TV-Reviewed

Most television shows would over-dramatize an episode like this and try to get you to cry. Fortunately, The Office isn’t like most television shows and you can guess that Pam and Jim’s wedding ends up being a huge mess, but there was a lot of laughter to go around.

It’s finally time for Pam and Jim’s big wedding day and it’s great that the writers didn’t keep dragging us along and try to hold off on doing this until somewhere around the season finale, which is what I thought they were going to do. These types of episodes where Dunder-Mifflin employees get to venture outside of the office are special because we get to see them outside of the office atmosphere and get to see how they act amongst a wider variety of people.

The big thing at the beginning of the episode was that they didn’t want to tell Pam’s Grandma about the baby because she’s old-fashioned. It was ironic to have Jim be the first one to let the cat slip out of the bag and then we had Michael really lay it on when he goes off on a tangent about unprotected sex that really made for one of those Michael Scott uncomfortable moments. Poor Michael actually had a lot of odd moments and there was something weird about how happy he was to see Pam and Jim get married — at certain points you would have thought that he was getting married himself.

Even though this episode was supposed to be centered on Jim and Pam, I found that the rest of the cast out-shined them. Dwight in particular had funny moments when he’s picking up women and actually gets a very hot one only to not want her after he sleeps with her. This was a good little story for Dwight because at first we were really cheering him on and happy that he was able to get someone, but then once he totally ignored her it really made Dwight look like the jerk that we know he is.

There were also some insinuations this episode about Oscar and Kevin being a couple and while I’ve never seen the two this way since the beginning of the show, it felt like the writers had the two play into the part by the way they were always together, they even ended up dancing down the wedding aisle together. I’m interested to see if this is a concept the writers will continue to use, by having the two together all the time.

While the first half of the episode had me laughing, the second half didn’t live up to my expectations. Sure we got the sweet scene of Jim and Pam rushing off to get married by themselves, which I thought was somewhat mean, but everyone dancing to forever at the end was a bit much and inappropriate considering the Chris Brown controversy; plus the song is annoying, but that’s just my personal take. When I saw this scene I immediately thought that this was an idea by Steve Carell because it was very reminiscent of the end of Evan Almighty. Also, the fact that they paired Dwight up with Pam’s best friend that he treated like trash was annoying. I know it was supposed to be all fun, but it all seemed too goofy; it was funny though when Dwight kicked her in the face.

To tell you the truth I was a little disappointed in this episode. I think I wanted that sweet wedding scene that we get in all other TV shows. I would have liked to see Jim and Pam on the boat, instead of seeing the snippet without any sound. I know The Office is a comedy, but the writer’s didn’t get the balance of seriousness and comedy right in this episode, it was just a little too much comedy for me.

If you’re looking for some laughs this episode is somewhat memorable, but I don’t think I’ll remember it for Jim and Pam’s wedding for some reason, hopefully the writers do a better job when the baby actually comes.

Rating: 7.5