Scott’s Tots: An Office episode That Lacks Humor

The Office has always attempted to show the humor in extremely awkward situations. Whether it is Stanley suffering a heart attack during a fire drill gone horribly wrong or Dwight killing Angela’s sick cat without her permission, the show has excelled in taking a horrific occurrence and making it funny. Occasionally there will be an incident which is just painful to watch and not funny at all, such as when Pam’s former boyfriend Roy starts violently destroying a bar after he finds out that she and Jim kissed. But these simply uncomfortable moments, besides being few and far between, are always surrounded by very funny moments. We have never had an episode that was just simply painful to watch.

Until last night’s episode aired that is.

Last night’s episode of The Office, entitled “Scott’s Tots”, was one of the most difficult shows to sit through. Instead of being awkwardly funny it was alienating and uncomfortable. The premise of the episode was this: ten years ago Michael had promised a class of underprivileged third graders that if they graduated from high school he would pay for each of them to go to college. Now they are set to graduate and he doesn’t have the money to make good on his promise. He goes down to the school where he is greeted be applause from the students and numerous members of the committee. After hearing several students give speeches on how Michael’s promise kept them on track Michael finally tells them that he can’t pay for them to go to college. The students are shocked and angry at not getting to further their education after they worked so hard to get to this point and Michael leaves the school in disgrace.

The entire episode was simply painful to watch. While Michael has made some impulsive promises before it’s never been at this horrid of a level before. Even when Michael’s receptionist Erin points out that the silver lining is that his empty promise enabled those kids to graduate from high school it still doesn’t make up for crushing those kid’s dreams and trust. Possibly the worst image is seeing a newspaper article that came out when Michael first made the promise, praising him for his generosity and for giving those kids something to aspire to. While I normally find dark humor hilarious, watching this episode was about as uncomfortable as watching a sex scene with one’s parents. Hopefully the next episode goes back to being awkwardly funny instead of just awkward.