Of all the sitcoms of the modern era, it could easily be argued that The Office is the most beloved of them all by far. For proof of that, all you have to do is look at the fact that people were so upset when they learned that The Office was leaving Netflix that it was headline news all over the world.
While it is remarkable that The Office means so much to people on the face of things, it is especially incredible since a lot of people have big problems with the later seasons. For example, a new character that a lot of Office fans can’t stand remained a huge part of the show from its eighth season on.
Since fans of The Office tend to be very vocal about the show, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that they have strong opinions about when the sitcom went downhill. In fact, it seems to be widely agreed upon among fans that a single moment in the show’s history is when The Office started to suck.
Averted Jump The Horse Moment
During a much-mocked 1977 episode of Happy Days, the Fonz could be seen jumping over a shark while on water skis. An infamous moment, most people agree that sequence was so ridiculous that Happy Days never recovered from it. Even though the legendary jump the shark scene is almost universally agreed to have been a mistake, The Office became remarkably close to doing something similar.
In 2020, author Andy Green released a book titled “The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s”. In the pages of that exhaustive book, Green revealed that there was set to be a horse subplot in the episode in which Jim and Pam tie the knot. Evidently, the episode’s original script called for Roy to be upset that Pam got away. As a result, Roy gets dressed up as a white knight and rides a horse into the ceremony in an attempt to win Pam back. While would have been ridiculous enough, the planned storyline somehow gets worse from there.
According to the original plans for the Jim and Pam wedding episode of The Office, Dwight was going to jump on Roy’s horse and ride it away. Before that happens, the episode was going to set up the idea that Dwight felt the “genetic urge” to go over the falls to his death. As a result, Dwight was going to ride the horse to the top of the falls and into the water only to jump off the animal to safety at the last moment. From there the episode was going to cut to Jim and Pam enjoying a romantic moment by the falls as the horse falls to its doom in the background.
Thankfully for fans of The Office everywhere, one of the show’s producers Randy Cordray told the author of the aforementioned book that Steve Carrell came to the rescue. After the table read for the episode, the show was set to go forward with the horse subplot. However, after the table read Carrell met with the episode’s writers, which included Mindy Kaling, and he argued that the storyline went too far.
According to Cordray, Steve Carrell made a very compelling argument against the horst storyline. “I love all of you, but this is really an animated joke. This is a cartoon joke. This is a joke we might see on The Simpsons. I know many people think that “The Office has already jumped the shark in many different ways, but let me just say, throwing a horse over Niagara Falls is really jumping the shark.” At the end of the day, fans of The Office were treated to seeing the show’s cast dance in the aisle instead of a horse falling to its demise.
The Office Starts To Suck
When you look back at The Office history, it quickly becomes clear that changing Michael Scott saved The Office. After all, Michael may have been hilarious during the first season but he was so overbearing that a lot of viewers would have found it hard to invest in him. Thankfully, Michael became a lovable character during the second season and that change played a key role in people coming to care deeply about the show.
Since fans loving Michael Scott led to The Office’s success and Steve Carrell saved the show from the planned horse storyline, it makes sense that the show died once he left the series. On the subreddit r/television, a user asked everyone to vote on when The Office jumped the shark. Unsurprisingly, the top suggested reply simply read “Welp, Steve Carrell leaving. That's the end of this thread.” It really is sad that the show went so far downhill at that point since the scenes in which Michael said goodbye to Jim and Pam were among the best in the series’ history.
