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the office (UK) (spoilers)
Sam
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
wanted to talk about this cause i've been rewatching. this show is like the perfect tragicomedy.
in particular, i wanted to talk about Neil-
i can't really see that. Neil put up with a lot of David's bullshit and was courteous enough. He was playing wiffleball on lunch break, while David was drinking at the pub. I don't see why any boss would let a fired employee come in to the office with his dog. As for Neil not caring, he didn't seem to care any less than the rest of the people around. I don't see what made his character unlikeable, if anything he was just overly professional and never expressed his underlying emotions, probably because his character wasn't really written to have any.
in particular, i wanted to talk about Neil-
from wiki-
Although very good at his job, Neil occasionally comes across as a rather artificial and disingenuous person. David catches him playing Wiffleball in the office, after Neil criticized him beforehand about office productivity. He is dismissive towards David's dog and shared a joke with Chris Finch at the expense of David's Christmas party date, Carol.
In an interview with The Onion A.V. Club in January 2007, Ricky Gervais (who created the show and played Brent) said he found Neil to be an unsympathetic figure.
There's only two people you shouldn't like, and that's Neil and Chris Finch. Finch is a bully, he's one of those people who comes into a room and takes a piss out of someone else, and you laugh, but really you know it's your turn next. And Neil you shouldn't like, because he doesn't care. He was better than David Brent at his job, but it meant less to him than it did to David Brent.[1]
i can't really see that. Neil put up with a lot of David's bullshit and was courteous enough. He was playing wiffleball on lunch break, while David was drinking at the pub. I don't see why any boss would let a fired employee come in to the office with his dog. As for Neil not caring, he didn't seem to care any less than the rest of the people around. I don't see what made his character unlikeable, if anything he was just overly professional and never expressed his underlying emotions, probably because his character wasn't really written to have any.
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I never really thought about Neil as a character except as a minor antagonist to Brent, looking at him though he is kind of an unlikeable guy.
Chris Finch called David's date a dog, Neil just laughed the way everyone laughs when finch talks shit
I think you need to rewatch the scene. Perhaps the entire episode.
First, it was Neil's goading that led David to anxiously try to find a date in the first place. He was doing it because he didn't expect David to be able to get one. He made comments throughout the episode "so you'll still be needing two tickets, then?" He came off as very condescending and lofty to David.
Second, Neil was making comments along with Finch though I admit Finch started them off.
Third, Neil was using the picture of his date to brag and show off.
Fourth, quite a few people throughout the two series and two special episodes do NOT laugh at Finch's jokes. Tim is one such person. Gareth only gives awkward chuckles as if to ingratiate himself. Many of the women look at Finch in disgust whenever he comes out with some ribald comment, joke, or pick-up line.
In fact, I think David was really the only one (outside of Warehouse folk and some others that randomly pop up) that actively laughed at anything Finch said. The end shows how David finally evolved past Finch's juvenile nonsense and equated Neil with it as well.
I guess you're right about Finch, although Gareth takes his side pretty oten (throwing Tim's shoe on his birthday) but that's probably just because he's always been a sycophant.
As for Neil in the Christmas special, I don't see why he wouldn't treat David with disdain. What the fuck is he doing in that office 3 years after he got fired? The taunting about the date was a result of David trying to brag to him about how his new job got him a lot of play, when it was pretty plainly obvious that if he had a life he wouldn't still be hanging around where he isnt wanted.
I don't think David's bad at all, just really oblivious. I can't really fault Neil for reacting to him the way he does though.
Less likeable than Chris Finch?
I would agree that Neal is fake, in that he doesn't genuinely care about anyone around the office on a personal level (David clearly did, way way too much and expressed it in the worst possible way, by entangling it with his insecure, self centered, stream of conciousness rambling) but really, who would give a fuck about Wernham Hogg? No one in the office is particularly attached to anyone outside their own little circle.
then again, it's written by the guy who plays brent and he is clearly the main character so, I guess looking at it that way makes sense.
this may be true, but I also remember in the christmas special that, while he is trying to make an ass of brent to some extent, brent is lying about having a date. so as much as he's having a go at him, he is right.
so I dunno. maybe I'll re watch it soon, I haven't seen it in a couple of years anyway.
