Tuesday, June 01, 2010
The Problems of Season 3
The Problems of Season 3
I have not always been an Office extreme fan. In fact I didn’t really immerse myself in the fandom until January of 2008 while the show was on hiatus during the Writers Guild strike. I had watched the show faithfully since the start and soon found it to be my favorite late in Season 2, but I did not realize that there was a dedicated internet following until my son got the S1-3 DVDs as a Christmas present in 2007. Watching the DVDs in rapid succession I began to focus on the Jim/Pam story which hadn’t really registered as the central element of the show for me at that point. It was while listening to a commentary that I heard Jenna Fischer mention the website Northern Attack. Soon after logging on to the site and reading the episode recaps I realized I had been missing this rather important focus of the story. As I paid more attention to their story I realized two things. First, it made me remember how midway through S3 I had become slightly dissatisfied with the show and had become more inclined to look forward to 30 Rock rather the The Office. Second, I realized what about the show had caused it to lose its status with me. Re-watching the episodes following The Return, I came to see that the desire of the writers and producers of the show to drag out the inevitable reunion of Jim and Pam until the May sweeps had led them to artificially delay what should have been much more natural reconciliation between the two characters. The requirements of network TV forced them to add in elements that the show had mostly avoided during S1-2.
While Season 3 of The Office has some excellent episodes, as an overall story it had some serious flaws as compared to Season 1/2. In the earlier seasons, the Jim/Pam storyline was executed almost flawlessly. The obstacle of Pam’s engagement made their dance completely believable. They couldn’t interact outside of the office except in the rarest of circumstances (The Dundies, E-mail Surveillance and Michael’s Birthday being the exceptions that showed how obviously compatible they were.) and so everything took place within the confines of the office where discretion would be required. Thus Jim is reduced to trying to read Pam’s interest in a situation where nothing can be stated overtly. Early in S2 he keeps first imagining that she has the same feelings for him as he has for her and then getting shot down when she raises the walls she has built to prevent her from really thinking about her and Roy. It’s not until his party and the Christmas episode that he seems convinced that she is on the same page and his resolve to do something about it (the X-mas card, 27 seconds of silence, “I’d save the receptionist.”) is strengthened only to be short circuited by the iPod incident and Roy setting the wedding date. After the trauma that was Booze Cruise, The Secret, The Carpet and Boys and Girls we got a number of episodes where Jim has realized that Pam just isn’t going to change her situation and that he needs to move on. Pam senses this change and subconsciously turns up her game to keep Jim in orbit, culminating in the poker scene in Casino Night which I contend is the catalyst for Jim’s confession later that night. All of this seems completely true to life for an office crush. Pam cannot concede her feelings for Jim without compromising her 9 year relationship with Roy and Jim is reluctant to breach that bond both out of a sense of decency and being unsure how Pam truly feels due to the lack of interaction away from Dunder Mifflin. These are completely believable roadblocks that real people negotiate all the time. Jim’s confession is also a plausible response to their circumstances as is his working on his transfer to Stamford.
Season 3, on the other hand, has a number of problems that detracted from this reality for me. It appears they made two decisions that, for me, adversely affected their story. First, they decided that nothing would be resolved until the season finale which might be a reasonable decision if well executed. Second, rather than stay grounded in the reality of a workplace romance, they concluded that Jim and Pam were just “Meant to be”. While perhaps good for romance novels it doesn’t seem realistic for The Office. These choices allowed them to stretch things out far beyond plausibility and then bring them to a conclusion with a sort of magical (if satisfying) twist.
The problems begin with the flashback in Gay Witch Hunt. I find it almost impossible to believe that Pam would have been able to decisively give Jim an answer to “Are you really going to marry him?” She had been suppressing the idea that she and Jim were more than friends for months or years. To have this façade shattered at that moment would have thrown her into real turmoil, especially since she obviously returned his kiss, a fact she admits much later in S3 to Roy. The original script had her run out of the room crying which strikes me as much more believable given the insecure Pam we saw in S1-2. To have her give Jim a decisive answer at that moment seems out of character, especially since only moments before it seemed like she was reconsidering her choice to marry Roy while talking to her mother (The infamous“I think I am” which regardless of what you think her mother asked: “Are you in love with Jim?”, “Are you thinking of calling off the wedding?” or “Are you going to go through with the wedding?”, her answer indicates a lot of uncertainty.)
A related misstep is the idea that Jim would just accept her response as a firm rejection of him. Every male in the world knows that when you put yourself out like that, even to a single woman, there is a decent chance you are going to be shot down or at a minimum not encouraged to pursue, but that this may not be a definitive response. Jim would have to know that engaged Pam isn’t going to be capable of making an instantaneous decision to uproot her life to be with him. Even as he was telling her he loved her, he knew that what he was doing was probably not going to be well received. Thus his “I'm really sorry if that's weird for you to hear, but I needed you to hear it. Probably not good timing, I know that. I just...” during the parking lot scene. If there is a defining trait for S2 Pam is that she is hesitant to change and unsure in making decisions. Rather than just meekly accepting her response, he would have given her the time to mull over her decision while informing her that he was contemplating the move to Stamford. He is making the play of a lifetime here, not picking what movie to go to. He is asking her to end her 9 year relationship to the man she lives with and is planning to marry in a few weeks and he is going to give himself the best shot available. Of course the problem with this approach, in terms of the show, is that if Pam had still shot him down after receiving this information she would have gone through with the wedding. The NA contributor ferd farkel put it well:
The idea that he accepts this single (or double) rejection (heck, let’s call it 10 solid minutes worth of rejection) from a woman who has just had this sprung on her is ridiculous. He's a salesman. He knows people sometimes need time to make a decision. The bigger the decision the more time they need.
And, he’s a smart guy. Later, he would absolutely know immediately that he played a role in the end of the wedding. He would absolutely not read too much into shy Pam not calling him. He would absolutely go to her as soon as the dust had settled on the wedding and let her know he just needed to be sure. What’s she gonna do eat his brain? (his real brain) big freaking scaredy cat!
He had been working to win this engaged woman for 2, 3, 5 or something years. Yes, he was actively working to win her. He was using approach number 3b for un-engaging a woman. This is also known as the "a. get close enough to a. show her how much cooler you are than men nearly twice your size and b. enjoy the crap out of her company while you are doing it" approach. That guy would have tried again.
Sure, if he went to a bar and the third girl at the end of the bar who was kind of hot told him no just once, he would move on. Not worth another effort. With Pam, though, he is going to find out for sure. Again, as a salesman, if he hears that Pamco is no longer getting her plain white from Royco he’s gonna be on the phone to make sure that Jimco is servicing that account by the end of business that day.
Another problem I have with the start of S3, is the assumption that Jim somehow escaped Scranton without ever interacting with Pam again. Transfers just don’t occur that quickly and especially for an intra-company move there would be a need for Jim to close down or transfer his Scranton accounts before moving. It seems more likely that he and Pam would have had another chance to talk and that Pam shot him down again out of fear. At a minimum he would have told her he meant what he said and that if she changed her mind she should get in touch with him. This would have been a better explanation for Jim’s estrangement and his “She said no….twice.” statement to Michael. For Jim to be as emotionally distant as he was all through S3 required more than Pam’s simple head nod in response to his question. Again, though, the idea that Pam could think over her response, tell Jim no a second time and then call off her wedding after he leaves is just not credible.
