Could They Make THE OFFICE Today?

I’ve seen “You couldn’t make The Office today” as a talking point from the online rabble many times. Still, it was a surprise when I heard someone who wrote, directed, and starred for the show say it. Mindy Kaling got a healthy dose of “nuh-uuuuuuh” from Twitter (assembled here by Screenrant), but I think they’re missing the point. Screenrant points out the errors in a lot of their arguments: the edgier, still-on-the-air shows they bring up are on cable networks not broadcast networks like NBC, and aired a long time ago. So Kaling may yet have a point, which Screenrant and “the internet” are missing. But Kaling is also missing a key point.

You could absolutely make The Office today. You’d just make it a little bit differently. Comedy has evolved.

The Office showrunner, Greg Daniels, changed the game forever. Along with 30 Rock, they killed the laugh track. More laughs per minute, and more trusting the material and not padding it with artificial laughter. But it’s Daniels’ follow-up show, along with his protégé Michael Schur, that really changed everything. Parks and Recreation is the first mainstream show I’m aware of that proved that wholesome comedy can be hilarious. Schur continued that momentum with Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Before these shows, I think it was much more common to believe that comedy was inherently at least a little bit offensive. I know I did.

So, back to The Office. I think Mindy Kaling means that the show wouldn’t get picked up, or wouldn’t last long. When she says it’d be “cancelled,” I think she means by the network, not by the radical-left-woke-mob-insert-dog-whistle-here that most of the people online who share her sentiment are claiming. And if she’s talking about the exact show, all nine seasons as scripted, then yeah. It wouldn’t quite fly today. But the necessary changes would be minor.

Overall, Michael Scott is the problem and his lines are the bulk of what would need to change. And it’s not because his racist, sexist, homophobic comments should have been written differently in the first place. It’s that we’re more aware of microaggressions now. He crossed the line into “fireable offense” several times when the show initially aired, and the line has moved now, so he’d be crossing the line more often. So the jokes would need to be dialed back a bit. Make the aggressions even more micro. Make the consequences bigger for some of his cringey moments. Characters’ beliefs should be as outdated as they were then, meaning that if a character in 2004 had a 1994 mindset, today he should have a 2012 mindset. That’s really it.

Let’s go “ism” by “ism”:

SEXISM: A moment that stands out is when Michael scoffs at the idea of putting a woman in charge. That’s not a reasonable belief for a character to have today. Such jokes today would be about implicit bias, not overt sexism. Complaints could also be made about how the only women in positions of power on the show are crazy (Nellie, Jan). But it’s not like the show offers us many examples of competent male leadership either. The best supervisors on the show are, I’d argue: 1) Darryl, 2) Jo Bennett, 3) David Wallace.

RACISM: The Office was brilliant when it came to portraying racial microaggression. The way the camera would pan to Stanley, Darryl, Oscar, or Kelly after an insensitive comment was amazing, and it showed the impact those comments have, using comedy to increase the understanding of what minority populations experience in the workplace. None of that would need to change in 2022. However, the “Diversity Day” script would need a lot of reworking. It was based on an actual exercise that a company had done not that long ago when it was written. Today, they’d need a more updated example of a company trying to address racial bias in an unhelpful way. I’m pretty sure they could come up with something funny. Finally, in terms of cast diversity, today the show would need to be closer to where it ended than where it began. The six actors named in the opening credits in season one are all white. That wouldn’t fly today; but The Office was part of a movement toward diversity in network comedy and should get some credit for that (contrast with Seinfeld and Friends).

HOMOPHOBIA: At least there were serious consequences for Michael Scott’s most egregious displays of homophobia. Oscar’s paid “gaycation” (Kevin’s still proud of himself for that one) probably should be the model for all of Michael’s indiscretions. Michael offends a coworker, they complain to corporate, they get a paid vacation or some other settlement. An episode where everyone’s trying to bait Michael into saying something offensive would be hilarious! But again, the jokes would need to be updated. Michael’s level of ignorance couldn’t be as playful today, if you’re that ignorant in 2022, it’s willful. And today the show would probably explore more of the LGBTQIA+ acronym; watching the Dunder Mifflin staff try to get the new intern’s pronouns right would be an amusing side plot.

FAT-SHAMING: Honestly, I think this is what would need the most updating. There are rarely consequences to Michael’s comments about Stanley, Phyllis, and Kevin’s bodies. The consequence to how he treats Tony from Stamford is that Tony’s gone from the show, and Michael’s mismanagement of the situation earns Tony severance. On the other hand, I would say that Phyllis’ love life was groundbreaking. She’s got one of the best love stories on the show. She and Bob Vance get naughty at lunch more than once. It’s awesome. But a 2022 version of The Office definitely would need a more nuanced understanding of weight and health—I think an episode where the whole staff does a health screening and Michael finds out his numbers are worse than Phyllis or Stanley would totally play, because it’s established that Michael eats a lot of junk food.

Finally, overall, I think the show missed the mark in one big way that wouldn’t fly in 2022: the fact that Dwight gets put in charge at the end. After all the trouble he’s gotten in, all the ways he’s shown the limitations of his judgement, the fact that he wants it the most doesn’t make up for it. It reinforces the idea that white men skate by, failing forward into positions of leadership, yet paints this as a happy ending. Darryl should have been put in charge, but Craig Robinson was moving on with his career and was unavailable, so… why not Oscar? Who would run the company better than the voice of reason? Why not Phyllis? Her leadership style is unconventional, but showing that it works outside of the Party Planning Committee would have been a powerful statement.

If you believe this version of the show wouldn’t be as funny, I can’t prove to you that you’re wrong. This version of the show doesn’t exist. I can say that, following the continued work of Greg Daniels, Michael Schur, and the other brains behind The Office, that this is closer to the show that they would have made in 2022, and I trust that their show would be just as brilliantly hilarious as it was in 2004. It would just need to hit slightly different notes to strike the same chord.