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Ricky Gervais unleashes David Brent on "The Office"

Lawrance M. Bernabo | The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota | 03/02/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Every time David Brent (Ricky Gervais) starts fiddling with his tie I get anxious. It is like hearing the sound of an artillery shell coming at you and wanting to yell "Incoming." Yes, I know I am contrasting a visual clue with an aural clue, but my point, vis-a-vis "The Office: The Complete First Series," would be, to wit, on point in the same way taking a round hole and finding a square peg to put into it would make a modicum of sense, in a round about way. We live sheltered lives up here in the Northland, so I had never seen "The Office" nor heard much about it until the BBC series won the Golden Globe for Best Television Series: Musical or Comedy and Gervais won for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series: Musical or Comedy. But that was enough to check it out. Since this is a British situation comedy there are only a handful of episodes, six to be exact, so we are spared from the sub-par and totally wasted episodes that so many American sitcoms are bloated with (is there going to be even one more great "Friends" episode before the grand finale?). The result is an instant cult classic in the mode of "Police Squad," another limited run sitcom series that inhabited its own little comedy world. "The Office" is the Slough office of Werham Hogg, manufacturer of paper products, where David Brent is the office manager. The key story arc of the first season is the company's impending decision to close either the Slough or Swindon branches and merge the two, which brings up the dreaded idea of "redundancy." Brent talks about protecting his people but we are aware from the start that this guy is talk, all talk, all the time, and has achieved new levels of self-interest and self-absorption in the process. There are also the interpersonal conflicts in the office, where the number two man in the office, Gareth Keenan (Mackenzie Crook) is blind to his own incompetence and Tim Canterbury (Martin Freeman) divides his time between making life difficult for Gareth, trying to connect with Brent's secretary Dawn Tinsley (Lucy Davis), and keeping on the good side of the man himself.The six episodes from the first season consist of: (1) "Downsize" is where Brent is told that his branch might be closed down and absorbed by the other office. Of course that would not be a popular thing to tell his workers, so Brent flies in the face of reason and tells them the exact opposite; (2) "Work Experience" presents Brent with two headaches, the first being a doctored pornographic image of himself sent over the company computers and the second a return visit from Jennifer Taylor Clark wanting to know what changes he has made to improve the office; (3) "The Quiz" starts with Tim's birthday and his various gifts (one of which is large and inflatable), but comes down to Tim and Ricky (Oliver Chris) against Brent and Finch (Ralph Ineson) in the office's annual trivia quiz contest; (4) "Training" is my favorite of the bunch as it is training day. Of course Brent cannot play second fiddle to anybody and it is not long before he is livening up the boring session with some of his original musical compositions; (5) "New Girl" has Brent firing and hiring as the deadline for a decision comes closer while Tim is thinking of moving on; and (6) "Judgement" deals with redundancies judgement day and the choice that Brent has to make. Of course, no selfish deed comes unpunished.My only complaint is that given how Jennifer Taylor Clark (Stirling Gallacher) saw through Brent in episode two, how she can come back in episode four and have a different attitude. I know the short answer is because Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant wrote it that way, but it only underscores that for "The Office" to work nobody above Brent on the corporate food chain can really know his true value. Done in mockumentary style, just another piece of evidence that Brent's ego is too great to ever see the harm of having his every word being recorded by a camera, "The Office" is ultimately about a man who is trying to have it both ways. Every time he tries to stay ahead of the game he falls farther and farther behind, with the one constant being that he basically never ever shuts up. There is just something so compelling about watching such verbal self-immolating, especially when we are only talking about six episodes where only the fifth one is less than completely satisfactory."