Kevin Beaumont takes a look at The Office season 4 finale.

When the announcement hit the wire that The Office had been sold to NBC for an American remake, I instinctively groaned, picturing the American reworking of Red Dwarf.  How wrong I was – the creative force behind the US version of The Office is clearly very strong, and for the first few seasons they delivered almost universally funny episodes and expanded the show to both please a major US network and find a long term audience.  Or, to put it another way – they made me fall in love with the characters, and this is genuinely must-see TV for me.

So, the fact I delayed watching the finale of this season for over a week should speak volumes – put simply, I have felt this year the show has started to sag, both in humour (there was an episode this year which didn’t make me laugh once, which for a comedy show is more than a little bad) and in terms of character development.  I wasn’t quite sure what they were doing with Jan this year, and if I’m honest I don’t think the writers were, either.  Same goes for Ryan – the most interesting thing I can say about his character this year is that he grew a beard.  And then there’s Pam and Jim.

Ah, Pam.  You’re wearing something fuzzy – I just want to touch you.  Here, we see Jim realise how he is going to propose to Pam.  We see Pam – unaware – absolutely happy (“That is the first time I’ve ever used the word perfect”) and being her amazing self (she actually calls herself amazing in this episode, and it’s well deserved).  We see Jim standing up for himself, telling Ryan exactly where he stands in the company.  We see new character Holly introduced, who comes across as a great new character, and forms a new love interest for Office boss Michael Scott.  And that’s not the only character development – Andy, Dwight and Angela all get a look in.  Toby leaves the company, Ryan is arrested for fraud and a lot more stuff is going on, too.  In short, there’s plot in this episode, and bags of it.  In a season where nothing much has happened, they’ve stored the best till last.  It’s also laugh out loud funny – from Holly thinking Kevin is retarded, to Michael’s almost child, the writers are back of form here.  It’s just a real shame about the episodes at the start of this season.

One of the many things this show does beautifully is place you, the viewer, in the middle of the action.  You feel like you’re in that office, or at that party – you hide behind your fingers as you watch because that’s what you would do in real life.  I was in the pub the other day, and I told somebody something they clearly didn’t want to hear.  I could tell this because they shielded their head with their arms, and started to curl into a ball at one point.  (I think they thought I was drunk; I wasn’t, I  was sober enough to be hanging off every word and watching body language).  If that moment of my life had been in The Office, I’d be both laughing and cringing.  One of my favourite scenes in television, ever, is near final scene of the second season of The Office, in the car park.  I mentioned this to cult television figure Joss Whedon once; he told me he watched that scene near enough 20 times.  Of course he did.  It broke our tiny little hearts, because it’s absolutely real.  Life is brilliant and scary, and The Office takes both sides and shoves it down our teleholes.  Keep it up, boys and girls.