A bigger complaint with these episodes though is the idea that they never contacted each other after Pam called off the wedding. Folks say “Well, Pam needed to get courage and honesty, become Fancy New Beesly, before she could tell Jim her feelings.” Calling off your wedding to the man you live with and have been dating for 9 years just days before the ceremony strikes me as far more brave than telling Jim that you had done just that. Just imagining having to do something like that gives me sweaty palms. As I’ve said above, given the meek Pam we had been introduced to, the far more likely development after Jim left would be for her to go through with the wedding thinking that Jim had abandoned her and that Roy was the safe choice. To have her make the decision to dump Roy, but then be too timid to call Jim for five months is just TV manipulation.
Others have argued that maybe she was frightened that Jim would reject her, but how much worse would her life have been? Jim has moved away, she lives alone and she still works at Dunder Mifflin. SHE DOES NOT KNOW THERE IS GOING TO BE A MERGER! Jim is gone for good and isn’t going to magically show up at her door for another shot at the ring. She can’t be telling herself, “If I just wait a few more months then I can talk to him face to face and get all this resolved.” Stewing in her regret in no way is an improvement over getting some closure with Jim either way. An e-mail, letter or phone call simply saying: “Jim, I made a huge mistake back in May. I’m trying to straighten my life out right now, but I’d love a chance to talk to you about it.” would have been a relatively easy thing to do, far more so than meekly doing nothing. Again, having her fail to contact him is just a plot device to maintain their separation until Stamford and Scranton are merged and not an organic response of the character.
Conversely, while Pam not calling Jim could possibly (but not probably) be explained by her wanting to be on her own after the 9 years with Roy, the idea that Jim wouldn’t find some way to find out why she called off the wedding seems like a writer’s crutch and not real life. Sure he might be pissed about her changing her mind after he left and then not calling him, but it would be almost impossible for him not to want to know where he stands. The “Jim is so crushed he can’t even imagine speaking to her” theme is a romance novel device to prevent the simple solution that he would call (or ask during the call in The Initiation) to find out. While his moving to Stamford to get away from seeing her married makes a lot of sense, it doesn’t mean he would necessarily be irrationally angry with her. A simple “Pam, what the hell is going on?” would have put a stop to the whole drawn out proceedings. He has to know that he was in some way responsible for her decision and if so then they might still have a chance. While she told him she was still going to marry Roy, only seconds before she had admitted wanting to kiss him for a very long time. Plus wouldn’t he be concerned about how she was doing after making such an important decision? A simple call to find out the truth would not be an unreasonable action on his part. Guys are constantly seeing hope with far less evidence that Jim has and giving up on a woman you think you love (and have for three years) is not the default position. Even if she were to shoot him down again, at a minimum he would be in a better position to move on.
This artificial communication block is a recurring theme throughout the season. After the long phone call in The Initiation apparently neither of them contacts the other until the text message of Diwali. Why? Wouldn’t Jim have sent an e-mail joking with her about her new apartment? Or Pam might have sent something along with Michael’s daily log. Also, how does the subject of her being single not come up during the phone call? They are discussing her living alone. Isn’t there a rather large elephant in the room over the implications of that? People say “Well, they were trying to keep it light.”, again why? Jim is obviously not interested in reverting their relationship to the buddy mode it was before Casino Night and regardless he didn’t call to speak to her. And of course rather than let them naturally get to that point, they throw in the misunderstanding at the end with Ryan and Dwight which is so contrived that even the actors had a tough time pulling it off. In a deleted scene we even have Pam commenting on how they have a standing bet on the outcome of Dwight and Ryan going on a sales call together. How would this not have come up and logically from this how could Pam not tell Jim she was saying goodbye to Ryan? And in Diwali, why only a single text message? If she had gone that far why not a little more sustained effort? Are we to assume that Jim didn’t answer? Text messages just don’t disappear into the ether. Even before these events, how did Michael not bring up his conversation with Jim from The Convention? I find it hard to believe that the revelation that Jim (Michael’s “best” friend) moved away from Scranton because Pam rejected him, but then called off her wedding anyway wouldn’t have driven Michael to try all sorts of wildly inappropriate things to get them together. Then after learning of the merger in Branch Closing, both seem to ignore the possibility of reconciliation outside of the office in favor of a face to face meeting. Their reluctance to meet outside the office only made sense when Roy was an obstacle, but now seems ludicrous. Also, Pam’s meek effort to get together over coffee in The Merger hardly seems sufficient given what has transpired between the two. Jim’s “I’ve sort of started seeing someone.” shouldn’t be enough to derail Pam from trying to force some honesty from both of them. He confessed his feelings while she was engaged and only weeks before her wedding. She really should not be overly concerned about Karen’s feelings or the sanctity of Jim’s relationship. Given that what puts them together at the end of the season is Pam’s speech and her note after all the bad behavior in between, wouldn’t a simple five minute conversation have resolved much of this angst early on? It is points like this that the TV format takes over for reality. Moments that really should have gotten them to open up are just dropped without any explanation. Why, after the Andy prank in The Convict or Pam’s CIA stunt in A Benihana Christmas, wouldn’t they have sat down and reminisced about old times and joked about their ridiculous coworkers? In fact The Convict interactions seem to show them almost back to their old dynamic. Jim is enjoying his prank and even shields Pam from Karen’s involvement. Pam obviously enjoys that he has gone to the trouble to include her and in the deleted scene pranks him back. They trade glances during the Prison Mike conference room meeting. This entire interaction is just then swept under the rug and resets them in the next episode (A Benihana Christmas). Again while Jim at first rejects her CIA gift, by the end of the episode he has come around and their ordering of the helicopter is very much S2 like. In fact rather than Jim starting out after the merger as cold and distant and slowly warming back up to Pam, he somehow becomes more distant as the season goes on which seems a fairly unrealistic dynamic. As ferd put it:
but that was a different character, really. The writers had to actually change the Jim character to make this sitcom (ok traditional sitcom) plot direction work. They had to have him forget his motivations. They had to make Jim Halpert sullen, because his old personality would have pulled Pam too close to him too quickly. It wouldn’t have taken much interaction between the characters to get over this little misunderstanding (a sitcom staple). Every problem they faced the writers kept coming back to “Well he’s hurt.” and every solution was “Well he’s gotta act hurt.”
What keeps them apart? The idea that Karen being there would have prevented them from talking just doesn’t hold water unless we believe that the moments we see on film are their only chances for interaction and that the other 39.5 hours of the week they manage to completely avoid any sort of contact. Pam is desperate to, at a minimum, reestablish her friendship with Jim and she has no reason to avoid interacting with him. Again, ferd:
It gets even more ridiculous if you think about the time Jim and Pam would have actually spent together in the past year. Not just the time we saw them together. 7-8 hours a day every work day for the better part of a year. And if you consider this was a woman actively (for a shy type anyway) trying to send you signals that “Hey, it’s ok. I’ll have your babies. No, really, I want to.” not the kind of signals a man is going to miss.
After Pam learns that Karen and Jim have only been dating for a month in Back From Vacation why wouldn’t she feel a bit bolder about asserting some prior claim? While the idea that Roy and her engagement would prevent them from discussing their feelings is easily believable, here in S3 there are no real constraints of equal weight. With a little math Pam would have been able to figure out that Jim started dating Karen after the branch closing and learning he was returning to Scranton. They failed to logically build their estrangement during these early post-Merger episodes so that the later split would seem more plausible. And then to break the logjam and show how far FNB has come, they went and had Pam give a public declaration of her feelings in front of the entire office including Karen, perhaps the most unlikely thing the character would ever do.
