TVSquad

(S04E01) We had a lot of discussion last year about The Office's precarious balance of sitcom-type humor and soap-opera drama. There were times when the Pam/Jim/Karen/Roy love quadrangle threatened to overwhelm the show. Other times, Michael's increasingly cartoonish boss went so far off the reservation as to completely shake our suspension of disbelief.

If anything, tonight's episode proved while the sitcom elements are certainly important, it's the soap opera that gives us our unique connection to these characters. I don't know about you guys, but seeing Michael and Jan and Angela and Dwight and, most especially, Pam and Jim back on the small screen felt like slipping out for some coffee with my old friends.

Yes, I'm completely aware that this feeling might be the beginning stages of paranoid schizophrenia, but I don't care because The Office is back! On to the review...

I've got to start this post with a few items... First of all, there are currently a bunch of auctions going on to support McSweeney's and one of the things up for bid is a personal tour of The Daily Show guided by Resident Expert John Hodgman. It's currently going for $1,575, so get on it. Secondly, I should probably explain the photo I used tonight. It's from a goofy TDS piece called "Pitch" from 2000, back when Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert were correspondents. I just had to use it in honor of the fact that all three guys will appear in this episode. Yes, I had to use it.

I was watching an ad for The Last Mimzy, a mystically-themed family movie, and I noticed that Rainn Wilson was playing a pretty significant role in it. I was pretty happy that a guy from one of my favorite shows, The Office, was parlaying the show's success into a movie career. Then I heard that Jenna Fischer had a role in the Will Ferrell / Jon Heder figure-skating comedy Blades of Glory. It made me wonder: who else from The Office has a movie out this year?

Actually, I didn't wonder that. But I had no other good way to set up this interesting little article from USA Today, which talks to Wilson and Fischer about how the main four Office player all have movies coming out (Steve Carell has Evan Almighty and John Krasinski has Smiley Face, both coming out in the next few months).

The Office star Steve Carell was injured yesterday on the set of Evan Almighty, the sequel to the Jim Carrey comedy hit Bruce Almighty. He fell out of a Humvee and badly sprained his ankle. He's doing OK though, and the filming won't be interrupted.

My shock isn't that Carell was involved in an accident. I'm more shocked that they're making a sequel to Bruce Almighty.