Reaction Shots: Officetober Edition
Why Ryan Howard is his own worst enemy, plus imagining what the show would be if they had more Asians.
Welcome to Officetober, where we look into the underappreciated aspects of The Office, mainly in the US and adapted by Greg Daniels. Given that it is near the month’s close, and that there are more things I have to carry, apart from this newsletter, I thought it would be wise to do two posts in one (a la a Reaction Shot), rather than one long essay. So here it is. The final Officetober. If you missed what I wrote for Officetober, here they are:
Ryan Howard was the Fire
In the last edition of Officetober, I made the case that Andy Bernard was more of a bizarro Ryan Howard. Ryan Howard - thanks to the brilliant performance and writing talents of BJ Novak - is a bizarro version of himself. Or more so, the bizarro equivalent of Ricky Martin from the British series. Except, Ricky Martin left Wernham Hogg on his own terms happier than he was working at that paper company. Ryan is a cautionary tale - a young man exhausted from either too little work or his own delusions, that he becomes nastier in the end.
From the first two seasons, he was a temp with business school credentials to boot, yet has no mentor. Michael Scott, his superior, was bizarrely attracted to him, that any of their interactions could have been a mild #MeToo scenario. In the next season, he works full-time at Dunder Mifflin and has a girlfriend who loves him way too much to the point of manipulation. At that time, Ryan was uncertain, unconfident, lacks ambition, and is saddled with a six-digit debt. We see flashes of his arrogance, when he brought in Michael Scott to his alma mater, after he tentatively revealed why Dunder Mifflin won’t survive. Michael was justifiably angry, but won’t fire him because “he hires and inspires people.”
Afterward, Ryan took the mask off, when he replaced Jan as a corporate shark, planning to integrate Dunder Mifflin into an e-commerce platform. Despite having made no sales in his career, Ryan had manipulative energy borrowed from Kelly Kapoor that he is able to convince the shareholders that his project was doing fine. He got arrested for fraud when it was revealed he was fabricating his sales numbers. Since his return to Dunder Mifflin’s branch (again as a temp), Ryan was becoming more apathetic and neurotic. His start-up wumph.com launched poorly and his relationship with Kelly grew bipolar.
Ryan’s final moments solidify his desperation. Once BJ Novak left to focus on other writing projects, the character appeared in two scenes of the final season: the first was his not-so-subtle attempt to win back Kelly, by going to Miami, Ohio, and investing in new projects. The second was when he became a single father, raising an infant son named Drake all by himself. He and Kelly reunite at Dwight’s wedding, abandoning Drake, and they elope somewhere. These are, in essence, depressing hangers for a show mainly about keeping people happy. But the saddest moment in the latter days of The Office was Ryan being unable to give a presentation at Sabre’s new store and jumping off the ship. All the skills and abilities he had at the beginning (if there were any), evaporated through bitterness and narcissism.
If you realize how antithetical Ryan was to Dunder Mifflin’s values, Ryan’s painful transformation into a weird hipster flirting with shallow innovation was pretty natural. Critics love to paint Ryan Howard as a millennial tragedy, a significant victim of his surroundings. But that’s a false myth these people love to prop up a narrative because Ryan’s fallibilities are quite innate. The show proved throughout that while Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch isn’t a perfect workplace - Dwight’s antics, Michael being a distraction have led to some employees leaving - it fostered a lot of friendship among colleagues and employees, that even Andy, after he became a punchline, still had goodwill with them. Ryan’s lack of business acumen earned him humiliation and enemies, particularly with Pam, who hated him for being Kelly’s terrible boyfriend, that she hooked her up with an Indian pediatrician that treats her decently.
Ryan’s only savior was Michael Scott. Despite his bizarre fixation, it showed how much he cared about him the same way that he connected more with Pam at her art exhibition. In a deleted scene, he gave Ryan a second chance after the CFO’s David Wallace screamed at him for returning1. Michael then gave him an opportunity to become one of his only employees at his rebellious new paper company. It was also revealed, in Michael’s farewell song, he got Ryan off from drugs. Most importantly, when Michael didn’t fire Ryan after the business school fiasco, it revealed a mature, elderly figure, expressing generosity and disappointment that feels like a wake-up call. His words didn’t have an impact, because Ryan still felt he had other priorities.