These objections are rather subtle compared to the mess that was presented after The Return. Things just headed downhill in ways that make little sense. Jim’s confession to Karen that he still has feelings for Pam is a moment that should have never been filmed. If he came to admit that to himself how could he not talk to Pam? He hasn’t confirmed his feeling that Pam isn’t interested; he just takes it on faith. And while Jim’s lack of action is hard to understand, Karen’s reaction is even harder to fathom. They attempt to paper over it with the ‘five nights of talking’ from Ben Franklin, but it is hard to imagine what Jim could have told Karen that would have, one, come across as honest and, two, assured her it was worth continuing a relationship that was at most two months old. And the idea that Karen did all the talking without much input from Jim is ridiculous. It was incumbent on him to reassure her that she wasn’t just a distraction from Pam. It’s hard to imagine him coming up with something plausible that he could deliver sincerely. Karen would obviously ask if they had talked about the situation and she can see that Pam might have feelings for him still. Also, Karen would also be able to do the math about them starting to date AFTER he found out about the merger. This would be a huge red flag for her for a relationship so young along with the fact that he failed to mention Pam at all before Phyllis revealed their story and acted so nonchalant about the whole situation when she confronted him in Traveling Salesman. Also, did he tell her about Pam and Roy’s engagement at this point or was that another lie of omission and what happens when she discovers this little fact? While Jim might be able to convince himself that Pam’s decision wasn’t related to his actions, I don’t think Karen would have come to the same conclusion. People like to defend Karen hanging on here as her desperately clinging to a great relationship, but really how great could it have been? Jim must have been nervous and distracted the entire time due to the situation with Pam, he’s concealed and then lied to her about the significance of the relationship, has admitted he still has feelings for Pam and Pam appears to still have some sort of feelings for him. Karen was never presented as the shrinking wallflower type who would be satisfied with trying to hang on.
The corollary to this is why would Jim put so much work into hanging onto Karen at this point? If it had come after six months maybe he would feel the need to reassure her, but again this is a two month relationship initiated after learning about the merger that he is already trying to backpedal from. Why go through the endless late night talks in which you continue to lie to her (“Just a kiss.”) especially if you still have feelings for Pam? All of this might make more sense if Pam had actually rejected him on Casino Night rather than just failing to act decisively to get away from Roy, a course of action she takes less than a month later. Jim’s estrangement from Pam seems more like the reaction of someone who was in a relationship with Pam who then dumped him. Also, guys are not inclined to stay in young relationships where they spend a lot of time having to defend themselves for their actions or explain where they think the relationship is heading. “We need to talk.” is a red flag and five nights of it would have any guy with any self esteem running for the hills regardless of any other woman in the picture. Once again a major turning point comes along and instead of Jim changing, he just resets to “Jim is with Karen”. Or to quote DwightfromtheFuture who wrote at the time:
This year it's: Jim has a girlfriend. Pam is sad. Jim? He still has girlfriend. Pam? Guess what, she's sad. You know, that Jim, he has a girlfriend. Pam's a bit down about it. Jim's girlfriend is apparently willing to put up with a lot of crap, and is still around. Pam, who we all thought might be growing a backbone, is instead sad.
Another major objection to the events depicted in S3 is the Pam/Roy reunion. That Pam might have backslid and gone back to Roy is not my major problem although it is a bit of a cliché. It’s more the timing and resolution of this story that bothers me the most. It seems as though the show might have intended for this reunion to have occurred earlier in the season at the Back From Vacation stage (Of course an even better point would have had Pam mirror Jim’s decision and reconcile with Roy after Branch Closing.). Pam was crushed by the evidence of Jim and Karen moving forward and Roy was there to bring a smile to her face. This would have been an excellent point for them to quietly reconcile without anyone noticing. This reunion should have occurred without it being prominently displayed for all in the office to see and allowed to run its course as Pam re-realizes why she and Roy don’t work. A contrast between Jim’s response to her winning the elementary school art contest with Roy’s most likely disinterest would have been a revelation. This could have been reinforced by his lack of enthusiasm for the art show. Having her realize that she had made the right decision back in June would have provided her with confidence for moving on with Jim. Also, Pam getting together with Roy at the wedding makes little sense. She shares a flirty moment with Jim at the bar and they lock eyes as he dances with Karen, but rather than this giving her the impetus to say something to him directly, she retreats and falls for Roy’s lame come on which comes just shortly after he reinforces his essential cluelessness with his ignorance about his own wedding plans. This is just lazy writing, as if they had plotted for the reunion back before the season started and this seemed like the best place to drop it in. Then after two episodes they realized they needed to get moving towards the finale so they came up with a quick and easy way to get rid of him leading to the two scenes that taint S3 the most for me: Roy’s explosion in Poor Richards and his attack on Jim.
His violent outburst at Poor Richard’s and his subsequent attack on Jim are completely out of character for the show. Having him react so violently to Pam’s revelation about the Casino night events alters my perception of the characters involved. I always felt Pam rejected Roy before the wedding because he’s a bit of a self-centered jerk who doesn’t really account for Pam’s feelings in his life and that Jim’s confession had shown her that there was someone who would take her feelings seriously. Making Roy a rageaholic completely alters this dynamic. It makes Pam appear to be a very weak character because it implies both that Roy might have been like this before and that the only way she would leave him was because of his violent temper. Thus Roy’s hair trigger, which Pam would have been familiar with after 9 years of dating, makes her a victim of, at a minimum, emotional abuse and possibly physical abuse. That she might then return to her abuser over six months later in a moment of weakness is unfathomable. It makes me want to ask Greg Daniels “So how often did Roy beat Pam?” The alternative is that we are supposed to believe this was a onetime outburst followed up by an unprecedented assault on Jim, but this seems unlikely. The most reasonable explanation is that the writers got themselves into this cul de sac by simply thinking “At some point we’ll put Pam and Roy back together just to ramp up the tension, but break them up after two episodes.” They then pulled this lame stunt to end an arc they hadn’t thought through very well. A true “Fancy New Beesly” move would have had her understand why she got back together with Roy and why she left him in the first place rather than turning him into a raging psychopath. Turning him into a violent control freak was the easy way to end the arc and further estrange Jim from Pam, but it didn’t feel earned and it diminishes Pam’s personal growth. It basically resets her to where she would have been during the summer after calling off the wedding: mourning both the loss of Jim's friendship and the waste that her relationship with Roy turned out to be. That it takes her at most two months to summon the courage to confront Jim at the beach just points out how absurdly drawn out the story was over the entire season. The entire situation should have been resolved by The Initiation or The Merger. Pam is a 27 year old woman, not a teenager. She should have been able to work past her doubts in less than eleven months.
My final problem with the late S3 story was the lack of insight provided into Jim’s head post-The Negotiation. He basically cuts off almost all contact with Pam and appears to be moving on with Karen while apparently blaming Pam for their estrangement. First, why would he be so upset with her for Roy’s action? He knows Roy is a jerk of the first order and he did in fact break up the guy’s long term relationship. Getting punched over something like that sort of comes with the territory. Also, wouldn’t he be fairly curious as to why Roy suddenly did this out of the blue? What had Pam said? What did it mean for them? Why had she waited so long? Two other questions arise from this confrontation. Why didn’t Pam or anyone else at Poor Richard’s mention something to Jim about Roy’s outburst and what would Karen have thought? If Jim had been warned wouldn’t he have made an effort to talk to Pam? Has Jim told Karen that Pam and Roy were going to get married, but that she apparently called it off after his confession? These sorts of obvious possibilities are again glossed over in favor of keeping things in suspense. Beyond these sorts of logistical problems is the fact that they didn’t build to Jim making a decision, but left it all up to Pam’s speech and the yogurt lid. It’s all well and good to say, as Paul Leiberstein did, that “Jim loves Pam.” but is that how life works? Would Jim have thrown away his relationship with Karen and the possible promotion for Pam after weeks of ignoring her and working on making things right with Karen? Much like Pam’s decision to call off her wedding even though Jim has left, having Jim just toss aside Karen to return to Scranton for “the love of his life” based on the clues Pam gave strikes me as a melodramatic plot device to tie up the story rather than an outcome that was earned by what we had seen before. If, after the fallout from Roy’s attack, we had seen more of the small moments they gave in Safety Training where their obvious compatibility showed through or more of an indication that things with Karen were just not going to work out then his decision in David Wallace’s office would have seemed unassailable. Instead we got the opposite: Jim is even more estranged from Pam to the point they don’t even speak and his relationship to Karen improves to the point that they almost make sense as a couple. Only a week before Beach Games and two weeks from The Job, they are celebrating their six month anniversary. A celebration apparently initiated and organized by Jim. We are left at the end of The Job saying “Wow that was fantastic. What the hell just happened?” The conclusion is what we hoped for from the first seconds of Gay Witch Hunt, but the journey seems erratic. At a minimum from the low point of the breakroom scene after Roy’s attack to the end of season, they should have given some indication that Jim was struggling with his feelings over Pam. We saw Pam evolve to the point where she could tell Jim her feelings, but Jim remains a blank slate who basically erases the last year of his life in response to a yogurt lid.
