Burning Sensation

Since the appearance of Brian the boommike operator as a possible love interest in S9, there have been a number of commentors (Emily Nussbaum from The New Yorker, Andy Greenwald from Grantland and Myles McNutt and Erik Adams on The Onion) who mentioned that this sort of fickleness on Pam’s part isn’t that unusual. First, she flirted with Jim while engaged to Roy and then, in a leap that defies logic, they trot out the S5 storyline of Pam’s art school buddy Alex, played by Rich Sommers of Mad Men fame.

Alex was first introduced in the S5 premiere as one of the gang Pam was hanging out with at Pratt. She had a group scene with them where she kidded Alex about his elderly “girlfriend” and then a short scene of them in class laughing over Alex’s cartoon of the professor’s beard. Many online commentors speculated, and this appears to be being perpetuated to this day, that Pam and Alex might have a flirtatious relationship that would threaten Jim and Pam’s engagement. For reasons I will describe below, this always struck me as ridiculous, but people who should know better keep trotting it out without the least examination of the premise and how it would have fit into the show as it was in early S5. Rich Sommers encouraged this sort of thinking when, in an interview a year later, he suggested that he was supposed to represent a roadblock to Jim and Pam.

Readers sent me so many questions about The Office. How many episodes were you on last season?

 I shot three, but only two aired.

Joey O. asks, Rich's subplot with Pam seemed to be cut short. Was he supposed to be interested in her, or was that sort of a loose thread that never really went anywhere?

Here's my understanding -- and I don't know that this is gospel, but it's what someone sort of said to me out of the side of their mouth: Originally, my character -- and I know this part to be true -- my character was supposed to be enamored of Pam. He was supposed to be a potential roadblock for Pam and Jim. What I understand happened, or at least it seems chronologically to make sense, was we shot the first two episodes. Before I shot my third episode where I had this big monologue where I was to profess my love to Pam, the first one aired. The audience response to seeing Pam being even mildly flirtatious or being flirted with by some art-school guy ... the Internet exploded. People were like, "No, no no. We don't want more roadblocks for Pam and Jim. We just want to see them get together." And it was so big a response that when I showed up to do that final professing-of-love monologue, every bit of it had been changed. It was still the monologue, but it was about being in New York. Instead of "I love you," it was more, "Listen, you have all of these opportunities here. You're an artist. You need to follow your dream. You need to stay here." Whether it was from the Internet or whether it was self-realization for the writers, maybe we just needed to see Pam and Jim together. That's my favorite comedy on TV, so of course I was happy to have the job, because I wanted to be a part of the show in some way. But I was (also) like, "No, just get them married already!" (Laughs) You know, I just wanted to see them together.

 http://content.usatoday.com/communities/popcandy/post/2009/09/a-chat-with--mad-men-star-rich-sommer/1#.UWr9cMrcbwN

So we know that Alex appeared in the premiere and everyone remembers his speech in the sixth episode of the season “Customer Survey”. The third appearance was a deleted scene of the art school gang getting drunk in New York. Much of this dialog was used for the drunk dial Pam made to Jim in “Crime Aid” and certainly didn’t indicate that Pam was falling for Alex and in fact didn’t do much to emphasize the fact that Alex was falling for her. Even if it was left in it wouldn’t have led us to believe Pam was going to find him an interesting alternative. All in all his declaration in “Customer Survey” that she should stay in NYC came out of left field as was discussed on many of the boards at the time it aired. Sommers comment in the interview that they changed the speech because the internet exploded when the premiere aired, fails on two accounts, the first logistical, the second thematic.

First, the logistical reasons that Sommer’s interpretation doesn’t work. A reconstruction of the filming of Season 5 goes as follows:

S5 started shooting July 28th. Hour long “Weight Loss” was filmed through week of Aug 4th.
Second episode filmed week of Aug 11th. Kristin Santos confirmed this from her set visit.
Third episode week of Aug 18th
Fourth episode week of Aug. 25th
Fifth episode week of Sept 1
Stephan Merchant directed “Customer Survey” (sixth episode) the week of Sept 8. (Jenna Fischer MySpace)
Sept 25th Season Premiere

As you can see, the episode with Alex’s big confession was filmed two weeks before the premiere. There was no way the internet could have influenced the content of that speech. While there were spoilers before the premiere that he was going to appear as a friend of Pam’s, there was no detail that would have led anyone to believe he was a romantic interest. While there was some screeching about it following the premiere, most of that was overwhelmed by the engagement scene and regardless, unless they had access to a time machine, there was no way that had any influence on what was filmed for “Customer Survey.”

The second reason it makes no sense to see Alex as a romantic rival who might win Pam’s affections are thematic. Let’s remember where the show was as S5 debuted. S4 had ended with Jim’s aborted proposal in the parking of Dunder Mifflin. This, to put it mildly, had caused a significant amount of fan grousing as it seemed just the sort of TV stunt they had hoped the show had gotten beyond after the slog that was S3. Over that summer there were teases that Jim and Pam would have some struggles while she was away at Pratt. Jenna Fischer was fairly cagey about whether Jim’s failure to propose on “Goodbye Toby” meant they were headed for stormy waters. My impression was that most fans expected a proposal early in S5 and that any delay would be ridiculous. In fact the proposal was addressed in the early minutes of “Weight Loss” with Jim’s talking head about how they had discussed it and they wanted to wait until Pam returned from Pratt (I always found this excuse to be ridiculous, but I think it was mainly used to throw fans off the scent of the upcoming scene. Also, how do you discuss when the proposal should happen without just making it happen?). Anyway, we are lead to believe that Jim will be proposing sometime in the upcoming episodes and that all is well. As “Weight Loss” proceeds we see Jim becoming more dissatisfied with Pam’s absence until finally he convinces her to meet him at the rest stop for lunch. Cue the rain machines and the fake rest stop in the parking lot of the Los Feliz Best Buy and a lovely proposal. All is happy in Jim and Pam world.

The next few weeks show some bumps in the road as they try to stay connected across the distance. None of this is very traumatic and mostly well done. Suddenly episode 6 rolls around. They spend the day connected to each other via their tiny bluetooths again showing how well their relationship is going. This is continued right up until the final scene when Alex shows up at DM Manhattan and gives his somewhat ambiguous speech about how Pam should stay in New York when the program ends the next week. This basically comes out of nowhere because as I’ve pointed out, we really hadn’t seen Alex for five weeks. There had been no context established as to why he considered himself a good enough friend to tell her to stay or why Pam should listen to him at all. There is some implication that Alex has a crush on Pam, mainly by Jim’s viewpoint as an eavesdropper, but again we have been given nothing to show that he was, other than the fact Jenna Fischer is an attractive woman who might inspire male attention. And while you can fanwank your way into convincing yourself Alex was attracted to Pam, (Well, they didn’t show us all the time they spent together in NYC, she’s cute and relatable, blah, blah, blah) what you can’t do is come up with a plausible scenario where Pam is attracted to Alex. Again nothing had been shown to indicate this was a possibility and there is one excellent reason why it is ridiculous: SHE HAD JUST GOTTEN ENGAGED TO JIM ABOUT SIX WEEKS EARLIER!!!! The idea that Pam would completely forget her love for Jim because she was away at a temporary program and fall for one of her fellow students is too stupid for words. She pined all of S3 for Jim to return and let her make up for her mistake on “Casino Night” and was highly disappointed when she thought he was going to propose in “Goodbye Toby” and now we’re supposed to believe all that just goes out the window because she’s away from Jim for 3 months? Even after he proposes a month into the program? It just doesn't add up.