Officially Over

The Office went out with an hour-and-fifteen-minute finale befitting a show that's been a mainstay of the NBC lineup for the last nine years. Finales are tough to pull off, especially for sitcoms.  Half-hour comedies deal with the little things in life, and generally--even when there's an arc--each week starts as if you hit the refresh button, but you want big, decisive things to happen in a finale.  Also, sitcoms may be sentimental, but they're mostly about laughs, whereas it's hard not to overdo the emotions at the end.

In fact, they did overdo it.  More "touching" moments than they needed.  But there were still enough decent gags, and enough earned emotion, for it to work, if not quite wipe out the memory of the last two weak seasons.

The finale started a year after the last episode, so we got to see how all the characters ended up.  Dwight and Angela get married--the main action of the show.  Andy became a national laughing stock due to an embarrassing TV audition going viral, but landed on his feet with a job at Cornell admissions and a memorable commencement address. (It was sort of hard to buy this happy ending, but then, Ricky Gervais gave his own Office character a fake happy ending, so it's a tradition.) Erin reunited with her parents.  Kevin, who got fired by Dwight and now owns a bar, reconciles with his old boss.  Stanley is in happy retirement.  Darryl is doing well at Athleap (originally Athlead). Oscar is running for office.  And so on.

Then there's Jim and Pam.  If the show had gone off the air two years ago, it would have been about Michael as much as anyone, but now he's a bit player as Dwight's best man, and the whole show (and documentary) turns out to be about Jim and Pam's relationship.  Last seen, Jim had given up his dream of working at Athleap to hold on to Pam, but we knew that couldn't last--Pam couldn't be seen as holding him back, so in the end she sells the house and Jim will get to join Darryl.

Happily, it didn't end happily for everyone.  Ryan and Kelly, the two most self-centered characters, return long enough to run off with each other, abandoning a handsome, successful husband on one side and a baby boy (likely to be illegally smuggled into Poland by Nellie) on the other. Sweet, harmless (yet annoying) Toby is an unemployed, failed novelist living with six roommates in New York.  And Creed (it's finally admitted he was a member of The Grass Roots) fails to disguise himself properly and is going to jail.

So that's it. It's like the last day of school.  It's over, and we won't get to see these characters we used to see regularly.  Except on reruns.