Which leads to another question: What about Jim and Karen? How are we expected to view that relationship? Many have speculated that we were supposed to see that they were totally incompatible the entire time, but this mainly involves ignoring any positive interaction between them and also indicts Jim as fairly insensitive and selfish for prolonging a relationship he had no investment in. Their playful banter in the car on the way to NYC is dismissed as some sort of competitive game, Karen buying Victoria's Secret outfits and Jim planning a romantic dinner for their 6 month anniversary is them trying too hard and goofing off at the beach is seen as Karen forcing things. Anytime they work on a prank together it’s seen as awkward and uncomfortable. Unfortunately listening to the commentaries and various interviews it is obvious that Karen and Jim were supposed to be seen as a relatively functional couple that were working on their problems and that Pam’s declaration made Jim realize what he was missing. They made Jim and Karen’s relationship just opaque enough you couldn’t quite decide how serious it was, but it is my feeling that this was mainly to keep fans in the dark for the final reveal (in fact, in the commentary for The Job, the director admits they made Jim and Karen look like they were having a great time together just to make sure the last scene was a surprise. All those joking moments they share during the episode were meant to be seen that way. There is no hidden subtext of conflict that people claim to see.) and so that you don’t view Jim and Pam as sort of cruel towards other people’s feelings. In fact, looking at Jim’s behavior over the entire season, he comes off as somewhat of an insensitive jerk which is supposedly explained by his broken heart. His disdain for Pam’s situation and his cruel use of Karen as his shield and then his casual dismissal of her in New York are all fairly assholish. A truly decent guy would have turned down the return to Scranton or gone back alone and resolved his differences with Pam and not hooked up with Karen just days before returning. Or perhaps if he’d failed that test, maybe he could have been honest with Karen about him and Pam and let her move on without dragging out their relationship for another 3 ½ months only to drop her like a rock once he’s sure Pam is ready to get together. What exactly did Jim do during that week from Beach Games to The Job? The topic would have had to have been brought up given Karen's (justified) insecurity. Did he continue to tell Karen that he and Pam were just friends and that his and Karen's relationship was more important to him? The idea that the yogurt medal suddenly caused him to realize who he really wanted to be with is ridiculous. He had to have been contemplating the implications of Pam's speech the entire time. True love and maturity require a bit more honesty that what he displayed from Branch Closing on. Jim Halpert, thy name is douchebag. Sorry ladies, but you have the writers and producers to blame for his out of character behavior.
Yes, Pam could have been decisive enough to tell him she was still going to marry Roy and yes, maybe Jim would have accepted that and left Scranton without any more discussion. Maybe she would have called off the wedding, but still not contacted him and he wouldn't have gotten in touch with her after learning the truth. After talking for hours on the phone they might not have spoken again until the merger. And perhaps Pam wouldn’t have said anything about giving her a chance because of his one month relationship with Karen and they would have ignored their interactions after his prank on her with Andy or the CIA gag and never really talked even though she was miserable. Maybe they would have ignored their feelings after Pam’s art contest victory or the cell phone caper and Jim would have suppressed his feelings after admitting them to Karen and Karen would have hung onto the relationship even after learning his feelings for Pam and how he had brought her along as a buffer and then deceived her when she found out about it from Phyllis. Finally at Phyllis’ wedding they wouldn’t have had a dance and tried to sort out their relationship and Pam would end up back with Roy for no good reason only to break it off with him again because his anger issues resurfaced. Maybe all of these individual events are possible if somewhat unlikely, but here is my problem in a nutshell. They ALL had to occur for the season to play out as it did. If at any point during the 6-9 months from Casino night on one of them had made even the smallest effort to work out their problems then they would have gotten together much sooner. A simple “I miss you.” uttered in the breakroom by either one completely changes the dynamic of the show. There was no room for error. They worked together 5 feet apart from November until May and somehow avoided discussing their situation that entire time until Pam blurts out her confession in front of the entire office at the beach. I bought it with a fiancée, but not with them basically single.
I think the biggest mistake that leads to all of the missteps I’ve cataloged here is the decision that Jim and Pam weren’t going to get together until the season finale, but because their story represented “true love” nothing could prevent them from ending up together. Thus no amount of hurtful behavior (Pam not calling, Jim slamming her because of Roy) has any real effect on their eventual reunion. Thus developments that seemed huge as the season went along were suddenly reduced to meaningless with a simple "Then, it's a date." We end up feeling like we were played for chumps, as if the writers said "You idiots spent all that emotional energy worrying about for absolutely no reason." The trauma that was mid to late-Season 3 deserved better than that.
A corollary to this is that Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski were cast primarily for their interpersonal chemistry which they have in spades. The problem is that whenever they were put together it became impossible to believe that they couldn't overcome the problems they had caused for each other. So the show needed to keep them separated either physically or mentally for the entire season. So for every scene together they needed to find a way to reset the tension. Sometimes they didn’t even bother trying such as after Diwali or The Convict. Other times it’s the “five nights of talking” an unexplained development that really raises more questions than it answers. And occasionally, especially in the episodes just following the merger, they just deleted scenes that showed them together most likely because every one of them destroyed their “Pam and Jim are no longer friends” storyline. So we get the Stamford episodes, which in retrospect make far more sense than the artificial roadblocks following Jim’s return. Why wouldn’t Jim have gone to coffee with Pam? Why is Karen finding an apartment such a shattering experience? The woman has to live somewhere and contrary to Jim’s faulty logic (which Pam calls him on), living two blocks apart is not like living together. Why does one song request and a dance have Pam get back together with Roy especially if he is abusive? If she's so miserable, why not try and talk to Jim instead of going back with her violent lunkhead of an ex-fiancee? And why, after spending all his time reassuring Karen that he’s no longer interested in Pam, does the Roy reunion make him so angry and then when Roy tries to attack him does he cruelly blame Pam? Also, after spending six months assuring Karen that there is nothing between him and Pam, how does Jim justify just dumping her in New York City? And how does all of this Sturm und Drang get overcome with an ambiguous confession and a yogurt lid? Because their relationship became a romantic cliché that nothing could break their bond. Of course most of us forgive them because the outcome is one we’d been hoping for since Casino Night.
A final quote from NAer Wink pretty much covers it:
I agree with DftF that the S3 storyline felt forced on several counts. I'm sorry I can't remember who posted this idea (or something like it), but I agree the season went from A to B to B to B (and more B's) until Beach Games where it jumped to Y and The Job where it crash landed with a happy thud at Z. The B's were tons of fun and full of genius moments that I lived for Thursday to Thursday, but the storyline was rough, full of far more fits than starts, and unsatisfying as a whole.
