Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey are two actors who enjoyed a brief amount of fame in the 2000s for their time on The Office, a show about paper and family. They also host a podcast, Office Ladies, in which they break down every episode of the show, some 10 years after its end. On Monday, they both appeared on Ellen for an episode guest-hosted by former Office castmate Ellie Kemper. Fischer, who makes me a little sad, said of the possibility of a reboot, “I would not do an Office reboot, but I would love to do a reunion special. I would like to get us all together again.”
Congrats to Fischer for recognizing that no one else wants a reboot of this program, but also curse Fischer for putting into the universe the idea of a reunion special. The Office was a good show, but enough is enough.
For those of us who watched The Office when it was on television, living through the show’s resurgence (thanks to Netflix and improbably, Billie Eilish) has been fun. How nice to see the children discover Dwight Schrute. Glad Jim and Pam’s relationship, in all its dysfunctional glory, is being seen by another audience. The Office is an excellent program, but there’s also something ineffably sad about Fischer’s continued involvement; please remember in 2017 when she revealed the depths of her emotional involvement with the character. I loved the Jim and Pam relationship as much as the next gal, hoping for my own floppy-haired, soft John Krasinski upon which to pin my hopes and dreams, but I recognized that their relationship was fiction.
A reunion of the cast would be good for Fischer, possibly for Kinsey, and definitely for whatever streaming service NBC is currently offering, but for the rest of the world, content with letting the past remain firmly in the past, not so much.