When I said Andy Bernard had the most backhanded ending, it meant that he is capable of learning from his mistakes and wasn’t overall, sad. America’s version of The Office shared melancholic qualities, and nothing was far more cathartic and poignant than Ryan Howard.
Imagine The Asian Office. Imagine Dragons.
If The Office was rebooted as this post is published, would it ever consider at least one multi-racial aspect of the blue/white-collar environment? I’ve been contemplating this watching the debut of Asian Jim, played by Randall Park, a foil to the actual Jim, embodied by John Krasinski. It’s one of the few hilarious moments in the final season, where he trolls Dwight and Pam plays along with the prank. His family picture’s racial makeup has changed, and Asian Jim is quite collected and sunny to his paranoia.
Park tells Conan O’Brien that he forgets about doing that bit, he got annoyed by people in the street calling him Asian Jim, sometimes mistaking it for a racial slur.
Asian Jim almost became the foundation of the show. John Cho, who hit it big with Harold and Kumar Goes to White Castle, auditioned as Jim Halpert2. Admittedly, he was a bit blank in the tapes, where he doesn’t have the character’s self-satisfaction of being the audience surrogate. It would be fun imagining him being in the biggest interracial couple in sitcom history with Pam, given that the Asian man and white woman dynamic, isn’t as desirable compared to the other way around3. Most Asian men are often emasculated and are least attractive in the dating markets.
The exotic Asian women trope was a plot for the episode A Benihana Christmas. After breaking up with Carol, Dwight and Andy treat Michael to a trip to a Japanese restaurant and pick up two women, who are blissfully unaware of what happens at Dunder Mifflin or why they went with them. The show didn’t stop there with the trope. There’s also Ryan putting a topless Asian woman on the desktop of the Michael Scott Paper Company’s only laptop.
Because of the pandemic and following the tragic Wi Spa massacre, Asian bigotry has been a fashionable conversation among progressives. Entertainers have tried to distance themselves from making such jokes about Asian women being sex objects or the assumption that they are a model minority in many areas. One of the actresses who appeared in A Benihana Christmas, complained in a TikTok video about her experience, as it presumes Michael Scott thinks all Asian women look alike. On the Office Ladies podcast, the episode’s writer Jennifer Cirotta said that the storyline made her cringe.
Much of the complaints have mainly been of an edginess the show had during its early run before it became far more sentimental.
Of course, that plot was meant to be cringeworthy, mainly because Michael Scott is. The show’s second episode Diversity Day sees the prominence of Kelly Kapoor, who was far more muted, being offended by his imitation of Apu. For some reason, Comedy Central thought that it’s too sensitive for a rerun. And let’s not forget Japanese Office, a Saturday Night Live sketch, that has Steve Carrell, Bill Hader, and Kristen Wiig working alongside Japanese-speaking drones and their etiquette. I wonder if NBC had any reservations.
Pretending that The Office’s portrayal of Asians overall was damaging omits what was a largely positive picture, primarily from Mindy Kaling. Not only does she bring life to Kelly Kapoor, but she is responsible for some of the show’s best episodes, including The Injury, Niagra and Take Your Daughter To Work Day. Kelly has the embodiment of a teenage valley girl in her own skin and for Kaling to add this layer of shallow obliviousness, is a step forward for Asians within the industry, who are often seen as dignified and hard-working.
It gives pause to whether a Dunder Mifflin with more Asians in its ranks would have remained the same as the actualized product, given that they are most likely to be deemed ‘white-adjacent’ considering that they have roughly earned the most income in contrast to their pale peers. But it’s not as if the show never explored racial tensions before, often pointing at Michael’s obliviousness with Stanley, because he is African-American. And it made its point solidly back then. It didn’t need to prove something now to protect itself from a trendy backlash.
You can tell that the entire staff felt really sorry for him when they can hear the intensity of the conversation.
To make my point even further, John Cho was memed on Twitter to star in all possible movies
Counterpoint: John Cho appeared as Karen Gillan’s love interest in the canceled TV series Selfie, which is based on Pygmalion.