I have not always been an Office extreme fan. In fact I didn’t really immerse myself in the fandom until January of 2008 while the show was on hiatus during the Writers Guild strike. I had watched the show faithfully since the start and soon found it to be my favorite late in Season 2, but I did not realize that there was a dedicated internet following until my son got the S1-3 DVDs as a Christmas present in 2007. Watching the DVDs in rapid succession I began to focus on the Jim/Pam story which hadn’t really registered as the central element of the show for me at that point. It was while listening to a commentary that I heard Jenna Fischer mention the website Northern Attack. Soon after logging on to the site and reading the episode recaps I realized I had been missing this rather important focus of the story. As I paid more attention to their story I realized two things. First, it made me remember how midway through S3 I had become slightly dissatisfied with the show and had become more inclined to look forward to 30 Rock rather the The Office. Second, I realized what about the show had caused it to lose its status with me. Re-watching the episodes following The Return, I came to see that the desire of the writers and producers of the show to drag out the inevitable reunion of Jim and Pam until the May sweeps had led them to artificially delay what should have been much more natural reconciliation between the two characters. The requirements of network TV forced them to add in elements that the show had mostly avoided during S1-2.
While Season 3 of The Office has some excellent episodes, as an overall story it had some serious flaws as compared to Season 1/2. In the earlier seasons, the Jim/Pam storyline was executed almost flawlessly. The obstacle of Pam’s engagement made their dance completely believable. They couldn’t interact outside of the office except in the rarest of circumstances (The Dundies, E-mail Surveillance and Michael’s Birthday being the exceptions that showed how obviously compatible they were.) and so everything took place within the confines of the office where discretion would be required. Thus Jim is reduced to trying to read Pam’s interest in a situation where nothing can be stated overtly. Early in S2 he keeps first imagining that she has the same feelings for him as he has for her and then getting shot down when she raises the walls she has built to prevent her from really thinking about her and Roy. It’s not until his party and the Christmas episode that he seems convinced that she is on the same page and his resolve to do something about it (the X-mas card, 27 seconds of silence, “I’d save the receptionist.”) is strengthened only to be short circuited by the iPod incident and Roy setting the wedding date. After the trauma that was Booze Cruise, The Secret, The Carpet and Boys and Girls we got a number of episodes where Jim has realized that Pam just isn’t going to change her situation and that he needs to move on. Pam senses this change and subconsciously turns up her game to keep Jim in orbit, culminating in the poker scene in Casino Night which I contend is the catalyst for Jim’s confession later that night. All of this seems completely true to life for an office crush. Pam cannot concede her feelings for Jim without compromising her 9 year relationship with Roy and Jim is reluctant to breach that bond both out of a sense of decency and being unsure how Pam truly feels due to the lack of interaction away from Dunder Mifflin. These are completely believable roadblocks that real people negotiate all the time. Jim’s confession is also a plausible response to their circumstances as is his working on his transfer to Stamford.
Season 3, on the other hand, has a number of problems that detracted from this reality for me. It appears they made two decisions that, for me, adversely affected their story. First, they decided that nothing would be resolved until the season finale which might be a reasonable decision if well executed. Second, rather than stay grounded in the reality of a workplace romance, they concluded that Jim and Pam were just “Meant to be”. While perhaps good for romance novels it doesn’t seem realistic for The Office. These choices allowed them to stretch things out far beyond plausibility and then bring them to a conclusion with a sort of magical (if satisfying) twist.
The problems begin with the flashback in Gay Witch Hunt. I find it almost impossible to believe that Pam would have been able to decisively give Jim an answer to “Are you really going to marry him?” She had been suppressing the idea that she and Jim were more than friends for months or years. To have this façade shattered at that moment would have thrown her into real turmoil, especially since she obviously returned his kiss, a fact she admits much later in S3 to Roy. The original script had her run out of the room crying which strikes me as much more believable given the insecure Pam we saw in S1-2. To have her give Jim a decisive answer at that moment seems out of character, especially since only moments before it seemed like she was reconsidering her choice to marry Roy while talking to her mother (The infamous“I think I am” which regardless of what you think her mother asked: “Are you in love with Jim?”, “Are you thinking of calling off the wedding?” or “Are you going to go through with the wedding?”, her answer indicates a lot of uncertainty.)
A related misstep is the idea that Jim would just accept her response as a firm rejection of him. Every male in the world knows that when you put yourself out like that, even to a single woman, there is a decent chance you are going to be shot down or at a minimum not encouraged to pursue, but that this may not be a definitive response. Jim would have to know that engaged Pam isn’t going to be capable of making an instantaneous decision to uproot her life to be with him. Even as he was telling her he loved her, he knew that what he was doing was probably not going to be well received. Thus his “I'm really sorry if that's weird for you to hear, but I needed you to hear it. Probably not good timing, I know that. I just...” during the parking lot scene. If there is a defining trait for S2 Pam is that she is hesitant to change and unsure in making decisions. Rather than just meekly accepting her response, he would have given her the time to mull over her decision while informing her that he was contemplating the move to Stamford. He is making the play of a lifetime here, not picking what movie to go to. He is asking her to end her 9 year relationship to the man she lives with and is planning to marry in a few weeks and he is going to give himself the best shot available. Of course the problem with this approach, in terms of the show, is that if Pam had still shot him down after receiving this information she would have gone through with the wedding. The NA contributor ferd farkel put it well:
The idea that he accepts this single (or double) rejection (heck, let’s call it 10 solid minutes worth of rejection) from a woman who has just had this sprung on her is ridiculous. He's a salesman. He knows people sometimes need time to make a decision. The bigger the decision the more time they need.
And, he’s a smart guy. Later, he would absolutely know immediately that he played a role in the end of the wedding. He would absolutely not read too much into shy Pam not calling him. He would absolutely go to her as soon as the dust had settled on the wedding and let her know he just needed to be sure. What’s she gonna do eat his brain? (his real brain) big freaking scaredy cat!
He had been working to win this engaged woman for 2, 3, 5 or something years. Yes, he was actively working to win her. He was using approach number 3b for un-engaging a woman. This is also known as the "a. get close enough to a. show her how much cooler you are than men nearly twice your size and b. enjoy the crap out of her company while you are doing it" approach. That guy would have tried again.
Sure, if he went to a bar and the third girl at the end of the bar who was kind of hot told him no just once, he would move on. Not worth another effort. With Pam, though, he is going to find out for sure. Again, as a salesman, if he hears that Pamco is no longer getting her plain white from Royco he’s gonna be on the phone to make sure that Jimco is servicing that account by the end of business that day.
Another problem I have with the start of S3, is the assumption that Jim somehow escaped Scranton without ever interacting with Pam again. Transfers just don’t occur that quickly and especially for an intra-company move there would be a need for Jim to close down or transfer his Scranton accounts before moving. It seems more likely that he and Pam would have had another chance to talk and that Pam shot him down again out of fear. At a minimum he would have told her he meant what he said and that if she changed her mind she should get in touch with him. This would have been a better explanation for Jim’s estrangement and his “She said no….twice.” statement to Michael. For Jim to be as emotionally distant as he was all through S3 required more than Pam’s simple head nod in response to his question. Again, though, the idea that Pam could think over her response, tell Jim no a second time and then call off her wedding after he leaves is just not credible.
A bigger complaint with these episodes though is the idea that they never contacted each other after Pam called off the wedding. Folks say “Well, Pam needed to get courage and honesty, become Fancy New Beesly, before she could tell Jim her feelings.” Calling off your wedding to the man you live with and have been dating for 9 years just days before the ceremony strikes me as far more brave than telling Jim that you had done just that. Just imagining having to do something like that gives me sweaty palms. As I’ve said above, given the meek Pam we had been introduced to, the far more likely development after Jim left would be for her to go through with the wedding thinking that Jim had abandoned her and that Roy was the safe choice. To have her make the decision to dump Roy, but then be too timid to call Jim for five months is just TV manipulation.
