One of the many things that the American remake of “The Office” did well — aside from giving Steve Carell the perfect platform to launch his career — was embrace the caustic nature of its British predecessor. The abrasiveness of Carell’s Michael Scott combined with the earnest romantic will-they-won’t-they between Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam (Jenna Fischer) created an endearing cocktail of all-too-familiar awkwardness, that, for all its unbelievable absurdness, was ultimately relatable. At least at first. Fans of the show by now have recognized the sharp contrast between its early seasons and the flattened and more friendly ones that followed. But no matter how you feel about the seasons after Carell’s departure, we can’t forget the indebtedness owed the original for helping us — as the new video from The Nerdwriter says — “Embrace The Cringe.”
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The new seven-minute video essay, appropriately titled “The Office: Embrace The Cringe,” takes a long look at the psychology behind the self-performance and theory of mind at the core of Ricky Gervais’ droll and innovative original version of “The Office.” Theory of mind, the video explains, is one’s ability to recognize that others have beliefs, thoughts, and feelings, and the ability to attribute them to body language and social cues, which, as you might have guessed, Gervais’ David Brent (and later Carell’s Michael Scott) is rather bad at. And it’s this and his obsession with “performing himself,” both for his employees and for the viewers of the documentary, that creates the perfect storm of his regular and hilarious idiocy.
As with everything from The Nerdwriter, it’s a fascinating and thorough essay that will certainly help you see “The Office” in a new light. Check it out above, and weigh in with your thoughts in the comments below.