The Office Should Never Come Back

We said it and we mean it — The Office should stay dead. As much as you likely want to head to the comments section in a fit of rage or dig out my Twitter handle to slide in my mentions fuming with middle finger emojis for having such a crummy opinion — it’s @AdamBarnhardt, by the way — practice some patience and hear me out entirely. One recent event proved exactly why bringing The Office back to life would do more harm than good.

That event, of course, being the impromptu reunion The Office alumnus John Krasinski pulled on his latest episode of Some Good News. In the midst of a global pandemic, Krasinski and his team were able to reach far and wide and reunited virtually the entire cast of the show to surprise a duo the actor had literally just married. If you haven’t seen the video that’s gone viral ten times over throughout Monday, you can see it at the link above.

But it’s moments like that that make The Office such a special piece of pop culture. It’s the mini-reunions we’ve gotten through the years that contribute to turning the sitcom into one of the many threads that make up the fabric of legendary television. It’s why The Office should remain as it is without any sort of continuation — sequel, reboot, or otherwise.

Time and time again, news surfaces of one NBC executive or another going on-record to talk about the desire to do a reboot — but at what cost? Seeing all these faces back together week after week would take away the effectiveness of massive surprises like the one we got last night — or the effectiveness of the every-so-often convention appearance.

That’s not even getting into the quality of the show we’d get. The show itself ended six years ago and the majority of the cast have become megastars in their own right. Whatever writers that didn’t appear on-screen have also gone on to have massive Hollywood careers. Even then, that angle might be on the backburner for this writer.

Maybe this piece is just me playing gatekeeper in an attempt to protect something I watch time and time again — after all, a co-worker just did (jokingly, I hope) chastise me for being an Office fanboy. Then again, I hope you see at least some merit in this stance and agree.

Maybe you do, maybe you don’t — either way, keep binging The Office.

All nine seasons of The Office are now streaming on Netflix before moving over to Peacock next year.