New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Whether you watch a ton of TV or whether you don’t watch a ton of TV, you’ve undoubtedly heard of NBC’s darling of a comedy, The Office, which, for no better to reason than to “push on,” will have its eighth season premiere two weeks from today.

I haven’t been a regular attender for some time now - sometime around season five I moved the show from priority to something way less than that - yet I’ve made efforts throughout its run, really, to keep tabs.

Its last full season was probably the one I paid least attention to. I mean, there comes a point when characters getting run over by cars or slinging trash at each other in a dump overwhelms and then miserably destroys the subtle realism the writers room tried to achieve during the show’s early years (read: heyday). It seemed that, over time, the show would lamely settle for broad comedy over the highbrow funny nurtured in seasons two and three.

Oddly missing from the new season will be the character at the heart of the machine since its inception: Michael Scott. Ricky Gervais’ Office never ever could have functioned without David Brent behind the wheel. Ever. And yet, Greg Daniels’ version has morphed into a thing that, I don’t know, thinks it will do fine without Steve Carell?

That kind of talk deserves a column all to itself. Yet given how little attention to The Office I’ve paid over the past few years - or, at least, the scanty attention I think I’ve paid - I don’t know that I’d be the proper author for it.

But what I can speak to, and what I’d like to speak to, is Steve Carell and his Michael Scott, and how insane it is that the dude has never done better than securing mere nominations for playing Scranton’s most immature yet well-intentioned boss.

Are award shows important? Over time I’ve realized they should mean very little to regular viewers of nominated shows. If you enjoy a show, that’s awesome! And that should be enough then, right? If not, why should votes cast by people you haven’t and probably will never meet validate your opinion of a favorite program?

In my view, award shows like the Emmys are relevant for three other reasons:

• They give us something inane to talk about with co-workers and friends. (This one pairs very nicely with “bragging rights” for those of you who take your Emmys seriously).
  
• They give decent exposure to good shows that need viewers. (I like to think Arrested Development wouldn’t have stuck around even for three seasons had it not been such a critical darling and award show favorite).
  
• They give seasoned actors who’ve played their characters for X amount of years an honorary “thank you” for the entertainment.

For all the schlock I’ve dealt the series privately and on this site, I have to hand it to Carell for not mailing in his performances nor appearing like he’d rather be out filming Evan Almighty 2 or something. No one on The Office - not even Creed - has shown the same level of dedication to the show, their character and their character’s place within the show like Carell has with his Michael Scott.

As you can guess, Steve Carell and his commitment to The Office aligns squarely to that third bullet. I mean, the guy has yet to win an Emmy in six tries!

Now, the thought of Steve winning Outstanding Comedy Actor because of longevity is unfortunate. I do realize this contradicts with what I’ve been trying to say from the get-go… Yet the thought of history writing that Carell merely won for seven years of service doesn’t seem just. It’s cheap. Especially when the Jim Parsons of the world have won in the years Carell hasn’t won.

Writing about this, I’ve noticed, is a tough line to grasp. In my mind, Emmys don’t mean a thing. But then Carell wins an endurance Emmy - which, for the record, I’ll go ahead and predict now - and the thing is bound to feel anticlimactic.

On a related note, Carell not winning would land him in good company with a show like The Wire. For at the end of their runs, then, The Wire (the show) and Steve Carell (the actor): absolutely winless.

Is it “better,” then, in the long run, that Steve win or lose come September 18th? I think I’d side with losing, actually, since it’d keep him at a distance from the other times the Academy botched. And perhaps that’s why Emmys don’t really matter…