I've been rewatching the series and paying extra attention to Neal. He's used pretty sparingly to begin with. If ou watch him in the first episode he's in, his facial expression is pretty much always a laughing smirk when he's dealing with or watching David. I'm not really sure, but he's the only one who seems to conciously poke at/challenge Brent (and I'm not talking about doing his job as his boss) whenever they're in a conversation, but it seems to be one of those things where someone treats you like shit but you can't pinpoint what exactly they did. Plus Neal giving David plenty to be jealous about just by being popular in David's office. I'd say each emotions drives the other in David's head. But I think of all the characters, Neil actually does "take the piss" out of David the most- the speech about David being on top of a pile of men, implying that David is a false prophet ("it's not about profits is it?")when he talks about his plans to do training seminars, etc. Finch treats David like shit, but Finch is also his bully-friend, and David has pretty much given him permission to do that, so long as David isn't recieving the brunt of it.
Also, it's interesting that Neal is just as good, probably better than Chris Finch when it comes to telling dirty jokes. If a shit like Finch chooses to steal from him, and we saw a glimpse of Neal's sense of humor when he was making a joke about doll orifices, chances are he's a more reserved/polite Chris Finch, and is probably thinking similar things in his mind.
This is a very subtle show. I remember someone talking about Neal showing off pictures of his hot doctor fiancee. In S2E2, when David goes into address the "Swindon lot", Neal is in the room with them before him, and we see him pack up a bunch of photographs in what looks like photo studio packaging. Holiday snaps maybe?
well yeah, it's an american show. we don't do subtle.
I'd still take Neal as a boss over David anyday though.
this is assuming he does his job, which I suppose is silly. He obviously wasn't good enough at his job to keep it, so in that respect I agree with you.
That plus every single time he's been asked about what exactly he does he's babbled out management speak bullshit.
That's basically why I wouldn't want him as a boss- he tries to be everyone's friend, unconciously tries to use his interactions with people as an ego crutch (his authority putting you in a very awkward position in terms of how to respond) and takes things very personally, so really, what kind of opportunity for career advancement are you going to have when the person in charge of you isn't going to care how well you perform.
Eh, I think we can when we wanna. The Wire certainly is. Arrested Development could be very subtle - though in the sense that subtle shit was going on in the background, behind the crazy loud shit going on in the foreground.
I just figure it's a result of the different work process between the shows. UK was purely Merchant + Gervais and they worked out everything in the script stage, leaving nothing to chance. US is much less improv than it appears but even so an episode usually is about 10% improv, and also the actors apparently have a lot of input into the direction of their characters.
Cool, it's just something that I hear a lot from Brit types slagging off US media, so my automatic defense mode goes into overdrive. Though having watched every episode of Charlie Brooker I will never again believe anyone who thinks that UK tv is inherently superior/smarter/more literate/whatever than ours - we just get the good stuff.
About AD : I don't rate it as a failure. It stuck in there for three years, and could have gone longer, that's pretty good for a show that goes so perpendicular to the way most TV is done.
Anyway, sorry, never actually watched the Office as it looks too cringe-worthy for me and has been hyped far too much. Incidentally, Ricky Gervais says he based the Office on US sitcoms.
Also - completely off-tangent, I found this article interesting on the cultural differences between different versions of The Office, despite not having seen the show.
It is cringe inducing, but you get over that once you get a feel for the characters, although no one ever stops cringing for David.
I get the sneaking suspicion this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Has he never seen Office Space? The main difference between the US and UK Office isn't about culture, it's about sustainability. The British version has things happen to the characters that nudge them out of their place pretty rudely, and then they try and get back up, and there's the characterization. The American version takes similar scenarios and strips them of emotional after-effect in order to keep things zippy and have more and more zany shit happen around the office without any real consequences for anyone.
