One Office, Two Michaels

We all owe it to Greg Daniel’s Deedle-Dee Productions for bringing to us The Office, a mockumentary which captures the daily shenanigans of the employees of Dunder-Mifflin’s Pennsylvania offshoot, including and especially, a certain Michael Scott. He isn’t someone who’d fit into your conventional idea of a manager. Full of antics, he holds dear muddled notions of what’s funny and what’s not, with an uncanny knack of screwing up just when things start going his way. Steve Carell of  “The 40-Year Old Virgin” and “Crazy, Stupid, Love” fame, portrays Scott, an overtly dramatic, plain irrational and tantalizingly unpredictable creature, but there’s a certain equanimity that Carell brings to the character otherwise inherently prone to monotony, thereby lending deeper meaning to the absurdity at play. No wonder he hogs the limelight despite the presence of two acting wizards John Krasinski and Rainn Wilson who play the equally integral Jim and Dwight. Season after season, he continues to amaze us, adding multitudes of nuances to Scott making him the boss we hate to love.

And yet, there’s another Michael instrumental to The Office’s success. Michael Schur handles the back end of the show in the capacity of a writer and also plays Dwight’s retarded cousin Mose (not mentioning his signature animated sprint would be criminal!). A Harvard graduate, Schur’s refreshing takes on different work-environments have always stood out. While this by no means implies that all his creations are alike, a few parallels can be drawn. Jim-Pam, like Jake-Amy (B99), Leslie-Ben (Parks and Rec) and Eleanor-Chidi (The Good Place) share one of most heart-warming relationships to ever grace the television. Schur’s pen, time and again has churned out humor of the absurdist kind, but shrewd viewers will discern the authentic backdrop that he unfailingly appends making all the insanity highly relatable.The marriage of Carell and Schur, both masters of their respective crafts,is what makes The Office so special.