Others have argued that maybe she was frightened that Jim would reject her, but how much worse would her life have been? Jim has moved away, she lives alone and she still works at Dunder Mifflin. SHE DOES NOT KNOW THERE IS GOING TO BE A MERGER! Jim is gone for good and isn’t going to magically show up at her door for another shot at the ring. She can’t be telling herself, “If I just wait a few more months then I can talk to him face to face and get all this resolved.” Stewing in her regret in no way is an improvement over getting some closure with Jim either way. An e-mail, letter or phone call simply saying: “Jim, I made a huge mistake back in May. I’m trying to straighten my life out right now, but I’d love a chance to talk to you about it.” would have been a relatively easy thing to do, far more so than meekly doing nothing. Again, having her fail to contact him is just a plot device to maintain their separation until Stamford and Scranton are merged and not an organic response of the character.
Conversely, while Pam not calling Jim could possibly (but not probably) be explained by her wanting to be on her own after the 9 years with Roy, the idea that Jim wouldn’t find some way to find out why she called off the wedding seems like a writer’s crutch and not real life. Sure he might be pissed about her changing her mind after he left and then not calling him, but it would be almost impossible for him not to want to know where he stands. The “Jim is so crushed he can’t even imagine speaking to her” theme is a romance novel device to prevent the simple solution that he would call (or ask during the call in The Initiation) to find out. While his moving to Stamford to get away from seeing her married makes a lot of sense, it doesn’t mean he would necessarily be irrationally angry with her. A simple “Pam, what the hell is going on?” would have put a stop to the whole drawn out proceedings. He has to know that he was in some way responsible for her decision and if so then they might still have a chance. While she told him she was still going to marry Roy, only seconds before she had admitted wanting to kiss him for a very long time. Plus wouldn’t he be concerned about how she was doing after making such an important decision? A simple call to find out the truth would not be an unreasonable action on his part. Guys are constantly seeing hope with far less evidence that Jim has and giving up on a woman you think you love (and have for three years) is not the default position. Even if she were to shoot him down again, at a minimum he would be in a better position to move on.
This artificial communication block is a recurring theme throughout the season. After the long phone call in The Initiation apparently neither of them contacts the other until the text message of Diwali. Why? Wouldn’t Jim have sent an e-mail joking with her about her new apartment? Or Pam might have sent something along with Michael’s daily log. Also, how does the subject of her being single not come up during the phone call? They are discussing her living alone. Isn’t there a rather large elephant in the room over the implications of that? People say “Well, they were trying to keep it light.”, again why? Jim is obviously not interested in reverting their relationship to the buddy mode it was before Casino Night and regardless he didn’t call to speak to her. And of course rather than let them naturally get to that point, they throw in the misunderstanding at the end with Ryan and Dwight which is so contrived that even the actors had a tough time pulling it off. In a deleted scene we even have Pam commenting on how they have a standing bet on the outcome of Dwight and Ryan going on a sales call together. How would this not have come up and logically from this how could Pam not tell Jim she was saying goodbye to Ryan? And in Diwali, why only a single text message? If she had gone that far why not a little more sustained effort? Are we to assume that Jim didn’t answer? Text messages just don’t disappear into the ether. Even before these events, how did Michael not bring up his conversation with Jim from The Convention? I find it hard to believe that the revelation that Jim (Michael’s “best” friend) moved away from Scranton because Pam rejected him, but then called off her wedding anyway wouldn’t have driven Michael to try all sorts of wildly inappropriate things to get them together. Then after learning of the merger in Branch Closing, both seem to ignore the possibility of reconciliation outside of the office in favor of a face to face meeting. Their reluctance to meet outside the office only made sense when Roy was an obstacle, but now seems ludicrous. Also, Pam’s meek effort to get together over coffee in The Merger hardly seems sufficient given what has transpired between the two. Jim’s “I’ve sort of started seeing someone.” shouldn’t be enough to derail Pam from trying to force some honesty from both of them. He confessed his feelings while she was engaged and only weeks before her wedding. She really should not be overly concerned about Karen’s feelings or the sanctity of Jim’s relationship. Given that what puts them together at the end of the season is Pam’s speech and her note after all the bad behavior in between, wouldn’t a simple five minute conversation have resolved much of this angst early on? It is points like this that the TV format takes over for reality. Moments that really should have gotten them to open up are just dropped without any explanation. Why, after the Andy prank in The Convict or Pam’s CIA stunt in A Benihana Christmas, wouldn’t they have sat down and reminisced about old times and joked about their ridiculous coworkers? In fact The Convict interactions seem to show them almost back to their old dynamic. Jim is enjoying his prank and even shields Pam from Karen’s involvement. Pam obviously enjoys that he has gone to the trouble to include her and in the deleted scene pranks him back. They trade glances during the Prison Mike conference room meeting. This entire interaction is just then swept under the rug and resets them in the next episode (A Benihana Christmas). Again while Jim at first rejects her CIA gift, by the end of the episode he has come around and their ordering of the helicopter is very much S2 like. In fact rather than Jim starting out after the merger as cold and distant and slowly warming back up to Pam, he somehow becomes more distant as the season goes on which seems a fairly unrealistic dynamic. As ferd put it:
but that was a different character, really. The writers had to actually change the Jim character to make this sitcom (ok traditional sitcom) plot direction work. They had to have him forget his motivations. They had to make Jim Halpert sullen, because his old personality would have pulled Pam too close to him too quickly. It wouldn’t have taken much interaction between the characters to get over this little misunderstanding (a sitcom staple). Every problem they faced the writers kept coming back to “Well he’s hurt.” and every solution was “Well he’s gotta act hurt.”
What keeps them apart? The idea that Karen being there would have prevented them from talking just doesn’t hold water unless we believe that the moments we see on film are their only chances for interaction and that the other 39.5 hours of the week they manage to completely avoid any sort of contact. Pam is desperate to, at a minimum, reestablish her friendship with Jim and she has no reason to avoid interacting with him. Again, ferd:
It gets even more ridiculous if you think about the time Jim and Pam would have actually spent together in the past year. Not just the time we saw them together. 7-8 hours a day every work day for the better part of a year. And if you consider this was a woman actively (for a shy type anyway) trying to send you signals that “Hey, it’s ok. I’ll have your babies. No, really, I want to.” not the kind of signals a man is going to miss.
After Pam learns that Karen and Jim have only been dating for a month in Back From Vacation why wouldn’t she feel a bit bolder about asserting some prior claim? While the idea that Roy and her engagement would prevent them from discussing their feelings is easily believable, here in S3 there are no real constraints of equal weight. With a little math Pam would have been able to figure out that Jim started dating Karen after the branch closing and learning he was returning to Scranton. They failed to logically build their estrangement during these early post-Merger episodes so that the later split would seem more plausible. And then to break the logjam and show how far FNB has come, they went and had Pam give a public declaration of her feelings in front of the entire office including Karen, perhaps the most unlikely thing the character would ever do.