Oh shit why did I open that can of derailing worms
I'd actually argue that Office Space is a perfect example of the article's point. For the first 5-10 minutes, sure, Office Space is as bleak as the UK Office. But then, in two hours of screentime,
Because anything that broadly applies to a culture obviously applies to every single individual within that culture.
In other news, Texans no longer enjoy hats and beef.
You've just proven that Brits don't get sarcastic humor. Because you missed mine, thereby proving the same for everyone else in your culture.
Really? I thought it was "funny" in the way a lot of Office stuff is "funny" - it didn't make me laugh out loud or anything, but I thought it was a nice commentary on how dumb shit can get stuck in your brain and you can't help but fixate/obsess over it. Also, obsessing over little things is one aspect of Andy's character that the writers distanced themselves from since he came back after his anger management courses, but the Kit Kat bar thing was put in, I believe, to remind viewers that Andy is still an obsessive person deep down. And a little crazy too. But in a relateable way, because the Kit Kat bar thing happens to all of us at one point or another.
It's much more common in British comedy as far as I've seen. Even British improv tends to be more subtle. Whether that reflects on some kind of culture-centric psychology is not something I can comment on either way but it's pretty noticeable in my opinion. Even British slapstick is more subtle than American slapstick. I mean, there's a difference between Mr. Bean and The Three Stooges, don't you think?
The Sopranos could be called subtle, and it certainly is funny.
Great shows though.
https://medium.com/@alascii
I definitely agree with the article, at least to some extent. I've said this before, but the UK show is about - not to sound too grandiose - existential despair. No one wants to be in the office and everyone has something that they'd rather be doing: Tim wants to get his degree, Dawn wants to paint, David's a thwarted comedian, et cetera. We're supposed to feel the tragedy of these people's failures. But in the US show, for instance, I get the feeling that the only thing that bothers Jim is Dwight. Michael is a barely-civilized bumpkin whose only tragedy is that he was promoted out of the one job he was good at.
In the US, soul-crushing work at Dunder Mifflin or anywhere else is an inevitability that everyone more or less accepts - Stan and everyone else would probably cheerfully slave away till they died at their desks if it wasn't for Michael and Dwight annoying them. And I don't think it's too much of a stretch to suggest that this acceptance of drudgery has to do with being made in a country where we work more hours per week than almost anywhere else in the developed world.
Could you give some examples of subtlety? I've not really seen anything yet to suggest that subtlety doesn't just mean different cultural in-jokes. The most 'subtle' humour I see is in non-comedic dramas, but again, there are good examples of those on both sides of the pond.
He is, the guy has a huge chip on his shoulder born out of the fact he took so long to "make it". He was in a not even 1 hit wonder band, then he drifted around (sold insurance iirc) ended up working for the Student Union in some musical capacity then went on to meet his wife who iirc got him the job as the Music Producer for fabled 90's UK Drama This Life.
Then he wrote The Office and "made it" in his early 40's and had a whole life of being seen as a loser and a failure, that's where he gets his brilliant pathos and knows which strings to pluck to evoke those emotions, it also means he has a smug "told you so! told you I was a winner!" sense of entitlement and a need to be hailed constantly as a success.
He plays on it as if it's a gag but it isn't
I cannot, off of memory, but if you watch the UK version of the office, a lot of phrases are almost inaudible but allude to some very funny things.
It's true that many of these allusions are cultural in-jokes, but that's coincidental, I feel. The subtlety really comes with the delivery of said jokes.
Oh, wait, here's one example: in one episode, Gareth comes in with his cell phone holster thingie. Tim calls his cellphone, says "cock!" and hangs up. The first time this happens, it is something of dramatic irony because the cinematic angle and presentation (Tim in the background, dialing jovially) hints to the audience that it's him calling. And we find out it is.
He does it again later in the episode.
Then WAAAAAAY later in the episode, Gareth is talking to I think the "BBC" documenters and he gets a phone call. He picks it up, listens for a second, and hangs up. The viewer hears nothing but understands what just transpired because we were trained to understand.
It's the little touches like that that I'm referring to by "subtlety".
The US Office tried to do something of this nature in the first couple of seasons but it never really worked.