The TV Doctor, Dr. Jack Shepherd is back with his analysis and guess for who will replace Steve Carell on The Office.
We’ve all known for some time that this will be Steve Carell’s last season portraying Michael Scott on “The Office”. If you’ve been watching each week you can see him getting closer to his happy ending of riding off into the sunset with his soulmate Holly. Michael will be gone soon, but the show has yet to announce its future plans for who will have the authority at Sabre in Scranton, PA. Will Ferrell will be doing a multi-episode arc in a few weeks, but his standing as one of the biggest movie stars in the world makes it highly unlikely he would make a jump to a permanent TV gig. So then who will be the new manager?
If the show decides to go with an in-house replacement, it appears Andy would be the first choice. He’s the character who is the most like Michael and elicits similar responses as Michael did from his fellow workers. There have even been two episodes this season, “Sex Ed” and “The Seminar,” that seemed to be auditions for an Andy-led “Office”. Ed Helms also currently has the most star power on the show aside from Carell, especially with “The Hangover 2” due out in May. Other in-house candidates would be Darryl (wouldn’t seem realistic), Dwight (would be too “wacky”), or Jim (would they really go back to this after Jim/Michael co-manager storyline fell flat?). If they promote from within, then the choice is probably Andy. But for a show that has gotten stale over the last few seasons, I wouldn’t say that’s the right move.
New blood is needed in Scranton to get this show back to being what it was, or at least closer to it. Ricky Gervais has come out in favor of Will Arnett being the replacement. “Arrested Development” is one of my favorite shows of all-time, and I love Arnett, but does he really have the credentials to be handed such responsibility? Also, the characters he plays the best, like GOB, tend to be hugely self-involved people who don’t see how their actions affect others. Does that sound like anyone else who’s already worked in Scranton? Danny McBride has also been mentioned, but as silly as this sounds I don’t see him succeeding at an authoritative role where he’s not allowed to curse. And again, he’d probably play a character matching Michael’s ineptitude. The show not only needs an outside hire, it also needs a new type of leader to walk through Sabre’s doors.
If the show was looking to install someone with a lot of past sitcom success, then Kelsey Grammar or Julia Louis-Dreyfus would be viable options. Grammar has struggled recently to get back into TV with his latest shows all flopping, and Dreyfus’ “The New Adventures of Old Christine” was cancelled last year. Joining an established show like “The Office” would give them more potential security than looking for a new pilot. Plus NBC, a network constantly struggling for good press, would be welcoming back one of its biggest stars from a decade ago with either choice. Neither of these actors would be bad choices and both could bring something new to inject new life into the show, especially Dreyfus as a female boss, but there’s still one more actor I feel NBC should be wooing first and foremost.
Matthew Broderick. We know that NBC has courted Broderick for years. He finally acquiesced to their requests by filming a pilot last season and in all its infinite wisdom NBC declined to pick it up. So with that bad taste in his mouth, it stands to reason Broderick might not be inclined to even consider this. Also, he might not want his foray into television to be replacing an iconic role like Carell’s Michael Scott. However, for the sake of this blog let’s say he is amicable to joining the show. Maybe he agrees his pilot was bad, and maybe he sees what replacing Michael J. Fox on “Spin City” did for Charlie Sheen’s career.
So then where does the show take the character? We know Broderick has experience talking to the camera from his “Ferris Bueller” days. Why not make the character essentially what Ferris grew up to be? Michael Scott’s replacement does not need to be a bumbling idiot or someone with no social skills. Why not make him the opposite? The paper business is a dying business and even with Sabre’s infusion of products, the Scranton bunch are still working in an industry that’s rife with the threat of decline. Bringing in Broderick to play a Bueller type character, one with smarts and charm to achieve seemingly anything would allow the workers to have something to believe in and the audience to have something to root for.
“The Office” started as a great example of the mundane existence so many of us face from 9-5. However, the light heartedness of Jim’s pranks on Dwight or Michael’s board room meetings allowed us to laugh at lives filled with unachieved dreams. Somewhere over the last few seasons, that stopped being funny and became kind of sad. It was funny to see a young Jim complain about his job, it’s less funny to see him seven years later in the same position even with his picture perfect family life. It’s not funny to see Pam realize she’s failed at almost everything she’s tried professionally. I’m not saying everything needs to be jokes and smiles, but why not change the direction of the show into the workers achieving something they can be proud of? They obviously could never do that with a leader like Michael Scott, but with someone like Ferris Bueller? Hell, you could do anything.
