If you've paid any attention at all to television in the past few years, you'll know that reboots and revivals of beloved shows from days gone by are quite popular. While shows like Dynasty, MacGyver and Charmed updated the original premises with new casts, the much more popular approach has actually been to bring back the original cast members of series such as Gilmore Girls, Murphy Brown, Will & Grace and The X-Files and continue the stories that were already established. Well, people have been clamoring for the cast of The Office to head back to Dunder-Mifflin, and star Steve Carell has finally let folks know what he thinks about potentially spending more (pretend) time in Scranton.
I'll tell you, no...I just can't see it being the same thing, and I think most folks would want it to be the same thing, but it wouldn't be. Ultimately, I think it's maybe best to leave well enough alone and just let it exist as what it was. You'd literally have to have all of the same writers, the same producers, the same directors, and the same actors, and even with all of those components, it just wouldn't be the same. So, no. But, I love the show. It was the most exciting time, and all of those people are my friends. We all love it. It was a special thing. It was a special thing before people thought it was a special thing. It was special to us, before other people started feeling that way.
Ah, yeah...so, I'm sorry to help Steve Carell burst all your bubbles with regards to getting The Office up and running again, but he does not think it would be a good idea. And, really, I think he makes several excellent points when he reveals that going back to that well would probably be a misfire. First off, he notes that people who love The Office so much that they want to see new episodes with the original cast would want the show to be the same thing, but, at this point, it just couldn't be. The NBC comedy went off the air after nine seasons in 2013, and a lot has changed since then.
With the exception of meeting up here and there to catch up, the cast and crew haven't been together on a regular basis for a long time, so that familiar dynamic we'd all be hoping for (which developed over weeks, months and years of everyone working together) wouldn't necessarily be there a second time around. Plus, everyone has gone on to other projects. For instance, Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski have gone on to other shows, with Krasinski also co-writing and directing one of this year's best horror movies, A Quiet Place. And, Carell, for his part, has become a movie star since his time on The Office ended in 2011.
Steve Carell also noted, in his interview with Collider, that he believes to come anywhere close to getting the same feeling of The Office we all know and love back, they'd have to reunite not just all the cast, but all the creative individuals behind the scenes who helped make the show one that we can't stop revisiting in reruns or binges on Netflix.
While Carell was quick to let people know that he loved the show and the people who worked on it with him, he also hopes fans realize that you can't usually recapture what made a show special the first time around, and that the last thing any of them would want is to try and end up with a product that simply doesn't live up to what we'd all want to see.
But, I don't think you can recapture that same magic. I really think it comes down to that. If it was magic. I don't want to overstate it. It was just a TV show. I just wouldn't want to make the mistake of making a less good version of it. The odds wouldn't be in its favor, in terms of it recapturing exactly what it was, the first time.
There you have it. Steve Carell is not down for participating in a revival of The Office, even though he loved working on the show. This might be sad news for you, but at least you can stay confident in the fact that the show, as it was, will live on and be there for you any time you need to see Jim play a prank on Dwight or revel in how smart you actually are after watching Michael Scott grill his foot.
