With a new season came a new dynamic – Jim moved to the Stanford branch, and Pam had broken off her relationship with Roy. This had repurcussions throughout the office, Michael in particular feeling like he was somehow to blame. Jim’s transfer introduces us to characters who would, midway through the season, come to inhabit the office and lives of the cast we’d grown to love. But in the beginning they were separate. There was Karen Fillipelli (Rashida Jones), who attempted to initiate a relationship with Jim that sort-of worked and sort-of didn’t, but remained a bone of contention between Jim and Pam upon Jim’s return (and subsequent discovery that Pam had broken up with Roy).
We also meet the Nard-Dog himself, Andy Bernard (Ed Helms), who is initially presented as someone with anger management problems but, after a period of therapy, is integrated relatively normally into the office society. This season offers a few gems: Michael accidentally outing Oscar (Oscar Nunez) in “Gay Witch Hunt,” then feeling forced to try to kiss him on the lips, the bird funeral in “Grief Counselling,” with the tiny bird coffin made by Pam, and “Branch Closing,” in which the Stanford branch is absorbed by the Scranton branch. This leads to interesting office politics, and a very different second half (compared to the first). It also signals the return of Jim who, after breaking it off with Karen, ends the season by finally (FINALLY) asking Pam to go on a date. Other brilliant moments include Michael’s faked suicide attempt (“Safety Training”), Phyllis (Phyllis Smith) being flashed in the office parking lot (“Women’s Appreciation”) and Pam’s fire walk (“Beach Games”).
Season four was a little shorter at nineteen episodes, as it was affected by the 2008/2009 WGA writer’s strike, but what it lacked in episodes it more than made up for with the funniest season opening in the history of The Office – Michael hitting Meredith (Kate Flannery) with his car. We also finally get to see Pam and Jim together, openly, as a couple, with Karen having left after the break-up and now managing the Dunder-Mifflin Utica branch. This season brings some big changes too – Jan moves in with Michael after losing her job last season, and they begin a relationship and Angela breaks up with Dwight in the first episode after he euthanises her cat, after which Andy attempts to seduce her, with varying degrees of success over the first half of this season until she eventually acquiesces. The relationship is key throughout the season, culminating in Andy proposing to Angela in front of everybody in the office. Angela says yes. Season highlights include Michael working as a telemarketer to support himself and now-jobless Jan, later hopping on a train and attempting to escape (“Money”); Michael and Jan’s dinner party (“Dinner Party”), and the entirety of “Chair Model.” The whole episode is just classic moment after classic moment.
We also saw Jim and Pam separated again, as she went to study Art at the Pratt Institute in New York, bringing its own challenges to their relationship. We then had “Safety Training,” in which Michael discovers he is the leading cause of stress in the office. We see Ryan, the office temp, take Jan’s job at corporate in this season too, which obviously doesn’t end well. “Goodbye Toby” was this season’s finale, in which Toby (Paul Lieberstein) moves to Costa Rica after announcing his intentions in “Booze Cruise,” shorly after telling Pam of his own affections for her that had slowly been building throughout the show. He is replaced by Holly (Amy Ryan), who went on to become an extremely important figure in the show, and possibly the architect of its downfall. The episode also features Andy’s very public marriage proposal, of course, but that final ballsy scene – to have Angela and Dwight caught having sex in the office by Phyllis – was a rare downer ending that was also really funny. It succeeded in adding another layer of tension to the already complicated Angela/Andy/Dwight triangle, because every relationship ends up triangular in The Office.
