King of the Office

Wherein I had his website listed as Something Old, Something New for months before realizing it was ...Nothing New. Oops. Pretty bad for something I read every day.

The original, British version of The Office never did much for me. Likewise, the American episodes based on the BBC scripts I also didn't like. Then somewhere during season 2 the tone shifted and I became hooked on the show. I'd like to find that breaking point of The Office I love and the one I hate, but I'm afraid that would require viewing too many I hate. Should I completely skip season 1?

Jaime at Something Old, Nothing New finds something The Office has in common with King of the Hill. Quote:

....one of the reasons I like the American version of The Office so much is that I find it gives me a lot of what I used to find in King of the Hill. KotH in its prime years had the same showrunner, Greg Daniels, and one of its best writers was Daniels' brother-in-law Paul Lieberstein, who now writes for The Office as well as playing the part of Toby. What they've brought to The Office is very much what they brought to KotH: realistic, observational humour with a satirical edge but with genuine emotion, some dark undercurrents (on KotH the darkness mostly came from the character of Bill, the most suicidal depressed loser ever seen on a mainstream sitcom) and more story arcs and status-quo shakeups than you'd get on a normal sitcom. KotH is still on, but while it's still a good show, it doesn't have much of that any more; the episodes are less satirical, there's less emotion, and the characters have become more static and unchanging. So for what I looked for in KotH, I now turn to The Office.