These objections are rather subtle compared to the mess that was presented after The Return. Things just headed downhill in ways that make little sense. Jim’s confession to Karen that he still has feelings for Pam is a moment that should have never been filmed. If he came to admit that to himself how could he not talk to Pam? He hasn’t confirmed his feeling that Pam isn’t interested; he just takes it on faith. And while Jim’s lack of action is hard to understand, Karen’s reaction is even harder to fathom. They attempt to paper over it with the ‘five nights of talking’ from Ben Franklin, but it is hard to imagine what Jim could have told Karen that would have, one, come across as honest and, two, assured her it was worth continuing a relationship that was at most two months old. And the idea that Karen did all the talking without much input from Jim is ridiculous. It was incumbent on him to reassure her that she wasn’t just a distraction from Pam. It’s hard to imagine him coming up with something plausible that he could deliver sincerely. Karen would obviously ask if they had talked about the situation and she can see that Pam might have feelings for him still. Also, Karen would also be able to do the math about them starting to date AFTER he found out about the merger. This would be a huge red flag for her for a relationship so young along with the fact that he failed to mention Pam at all before Phyllis revealed their story and acted so nonchalant about the whole situation when she confronted him in Traveling Salesman. Also, did he tell her about Pam and Roy’s engagement at this point or was that another lie of omission and what happens when she discovers this little fact? While Jim might be able to convince himself that Pam’s decision wasn’t related to his actions, I don’t think Karen would have come to the same conclusion. People like to defend Karen hanging on here as her desperately clinging to a great relationship, but really how great could it have been? Jim must have been nervous and distracted the entire time due to the situation with Pam, he’s concealed and then lied to her about the significance of the relationship, has admitted he still has feelings for Pam and Pam appears to still have some sort of feelings for him. Karen was never presented as the shrinking wallflower type who would be satisfied with trying to hang on.
The corollary to this is why would Jim put so much work into hanging onto Karen at this point? If it had come after six months maybe he would feel the need to reassure her, but again this is a two month relationship initiated after learning about the merger that he is already trying to backpedal from. Why go through the endless late night talks in which you continue to lie to her (“Just a kiss.”) especially if you still have feelings for Pam? All of this might make more sense if Pam had actually rejected him on Casino Night rather than just failing to act decisively to get away from Roy, a course of action she takes less than a month later. Jim’s estrangement from Pam seems more like the reaction of someone who was in a relationship with Pam who then dumped him. Also, guys are not inclined to stay in young relationships where they spend a lot of time having to defend themselves for their actions or explain where they think the relationship is heading. “We need to talk.” is a red flag and five nights of it would have any guy with any self esteem running for the hills regardless of any other woman in the picture. Once again a major turning point comes along and instead of Jim changing, he just resets to “Jim is with Karen”. Or to quote DwightfromtheFuture who wrote at the time:
This year it's: Jim has a girlfriend. Pam is sad. Jim? He still has girlfriend. Pam? Guess what, she's sad. You know, that Jim, he has a girlfriend. Pam's a bit down about it. Jim's girlfriend is apparently willing to put up with a lot of crap, and is still around. Pam, who we all thought might be growing a backbone, is instead sad.
Another major objection to the events depicted in S3 is the Pam/Roy reunion. That Pam might have backslid and gone back to Roy is not my major problem although it is a bit of a cliché. It’s more the timing and resolution of this story that bothers me the most. It seems as though the show might have intended for this reunion to have occurred earlier in the season at the Back From Vacation stage (Of course an even better point would have had Pam mirror Jim’s decision and reconcile with Roy after Branch Closing.). Pam was crushed by the evidence of Jim and Karen moving forward and Roy was there to bring a smile to her face. This would have been an excellent point for them to quietly reconcile without anyone noticing. This reunion should have occurred without it being prominently displayed for all in the office to see and allowed to run its course as Pam re-realizes why she and Roy don’t work. A contrast between Jim’s response to her winning the elementary school art contest with Roy’s most likely disinterest would have been a revelation. This could have been reinforced by his lack of enthusiasm for the art show. Having her realize that she had made the right decision back in June would have provided her with confidence for moving on with Jim. Also, Pam getting together with Roy at the wedding makes little sense. She shares a flirty moment with Jim at the bar and they lock eyes as he dances with Karen, but rather than this giving her the impetus to say something to him directly, she retreats and falls for Roy’s lame come on which comes just shortly after he reinforces his essential cluelessness with his ignorance about his own wedding plans. This is just lazy writing, as if they had plotted for the reunion back before the season started and this seemed like the best place to drop it in. Then after two episodes they realized they needed to get moving towards the finale so they came up with a quick and easy way to get rid of him leading to the two scenes that taint S3 the most for me: Roy’s explosion in Poor Richards and his attack on Jim.
His violent outburst at Poor Richard’s and his subsequent attack on Jim are completely out of character for the show. Having him react so violently to Pam’s revelation about the Casino night events alters my perception of the characters involved. I always felt Pam rejected Roy before the wedding because he’s a bit of a self-centered jerk who doesn’t really account for Pam’s feelings in his life and that Jim’s confession had shown her that there was someone who would take her feelings seriously. Making Roy a rageaholic completely alters this dynamic. It makes Pam appear to be a very weak character because it implies both that Roy might have been like this before and that the only way she would leave him was because of his violent temper. Thus Roy’s hair trigger, which Pam would have been familiar with after 9 years of dating, makes her a victim of, at a minimum, emotional abuse and possibly physical abuse. That she might then return to her abuser over six months later in a moment of weakness is unfathomable. It makes me want to ask Greg Daniels “So how often did Roy beat Pam?” The alternative is that we are supposed to believe this was a onetime outburst followed up by an unprecedented assault on Jim, but this seems unlikely. The most reasonable explanation is that the writers got themselves into this cul de sac by simply thinking “At some point we’ll put Pam and Roy back together just to ramp up the tension, but break them up after two episodes.” They then pulled this lame stunt to end an arc they hadn’t thought through very well. A true “Fancy New Beesly” move would have had her understand why she got back together with Roy and why she left him in the first place rather than turning him into a raging psychopath. Turning him into a violent control freak was the easy way to end the arc and further estrange Jim from Pam, but it didn’t feel earned and it diminishes Pam’s personal growth. It basically resets her to where she would have been during the summer after calling off the wedding: mourning both the loss of Jim's friendship and the waste that her relationship with Roy turned out to be. That it takes her at most two months to summon the courage to confront Jim at the beach just points out how absurdly drawn out the story was over the entire season. The entire situation should have been resolved by The Initiation or The Merger. Pam is a 27 year old woman, not a teenager. She should have been able to work past her doubts in less than eleven months.
My final problem with the late S3 story was the lack of insight provided into Jim’s head post-The Negotiation. He basically cuts off almost all contact with Pam and appears to be moving on with Karen while apparently blaming Pam for their estrangement. First, why would he be so upset with her for Roy’s action? He knows Roy is a jerk of the first order and he did in fact break up the guy’s long term relationship. Getting punched over something like that sort of comes with the territory. Also, wouldn’t he be fairly curious as to why Roy suddenly did this out of the blue? What had Pam said? What did it mean for them? Why had she waited so long? Two other questions arise from this confrontation. Why didn’t Pam or anyone else at Poor Richard’s mention something to Jim about Roy’s outburst and what would Karen have thought? If Jim had been warned wouldn’t he have made an effort to talk to Pam? Has Jim told Karen that Pam and Roy were going to get married, but that she apparently called it off after his confession? These sorts of obvious possibilities are again glossed over in favor of keeping things in suspense. Beyond these sorts of logistical problems is the fact that they didn’t build to Jim making a decision, but left it all up to Pam’s speech and the yogurt lid. It’s all well and good to say, as Paul Leiberstein did, that “Jim loves Pam.” but is that how life works? Would Jim have thrown away his relationship with Karen and the possible promotion for Pam after weeks of ignoring her and working on making things right with Karen? Much like Pam’s decision to call off her wedding even though Jim has left, having Jim just toss aside Karen to return to Scranton for “the love of his life” based on the clues Pam gave strikes me as a melodramatic plot device to tie up the story rather than an outcome that was earned by what we had seen before. If, after the fallout from Roy’s attack, we had seen more of the small moments they gave in Safety Training where their obvious compatibility showed through or more of an indication that things with Karen were just not going to work out then his decision in David Wallace’s office would have seemed unassailable. Instead we got the opposite: Jim is even more estranged from Pam to the point they don’t even speak and his relationship to Karen improves to the point that they almost make sense as a couple. Only a week before Beach Games and two weeks from The Job, they are celebrating their six month anniversary. A celebration apparently initiated and organized by Jim. We are left at the end of The Job saying “Wow that was fantastic. What the hell just happened?” The conclusion is what we hoped for from the first seconds of Gay Witch Hunt, but the journey seems erratic. At a minimum from the low point of the breakroom scene after Roy’s attack to the end of season, they should have given some indication that Jim was struggling with his feelings over Pam. We saw Pam evolve to the point where she could tell Jim her feelings, but Jim remains a blank slate who basically erases the last year of his life in response to a yogurt lid.
