After almost ten years, the ninth season of The Office is also the final season. It is comprised of 25 episodes, but some episodes are longer than the typical episode length so it is more like 27 episodes. The opening episode continues on from the previous season where Dunder Mifflin has changed owners once again. Andy gets his job back although Nellie manages to stay on as a regular. Their likability has swapped as Andy is slightly more unlikable while Nellie becomes nicer and gets along with the rest of the office. The final season surprisingly also introduces a few more new regular faces, including two interns who gives as much sass as Ryan used to.
As this is the final season, it has a planned ending for everyone. Therefore, there is a lot of foreshadowing throughout the season on how the characters will end up. Various characters start to make plans. Jim reflects on his life and how he had spent much much longer than he had anticipated at Dunder Mifflin in the same role. However, he is struggling to break through and make his career change work given that he now has a family to consider. He still has the time to play some good pranks and jokes on Dwight though. The best parts are where he manages to convince others to also participate.
Andy starts to go off the rails. He is experiencing episode after episode and it strains his relationship with Erin. While Oscar and Angela’s professional relationship also takes a hit. While what Oscar did to Angela was wrong, Angela putting all the blame on Oscar is unfair. She is doing all sorts of unpleasant and petty things to him which makes her character even more unlikable, if that is possible.
The various romantic relationships between characters working in the office are muddy. You start wondering whether some of the characters will get a happy ending considering the mess that they are in. The season would have to have a grand reveal, then resolve the conflict soon after, which seemed unlikely. Characters start to drift away and the office begins to break apart. These events heralds the end but the sweet thing is that despite all the things that the characters hated about their job and their lives, they realize that they will still miss these times where they had fun.
It is not all good points as the season has plenty of things to dislike about. There are too many episodes with horrible plot points which are basically comprised of arguments and characters doing horrible things to each other. These plots have no place for a final season, all these conflicts do it no favors and it makes it hard to keep liking these characters and cheering them on for a happy ending.
The documentary crew aspect is played a lot heavier this season. The earliest seasons downplays it all by having the characters give acknowledging nods to the camera and doing some monologues. Then in later seasons we start to see the characters pulling their mikes out. However, in this season, the crew is a lot more personal. We see equipment and even their faces. It blows up towards the end of the season as the characters find out just how intrusive the camera crew was. Since the crew was mostly in the background up until now, it feels really weird to have them at the forefront like this.
Despite its flaws, the finale provides a good closure to the series. It sorts out all the relationships, even though some of the characters don’t deserve such a happy ending. in the end, as each character is reflecting on what happened in the past, it has a nice heartwarming moment where it is all flowers and sunshine. It managed to resist the temptation to do a far off future conclusion to show where everyone is now. Overall, the ninth season of The Office is not the best season of the show. However, as a finale it does provide a nice farewell to the characters we have watched for so long. It is worthwhile just to see where everyone ends up and how everything settles, even if it overlooked some characters such as Ryan and Kelly.
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