The Rumored Return of ‘The Office’ Highlights a Deeper Problem With Our Love for Ended Shows

When are we not hearing about a rumored reboot of The Office? Or Friends? Or some other sitcom from the mid-2000s? I know I am not innocent in this conversation—I’d give a limb for Parks and Recreation to still be on the air. I was beyond grateful to see the return of Party Down recently because that’s a show I didn’t think got its fair shot when it was on TV. I genuinely believe that there are comedies that do deserve a return because of one reason or another.

Some shows, though, are always in the conversation among fans and in the news. One of those shows is The Office. Now, I like the show. This is not a knock on it. To be clear, it’s always in my rewatch rotation, and for the most part, I still think it’s a pretty good series. My issues with The Office have always been that Parks and Recreation was my favorite, and it didn’t get the same kind of love, and that The Office, for some reason, is always the show that people talk about bringing back. Why? I don’t know—it had a pretty great ending.

The newest reports about the potential for a The Office “reboot” come with some weight to them. Creator and showrunner Greg Daniels is seemingly part of the conversation, and, with the WGA having officially agreed to their new deal with the AMPTP, more could be revealed soon. This news is exciting for fans of the show but also shows an alarming trend when it comes to comedies and the problems with them.

Instead of investing in new ideas, we’re mining old ones. The Office is a comfort show. That doesn’t mean it needs to be the only show we return to time and time again.

Sometimes, we should let a good thing die

It is almost guaranteed money to pull from something that has already worked. The Office was a hit in the U.K. before it came to the United States, and then it was an even bigger hit when it was remade for NBC. While the series itself was beloved during its original 9-season run, the show has now found a second life on streaming with fans constantly rewatching the show.

Those constant rewatches have produced a different kind of love for the mockumentary sitcom, one that isn’t exactly working for producers when they look at what shows to spend their time and money on. They see the love we have for shows we rewatch as our comfort shows and think, “Let’s bring that back,” instead of recognizing that new shows that have that magic are what we want, not just more of the same.

While bringing The Office back could be great and might work, this is an exhausting conversation to have over and over again when we see exciting new shows often being canceled before they have a chance to thrive. I’m sure that Greg Daniels wouldn’t bring back The Office without a good idea behind it first, but maybe we should just leave Dunder Mifflin back in Scranton.

(featured image: NBC)