pam

Jim put himself on the line with Pam last year. That didn't work out; he transferred from Scranton. (Who knew that the Stamford office would also be full of loonies? But that only makes it more credible that either branch might be the one forced to close.)

Kudos to the writers for finding a way to put off the number one killer of sitcoms -- the hooking-up of long-unconsummated lovers. Jim appears to be the guy in the office who can't get through the tedium of a day without a little sexual tension. Who can blame him, when the other choices are pushing paper products or team-building exercises gone wild?

Wonder where the chemistry between The Office's "storybook couple" (Jim and Pam, silly... who'd you think I was talking about, Dwight and Angela?) comes from, just read this interview John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer do with the AP's Frazier Moore. Even in print, the interplay between them suggests that the on-camera "work marriage" extends to their off-camera workplace as well.

Not that anything else is happening, of course; Fischer is married to horror movie director James Gunn. But it's great to see two co-stars who are supposed to be romantically involved on-screen like each other so much off-screen. Believe me, any fan of Gilmore Girls -- who employs Jenna's brother-in-law, Sean Gunn -- knows that no amount of acting can overcome tension between the actors playing a couple.

I cringe every time I watch The Office. I want to intervene into the lives of these people. Go right into their office, or at least e-mail them (if Michael isn't monitoring the e-mails they get) and implore them to leave that awful company at once. It seems to me that none of these people could possibly get paid a lot of money, so what makes them stay there? The wonderful atmosphere (ugh)? The fun coworkers (not really)? The great boss (ahem)? It's almost the ultimate example of the lame, tedious, soul-sucking office you hear so much about. I've worked in a couple of offices like that, and it was the worst time of my life. 

Michael is one thing. He gets paid well and seems to be on some blind corporate career track (though I think that even he would improve as a person if he left the company). But it's the other characters, like Jim and Pam, who I worry about. They should be working some place else before they wake up 5 years from now in the same crappy job.

Dwight, however...I don't know what could help him.

A lot of people will tell you that Pamela Anderson got where she is today by her boobs alone, but that isn't much of a revelation. It was clearly her body that secured her roles in shows like Baywatch and Home Improvement, but what has always confounded me about her is that she never seemed to desire what I imagine most buxom actresses do, which is to have attention diverted from their chest and garner some legitimate respect for their craft. Okay, maybe describing Pamela's line reading as "craft" is a bit of a stretch, but as I've tuned in and out of her career over the years I can't help but notice how boobcentric it's been, and clearly by her own choice. There's her current show, Stacked, whose title refers directly to Pam's voluptuous frame, and then there was her recent Comedy Central Roast, where she wore a black see-through shirt, no bra, and was, for all intents and purposes, topless. It makes me wonder if maybe the reason she's so busty is because her boobs actually have brains inside them that have made all of her career choices while "Pam" is merely a biological attachment at the mercy of her double-brained Boob Master. The simple answer here seems to be that Pam is just using what she has for the benefit of a public that doesn't expect too much from her. What I find odd is that she doesn't seem to expect much from herself, either.