The seventh season of The Office is 26 episodes long. This is also the last season that has Steve Carell playing the role of Michael Scott (who is the main character and the manager of all the other characters). The first half of the season is pretty much business as usual. It takes place at the paper company Dunder Mifflin Sabre. The staff of the Scranton branch is an odd bunch, and each one is dysfunctional in one way or another. Over the seasons, the characters eventually become ruthless in tearing into each other. There’s no hesitation in expressing what is wrong with the other and it feels that everyone is for themselves.
For a long-running series, it manages to continue on delivering interesting premises for the episodes, including a really funny one involving Michael and all of his previous girlfriends. Once he starts listing them, you realize that he has dated plenty of times before and every single one of them was disastrous. It’s a shame that he hasn’t found the “one” though after all he has been through. Michael is constantly depicted as hopeless in keeping a relationship. It is once again put to the test when he, however unlikely, gets into one again. While you feel sad for him when he was single, it gets unbearable with his smugness and inappropriateness when he’s not. He is a massive hypocrite… but everyone else is too so it kind of evens out.
There are a few character arcs going around. Andy is the nice guy that’s down on luck. After splitting from Erin, he has to watch her get together with Gabe, who isn’t exactly the best character around, making his loss hurt all the more. Erin herself is kind of weird at times and totally oblivious to how much hurt she is causing for both characters. You can’t help but feel sorry for Andy at times. He has turned into quite the empathetic character since his original introduction as the annoying smug guy. He is one of the only ones that’s true, loyal and a good guy overall. Yet everyone else dislikes him to some degree and finds his antics unbearable.
The inclusion of the character Gabe leads to a host of new jokes and gags. He is now the butt of a lot of jokes and a common target for everyone else in Dunder Mifflin. The sad fact is that this is pretty funny. Even Toby doesn’t get the same amount of hate (since he mainly gets it from Michael, who absolutely loathes him). On another front, Jim and Dwight continue to butt heads, although Dwight is a bit obtuse and takes things too far. While what Jim does isn’t exactly the friendliness or nicest, Dwight pretty much overkill's in his responses. Dwight has quite the ego that makes him the more unlikable one. He easily lets power gets to his head and just thinks on a different wavelength.
Continuing on the trend from the last season, there are guest appearances of characters from previous seasons. This is already a nice surprise but a cameo from a character that has been written out a long time ago makes these scenes some of the most memorable. No matter how original most of the episodes are, there are still some that repeats a theme, like the ever recurring Christmas episode. There is a lot of time spent in focusing on the relationship between characters. It constantly tries to show us the characters who are in a relationship… are in a relationship with the wrong person and it sends a somewhat unfortunate message.
Towards the end of the season, it is hard to believe that this is Michael’s last appearance. You’d expect that with the replacement coming in and Michael constantly going on about leaving, that it’ll be like the previous seasons where it’s just played up for drama. His replacement is not exactly portrayed as the best guy and it highlights the fact that Michael does have his good points as manager, albeit not too many. Michael’s departure makes waves through the rest of the episodes. At this point, you realize that without Michael, the show is… not what it used to be. It just feels different and way more subdued.
Overall, the seventh season of The Office starts off strong. There are a lot of great episodes, and even more cringeworthy moments. However, this marks the end of the character Michael Scott and while he was given a worthy farewell, the episodes without him felt weird at the same time, like the soul of the show is missing.
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