Which leads to another question: What about Jim and Karen? How are we expected to view that relationship? Many have speculated that we were supposed to see that they were totally incompatible the entire time, but this mainly involves ignoring any positive interaction between them and also indicts Jim as fairly insensitive and selfish for prolonging a relationship he had no investment in. Their playful banter in the car on the way to NYC is dismissed as some sort of competitive game, Karen buying Victoria's Secret outfits and Jim planning a romantic dinner for their 6 month anniversary is them trying too hard and goofing off at the beach is seen as Karen forcing things. Anytime they work on a prank together it’s seen as awkward and uncomfortable. Unfortunately listening to the commentaries and various interviews it is obvious that Karen and Jim were supposed to be seen as a relatively functional couple that were working on their problems and that Pam’s declaration made Jim realize what he was missing. They made Jim and Karen’s relationship just opaque enough you couldn’t quite decide how serious it was, but it is my feeling that this was mainly to keep fans in the dark for the final reveal (in fact, in the commentary for The Job, the director admits they made Jim and Karen look like they were having a great time together just to make sure the last scene was a surprise. All those joking moments they share during the episode were meant to be seen that way. There is no hidden subtext of conflict that people claim to see.) and so that you don’t view Jim and Pam as sort of cruel towards other people’s feelings. In fact, looking at Jim’s behavior over the entire season, he comes off as somewhat of an insensitive jerk which is supposedly explained by his broken heart. His disdain for Pam’s situation and his cruel use of Karen as his shield and then his casual dismissal of her in New York are all fairly assholish. A truly decent guy would have turned down the return to Scranton or gone back alone and resolved his differences with Pam and not hooked up with Karen just days before returning. Or perhaps if he’d failed that test, maybe he could have been honest with Karen about him and Pam and let her move on without dragging out their relationship for another 3 ½ months only to drop her like a rock once he’s sure Pam is ready to get together. What exactly did Jim do during that week from Beach Games to The Job? The topic would have had to have been brought up given Karen's (justified) insecurity. Did he continue to tell Karen that he and Pam were just friends and that his and Karen's relationship was more important to him? The idea that the yogurt medal suddenly caused him to realize who he really wanted to be with is ridiculous. He had to have been contemplating the implications of Pam's speech the entire time. True love and maturity require a bit more honesty that what he displayed from Branch Closing on. Jim Halpert, thy name is douchebag. Sorry ladies, but you have the writers and producers to blame for his out of character behavior.
Yes, Pam could have been decisive enough to tell him she was still going to marry Roy and yes, maybe Jim would have accepted that and left Scranton without any more discussion. Maybe she would have called off the wedding, but still not contacted him and he wouldn't have gotten in touch with her after learning the truth. After talking for hours on the phone they might not have spoken again until the merger. And perhaps Pam wouldn’t have said anything about giving her a chance because of his one month relationship with Karen and they would have ignored their interactions after his prank on her with Andy or the CIA gag and never really talked even though she was miserable. Maybe they would have ignored their feelings after Pam’s art contest victory or the cell phone caper and Jim would have suppressed his feelings after admitting them to Karen and Karen would have hung onto the relationship even after learning his feelings for Pam and how he had brought her along as a buffer and then deceived her when she found out about it from Phyllis. Finally at Phyllis’ wedding they wouldn’t have had a dance and tried to sort out their relationship and Pam would end up back with Roy for no good reason only to break it off with him again because his anger issues resurfaced. Maybe all of these individual events are possible if somewhat unlikely, but here is my problem in a nutshell. They ALL had to occur for the season to play out as it did. If at any point during the 6-9 months from Casino night on one of them had made even the smallest effort to work out their problems then they would have gotten together much sooner. A simple “I miss you.” uttered in the breakroom by either one completely changes the dynamic of the show. There was no room for error. They worked together 5 feet apart from November until May and somehow avoided discussing their situation that entire time until Pam blurts out her confession in front of the entire office at the beach. I bought it with a fiancée, but not with them basically single.
I think the biggest mistake that leads to all of the missteps I’ve cataloged here is the decision that Jim and Pam weren’t going to get together until the season finale, but because their story represented “true love” nothing could prevent them from ending up together. Thus no amount of hurtful behavior (Pam not calling, Jim slamming her because of Roy) has any real effect on their eventual reunion. Thus developments that seemed huge as the season went along were suddenly reduced to meaningless with a simple "Then, it's a date." We end up feeling like we were played for chumps, as if the writers said "You idiots spent all that emotional energy worrying about for absolutely no reason." The trauma that was mid to late-Season 3 deserved better than that.
A corollary to this is that Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski were cast primarily for their interpersonal chemistry which they have in spades. The problem is that whenever they were put together it became impossible to believe that they couldn't overcome the problems they had caused for each other. So the show needed to keep them separated either physically or mentally for the entire season. So for every scene together they needed to find a way to reset the tension. Sometimes they didn’t even bother trying such as after Diwali or The Convict. Other times it’s the “five nights of talking” an unexplained development that really raises more questions than it answers. And occasionally, especially in the episodes just following the merger, they just deleted scenes that showed them together most likely because every one of them destroyed their “Pam and Jim are no longer friends” storyline. So we get the Stamford episodes, which in retrospect make far more sense than the artificial roadblocks following Jim’s return. Why wouldn’t Jim have gone to coffee with Pam? Why is Karen finding an apartment such a shattering experience? The woman has to live somewhere and contrary to Jim’s faulty logic (which Pam calls him on), living two blocks apart is not like living together. Why does one song request and a dance have Pam get back together with Roy especially if he is abusive? If she's so miserable, why not try and talk to Jim instead of going back with her violent lunkhead of an ex-fiancee? And why, after spending all his time reassuring Karen that he’s no longer interested in Pam, does the Roy reunion make him so angry and then when Roy tries to attack him does he cruelly blame Pam? Also, after spending six months assuring Karen that there is nothing between him and Pam, how does Jim justify just dumping her in New York City? And how does all of this Sturm und Drang get overcome with an ambiguous confession and a yogurt lid? Because their relationship became a romantic cliché that nothing could break their bond. Of course most of us forgive them because the outcome is one we’d been hoping for since Casino Night.
A final quote from NAer Wink pretty much covers it:
I agree with DftF that the S3 storyline felt forced on several counts. I'm sorry I can't remember who posted this idea (or something like it), but I agree the season went from A to B to B to B (and more B's) until Beach Games where it jumped to Y and The Job where it crash landed with a happy thud at Z. The B's were tons of fun and full of genius moments that I lived for Thursday to Thursday, but the storyline was rough, full of far more fits than starts, and unsatisfying as a whole.
Labels: jim and pam, season 3, The Office
# posted by Col Bat Guano @ 1:29 PM 
