This season is often considered the worst out of the first 7, and while I haven’t completely seen 4-7 in it’s entirety of my rewatch yet, it is so far the weakest out of the first 3, but does that mean it’s bad? Absolutely not! Even during the show’s semi-humble beginnings it still had reached a new high for all sitcoms, and as the show went on the high became even more higher!
I will say that one pretty big flaw in a lot of episodes from this season overdo the ”cringe factor.” Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for cringe comedy done right, which is why Scott’s Tots has always been among my favorites episodes of the whole show, but some scenes just had a disproportional ratio of cringe to actual comedy. A few examples I can point to is the scene from The Alliance where Roy catches Jim with Pam, while another example is the ending of Health Care, where I found the resolution of everyone walking out on Micheal more somber than actually funny, and the ending to Basketball was just plain anti-climatic in my opinion.
The real biggest flaw in my opinion was that the pilot was just really slow-paced, and while it is saved by some hilarious bits, like for example, Micheal fake-firing Pam, and of course the first Jello prank of the show, but even with all of these, the pacing still just really starts the whole season with an odd foot.
Luckily, Diversity Day did not suffer from any of these issues and overall maintained a great joke ratio, with each and every one hitting the hammer right on the nail, while also maintaining rapid fire pacing, which is why it is easily my favorite episode of the season.
Despite the few flaws mentioned above I overall thoroughly enjoyed this season, and on a scale of 1-10 I would definitely give it either an 8 or a 9, which really just goes to show how even a weak season of The Office is still an excellent sitcom season overall.
