Rumors surrounding a possible reboot of the beloved NBC mockumentary “The Office” have resurfaced over the last few months. Showrunner, actor, and executive producer Paul Lieberstein floated a “one-off special” on Friday and a recent “Saturday Night Live” cold open featuring lead actor Steve Carell which had “Office” fans salivating.
But “The Office” as we knew it will never, ever come back. At least not until the Wokescolds, as Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro has aptly dubbed them, have been defeated.
“The Office” was treasured by so many for a multitude of reasons — not the least of which was the off-beat, politically incorrect humor. Michael Scott, played by Carell to perfection, routinely spilled anti-PC lines that would have grievance bloggers rifling off screeds about the “problematic” show in no time.
Michael’s reoccurring “Ping” character would get the show canned in the current year. SJWs would lose their minds over the boss’ interactions with gay accountant Oscar Martinez. Michael almost killing himself while trying to fake kill himself would spark endless blogs about the brutal insensitivity toward mental illness. The entirety of the “Diversity Day” episode would make heads explode.
These reactions would, of course, completely miss the point of the bits’ importance, but nonetheless, they would exist. And as we all know too well: the squeaky hysterical liberal gets the grease.
There is already evidence of such an outrageous reaction, too. Expressing retroactive outrage, a 2017 blog post from Affinity Magazine lamented the “problematic” nature of “The Office.” The outrage blog whines in part:
All of the POC and the one LGBT+ character on the show are constantly harassed and teased about their race/sexuality. The female characters are written passively and blandly, and for most of them, male characters are their main motivation. A serious abusive relationship between two characters, Jan and Michael, is glossed over because Jan is the abusive one, and when men are abused, it’s comedy, apparently. But the biggest problem with The Office is the main character himself, Michael Scott. … Michael Scott is racist. He repeatedly makes racist comments towards his coworkers, for which he is rarely reprimanded. He is sexist, and he verbally and sometimes physically harasses his female coworkers. He is incredibly homophobic; in fact, he even outed one of his employees, Oscar Martinez (who is also the only gay character on the show).
As highlighted by The Daily Wire’s Ashe Schow on Wednesday, millennial Wokescolds have already come for beloved sitcoms “Friends” and “Seinfeld” for their, yes, “problematic” nature.
Even Carell himself has admitted that “The Office” would never work in today’s climate.
It “might be impossible to do that show today and have people accept it the way it was accepted 10 years ago. The climate’s different,” Carell told Esquire, adding, “I mean, the whole idea of that character, Michael Scott, so much of it was predicated on inappropriate behavior. … A lot of what is depicted on that show is completely wrong-minded. That’s the point, you know? But I just don’t know how that would fly now. There’s a very high awareness of offensive things today—which is good, for sure. But at the same time, when you take a character like that too literally, it doesn’t really work.”
Now, this is not to say that an “Office”-style show is not exactly what is needed at the moment. As noted by Daily Wire columnist DC McAllister, allowing only policed Woke humor does us more harm than good. Politically incorrect humor, on the other hand, helps to heal our wounds and closes our divides:
Accusations and realities of racism, sexism and bigotry are like pitchforks in our hands. We can’t laugh anymore when faced with these sacred cows of the PC culture. Hence, the divide widens. The isolation intensifies. The sickness worsens. We need medicine. We need humor, even when it’s offensive — especially when it’s offensive. Let’s, therefore, try to laugh more in 2019. Then we might be able to love more.
As a hardcore fan of the show, “The Office” coming back is a bad idea because why mess with perfection? But my impeccable opinion aside, the real reason it won’t get a reboot is because we’re still in the Age of the Wokescolds.