Musings & Thoughts for Tuesday, April 19, 2022, or: Revisiting ‘The Office’ on Blu-ray

Hi, there, Dear Reader. It is late morning here in Lithia, Florida, on Tuesday, April 19, 2022. It is a cool, dry spring day in the Tampa Bay area. The current temperature is 74 degrees Fahrenheit (23 degrees Celsius) under partly sunny skies. With humidity at 69% and the wind blowing from the north-northeast at 9 MPH (15 KM/H), the feels-like temperature is 73 degrees Fahrenheit (23 degrees Celsius). Today’s forecast calls for sunny skies and a high of 84 degrees Fahrenheit (29 degrees Celsius). Tonight, skies will be clear. The low will be 56 degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees Celsius). There’s a Red Flag warning in effect between 1 PM and 8 PM EDT. This means that the combination of low relative humidity, high temperatures, and high windspeeds increases the chance of wildfires in the area.

Last night I started rewatching The Office. I have the complete series on Blu-ray, but it has been three years or so since I last saw it, so I figured it was time to revisit my old friends at Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, Inc.

Dwight Schrute: Damn it! Jim! He put my stuff in Jell-O again.

[Points to Michael]

Dwight Schrute: You can be a witness. Can you reprimand him, please?

Jim Halpert: [eating Jell-O] How do you know it was me?

I started watching the pilot episode shortly before 8 PM Eastern Daylight Time, and I had a good time watching Steve Carell, Rainn Wilson, John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer, Leslie David Anderson, B.J. Novak, Brian Baumgartner, and Meloda Harlin go through their comedic paces.

Here’s the IMDb.com synopsis of The Pilot:

The premiere episode introduces the boss and staff of the Dunder-Mifflin Paper Company in Scranton, Pennsylvania in a documentary about the workplace.

Even though I’ve owned The Office for several years, I forgot that Season One – which premiered in 2005! – is, with only six episodes – the shortest of the series’ nine seasons. If I hadn’t started watching it close to 8 PM, I probably could have binge-watched all six, then bragged, in typical “Dwight Shrute” fashion, that I watched an entire season of a TV comedy series in one night.

Michael Scott: What is the most important thing for a company? Is it the cash flow? Is it the inventory? Nuh-uh. It’s the people. The people. My proudest moment here was not when I increased profits by 17% or when I cut expenses without losing a single employee. No, no, no, no, no. It was a young Guatemalan guy. First job in the country, barely spoke English. He came to me, and said, “Mr. Scott, would you be the godfather of my child?” Wow. Wow. Didn’t work out. We had to let him go. He sucked.

Anyway, yeah. I thought the quality of the pilot episode was excellent, and the acting was brilliant.

I did not watch The Office during its 2005-2013 run on NBC: I knew it existed because my mom subscribed to TV Guide until her death in 2015, and the magazine often published articles about the show and – not surprisingly – its breakout “will they or won’t they” couple, Jim and Pam (John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer).

I don’t usually follow “fads” – which is why I didn’t want to see Star Wars right after it came out or wore trendy clothes back when I was a young adult – and since “Jim and Pam” was a media fad, I wasn’t exactly enthused about The Office. Then in 2010 Mom got sick and my television-watching habits changed along with my daily routine, and I forgot the show even existed until The Caregiver’s middle son recommended that we watch it.

I don’t have much else in the way of news to share, so I’ll close for now. Until next time, Dear Reader, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.