laugh because it's true. The latter category covers someone like David Brent, regional manager for the Wernham-Hogg paper company and the central figure of the cruelly hilarious BBC series "The Office". Brent is one of those people who acts as your friend (or at any rate, thinks he acts as your friend) even as he hogs the spotlight and devalues your lower position; he follows up one bad, offensive joke with another until you laugh just so he'll shut up and go away. He's a man of limited intelligence and even more limited imagination, who can't imagine himself in any other world than the position of minor power he uses to amuse himself at other people's expense. By all rights he should be living a life of quiet desperation as he measures out his life in coffee spoons. But he's too dense to know it.
In any event, David (played to smarmy perfection by Ricky Gervais) has a bit of a problem on his hands: Wernham-Hogg is downsizing. David's task is to fire some people and reorganize so that the rest of the employees don't have to face similar "redundancy." But which ones to give the axe? Your loyal, uptight assistant Gareth (Mackenzie Crook), who clings tenaciously to his bit of authority and brags about his three years in the army? The acid-tongued Tim (Martin Freeman), who thinks he's better than his job and passes the time by encasing Gareth's office equipment in gelatin? Your comely receptionist Dawn (Lucy Davis), with her on-again, off-again engagement to her man Lee and her antipathy to Brent's sense of humour? David just can't make up his mind--not because he loves his staff, but because he's too lazy and cowardly to do anything decisive.
And so, with their jobs all hanging in the balance, the staff soldiers on, their uncertainty lending the series an edge of unbearable tension that can only be broken by laughter. As a documentary crew records their every movement, the office almost disintegrates with acts of pettiness and delusions of grandeur. Brent does his best to run the company into the ground, hijacking a professional development session to play his band's old songs and hiring a secretary despite the imperative to trim the company's fat. Gareth becomes drunk with power at the slightest provocation, as when he is assigned to investigate the appearance of pornographic jokes on the company e-mail. And one is never sure about skeptical Tim, who may be the only major sympathetic character or who may just be a coward seeking a secure paycheck. And so they wonder: will the office survive? And will it kill them if it does?
All of this sounds bleak and disturbing--hell, it is bleak and disturbing, but it's also the funniest television show to emerge since "The Simpsons" went to seed. Writer/directors Gervais and Stephen Merchant take the limited scope of most of the workers and skewer it mercilessly--everybody knows that their workaday world is all they have, and thus they inflate things far beyond their importance: a joke becomes a potential to break up the tedium, so the teller becomes the butt when it falls flat on its face. Though the characters are somewhat exaggerated, it's not by much--there is a recognizable face to each of them, which makes the laughter (and embarrassment) more intense. "The Office"--in its first season, anyway--goes beyond mere ha-ha comedy into something soulful and elegiac: a mournful jape in memory of the people at the centre of the suits.
Warner/BBC's Region 1 DVD release of "The Office: The Complete First Season" is first-rate. The 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced image lends the show's deliberately muted palette great effect: every level of the daylight scenes is rendered with incredible sharpness and clarity, giving the already-steely look of the show that much more of a chill. While there are some problems with haziness during night scenes, they're too minor to cause much concern. Meanwhile, the 2.0 stereo soundmix is dagger-sharp, spitting out the dialogue with an almost metallic sheen that adds to the stifling atmosphere of the rest of the aesthetics. All in all, one of the better transfers of a TV show I've seen--though this is admittedly because there are only six episodes to render.
As for extras (all on disc two), there is the documentary "How I Made 'The Office'" (39 mins.), which tells the tale of how Gervais and Merchant managed to rise from total obscurity to their rousing success with the show. It's is a tad vague--and way too reliant on outtakes reels--but the ethos of the show is well-explored, as is Gervais' link to his obnoxious alter ego. Six deleted scenes are also included, prefaced in every case by commentary from Gervais and/or Merchant: typically, the scenes were dropped either for being too broad or for making points already made elsewhere. Trailers (which start up automatically on disc two) include those for A Mighty Wind and the original British "Coupling", as well as an irritating claymation spot plugging BBC America. Rounding out the package is a remarkably comprehensive trivia booklet in which the characters are reviewed and a glossary to the British slang is helpfully provided for the uninitiated. It's all bound in a copy of the WERNHAM-HOGG NEWS that's as funny as the series itself.-Travis Hoover
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