Clickbait sites love producing a variation of this story:
10 Classic Sitcoms That Have Aged Poorly And Are Hard to Rewatch
So-and-so film or TV show is now offensive because it didn’t follow the future’s woke playbook. New stories. Classic tales. No matter. We can’t enjoy them anymore.
That woke mind virus is starting to fade. Still, the culture remains wary of stories that don’t abide by its draconian rules.
Which brings us to Rainn Wilson.
The comedic actor brought up his iconic show “The Office” earlier this month during an installment of “The Burnouts with Phoebe and Sophia” podcast. The actor, who played unctuous office drone Dwight Schrute on the NBC sitcom, worries that the beloved show couldn’t be its true self today.
“I don’t think we could do ‘The Office’ in this day and age. The reason the show works is because Michael Scott is a total buffoon who says the most outrageous things without realizing it. So you forgive him because you also love him at the same time. But if we’re in a kind of a culture where Sydney Sweeney is doing a jeans ad and makes a pun about jeans and genes and is pilloried for White Supremacy. Nowadays, I don’t think [‘The Office’] would fly.”
Michael Scott himself, AKA actor Steve Carell, essentially agrees with his co-star. Carell admitted during a 2018 interview that creating a show like “The Office” again, “might be impossible.”
“The climate’s different…I mean, the whole idea of that character, Michael Scott, so much of it was predicated on inappropriate behavior. I mean, he’s certainly not a model boss. A lot of what is depicted on that show is completely wrong-minded. That’s the point, you know?
“But I just don’t know how that would fly now. There’s a very high awareness of offensive things today – which is good, for sure. But at the same time, when you take a character like that too literally, it doesn’t really work.”
That was during the rise of the woke mind virus, but not at its 2020 peak when “offensive” sitcom episodes were banished from the public.
Some of TV’s best characters were less than kind or cordial. Archie Bunker rushes to mind, part of the beloved “All in the Family” ensemble.
Now, try thinking of a modern sitcom/comedy character as memorable as Archie or Michael Scott. Good luck…
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