Though my personal office experience isn’t nearly as entertaining as the antics at Dunder Mifflin, it certainly reached me on a different level. When COVID hit, I was fortunate enough to be able to work remotely for my office job and earn a regular income. In addition to contributing to The Beat and freelance marketing work on the side, I myself do temp work (not that dissimilar Ryan Howard) for a library magazine as an extra way to help the bills.

(Dwight Schrute’s callous solution for solving overpopulation notwithstanding) As it happened, it was actually more fitting for me to watch The Office this year. Through osmosis I knew enough before my 2020 binge watch to have a basic knowledge the various Office related memes that pop up around the internet, but I now have a better appreciation of them. I understand why more than a decade later the show still retains an ardent loyal fan following and why NBCUniversal shelled out $500 million to secure the streaming rights for its own service.

Now that I’ve seen the entire series, I’m kicking myself for taking taking so long to jump on The Office bandwagon. Nevertheless, The Office seemed to align more to my sensibilities. Admittedly I’m not yet completely sold his latest projects, Space Force from Netflix and Upload from Amazon. I’m a big fan Greg Daniels, who developed the American version of The Office, and his past comedy work for The Simpsons and Parks & Rec. Plus, I have no desire to subscribe to Peacock, the show’s new streaming platform home. Since The Office was leaving Netflix by the end of the year and my sister and everyone I know have been raving about it years it seemed like the obvious choice. While I initially devoured comfort shows like Bob’s Burgers, I figured I should check off at least one of the countless shows from my bucket list.

Like pretty much everyone, the 2020 pandemic granted me an abundance of time to get reacquainted with an old friend called television.

Hindsight 2020 meme