A Statement About Jim and Pam

In the spirit of being completely "behind" in my reviewing, writing, commenting, etc., I am now going to talk a little bit about The Office season finale. But first, a digression! Try not to act surprised.

The joy of living with one's (super cool) grandparents is that you can introduce them (or one of them) to super cool shows that they haven't seen yet, and in return you get to revisit old favorites. I highly recommend this course of action.

So we watched 30 Rock and have just moved on to Season 1 of The Office. Which brings me full circle to The Office season finale.

It is so painfully cute to watch Jim and Pam in these opening seasons, especially knowing where they end up-- and makes it that much holy-fraktasm-jump-up-and-down-able when they find out that they are pregnant at the end of Season 5. Eeek!

I think it can be argued that these two compose the most healthy, functional, and normal relationship on network television. They are madly in love, have real-life problems, and are not perfect people by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it's been horrifyingly indicated that Jim Halpert may be turning into Michael Scott, and if he doesn't jump out of his slacker haze, Dunder Mifflin Paper will actually become his career. Not just his job.

Not that Pam wants to change him. Quite the contrary, she wants him to be happy, just as he did when he sent her off to her art program in New York at the beginning of this season. These two are not strictly driven by any specific ambition except to be together. They want to be happy, healthy, and together. Not much more you can ask for than that.

As a couple they go through everything that normal couples go through-- unwanted separation, home purchasing (one of the scariest, sweetest moments ever is when Jim buys his parents' house-- without talking to Pam first), vague threats from outside parties (hello Karen, and dude from New York!). It's not the nature of The Office to show us anything about their domestic or sex lives, yet somehow we know that they are perfectly, er, satisfied on both counts, and we don't mind only seeing their relatively circumspect office interaction.

Personally I can't wait to see what comes next for them, and wouldn't be surprised to learn that we return from the real-time summer vacation to find that they eloped during the break. In the meantime, though, I'm going to seriously enjoy starting again from the beginning, and seeing just how far these two crazy kids have come.