Tone

Two shows are back on that I find pretty hee-larious despite their flaws; The Office and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

My gripe with The Office last season was simple...Michael is too stupid to live. On the British version the boss was a little stupid but mostly sexist, racist, arrogant, a little slimy and ultimately...unlikable.

The ubiquitous Steve Carell plays a character so cartoonishly stupid, he would really have to be in a group home. Meanwhile, the rest of the cast is playing in the real world. OK, maybe Dwight is a bit off the charts as well but not near the level of Michael Scott, retard Extraordinaire. The romances all matter in the show because they're being played quite real. Stanley and most of the other office members are played very real and they're still funny. The contrast doesn't need to be there to make it work.
Carell plays the character so stupid because he's a coward. Just like his character on the office, he has to be liked. The David Brent character was total slime. Gervais was willing to be hated, something Steve clearly won't do. Every other episode, Pam and Jim cheer Michael up after he's horribly screwed everything up or embarrassed himself and basically done everything but make poo-poo in his pants (I'm sure that's coming), reminding us that he really means well and just wants to be liked, but he's just retarded.

I was anxious to see if this season they realized that element was hurting the show, and they'd make Michael a little smarter or if they'd embrace it, because it's soooo hilarious.

They grabbed onto it like a post-beating teddy bear hug. He's dumber than ever. It's too bad that Steve Carell is scared to be hated, because I hate him for it.

On the flip side, there's SUNNY.

Sunny is certainly a Seinfeld clone. It's terrible people doing terrible things. They're totally unafraid of being hated and playing it to the hilt. None of the characters could be real but they've created a heightened world...everyone else is a cartoon as well.

While Sunny doesn't have any internal tone conflicts, I occasionally feel like I'm watching a bunch of people act as over the top as possible. It soon passes, cause frankly I find the show funny as crap.

I don't have any sort of zinger ending.