Popular TV show ‘The Office’ doesn’t need a reboot

RONNIE SAENZ / ASST. OPINION EDITOR

Numerous popular TV shows from “That 70s Show” to “Adventure Time” have made long time comebacks this year. With popular film franchises such as “Indiana Jones” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” also making a return, 2023 has steadily become the year of the reboot. Now, with the end of the writers’ strike, another TV show is digging itself out of the grave. “The Office” showrunner Greg Daniels recently revealed that he is actively working on a reboot of “The Office.” Personally, I think Daniels should leave “The Office” buried in 2013.

In case you’ve been living under a rock (or don’t have a Netflix subscription), “The Office’’ is a mockumentary that follows the everyday chronicles of the employees working at the fictional paper company, Dunder Mifflin. “The Office’’ aired on NBC for nine seasons from 2005 until its finale in 2013. It is one of the most popular U.S. TV series of all time with Americans cumulatively streaming more than 57 billion minutes of “The Office” in 2020. That is 18 billion more than the runner up, “Grey’s Anatomy.”  The series became immensely popular on a simple premise: the American workplace. Audiences quickly fell in love with the ensemble of characters from the lovable receptionist Pam Beesly and her romantic interest Jim Halpert, played by Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski respectively, to the quirky, beet-farmer-turned-salesman Dwight Shrute, played by Rainn Wilson. 

The problem with a reboot of “The Office” is that the original show didn’t leave off on the best terms. Even though “The Office” is a beloved series, the show suffered from a dip in quality in the later seasons. It was so bad that I would have preferred if the series ended in season seven, after the departure of the show’s iconic main character, Michael Scott, played by Steve Carell.To me, the true series finale was when Michael Scott left the show. 

The dip in quality from season seven to season eight is so significant that the season eight rotten tomato critic score was 44% which is half the critic score of season seven. If the final seasons of the show couldn’t stay consistent with the quality audiences expected, then how can a reboot nearly a decade after the show’s finale be expected to do any better? That’s the problem: it can’t. Anything added on top of the original series will only dilute the hard-won legacy of “The Office.”

Even if you are okay with the quality of the later seasons and wouldn’t mind seeing more, you probably won’t be getting anything out of the original cast this time around. None of the lead actors have confirmed they will appear in the reboot. 

On top of this, the main characters in “The Office” were already given satisfying conclusions. There is no more room for growth or development for the characters that everyone fell in love with. Even though much of the cast has expressed interest in coming back for a reboot, the showrunners will have nothing to do with them since all of their arcs ended.

 A perfect example is a long running plot of Jim Halpert, one of the cornerstone characters of “The Office” wanting to leave Dunder Mifflin for a job he’s actually passionate about. It’s been a goal of his since the very beginning of the series, and he finally achieves it when the series ends. So if the reboot were to bring Jim back, then he would be back at the same job he’s been trying to leave for nine seasons as if nothing ever happened. It would be a slap in the face to the character and especially the audience that was so invested in Jim finding happiness only for him to end up back at square one. This is just one example of many that these characters have run out of usability. The showrunners for “The Office” reboot will have no choice but to create new characters which at that point we’re looking at a different show with a different appeal. If you’re not going to retain the characters of “The Office” then you might as well create a whole new series. 

There are those who believe that “The Office” reboot can still be good, citing how other TV series have maintained quality after being rebooted. One such example is “Futurama” which coincidentally also had a finale in 2013 and whose season 11 aired this year with an 86% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. So if “Futurama” can do it, why not “The Office”?

The problem with this belief is that unlike “The Office” the entire cast of characters in  “Futurama” have unresolved plot threads especially with its broader sci-fi premise. “The Office” has a much more limited premise, and now that all their main characters have gotten what they wanted, the series has nothing left to tell. Shows like “Futurama” stay consistent in quality because they can keep the quirky characters and plots their audience fell in love with, which is a luxury “The Office” doesn’t have. 

“The Office’’ had incredible highs and devastating lows in its nine season run, and with the amount of people still watching, a reboot felt inevitable. However, just because it seems bound to happen doesn’t mean it should. Unless Daniels wants to endanger the legacy of “The Office,” he needs to take a step back and stop the reboot.