(Photo: Courtesy of NBC/Chris Haston)

The Office is hilarious, of course, but it’s also brilliant at handling dramatic dilemmas—the most prominent of which, Jim and Pam’s romance, has been successfully drawn out for four seasons. If last year’s finale is any indication, though, this season (returning September 25 on NBC) promises a relationship between Steve Carell’s Michael Scott and Holly Flax, the goofy new HR rep played by Amy Ryan, which will be a tougher nut to crack. It’s hard enough to sustain the conceit that someone as odd as Michael is capable of being a functioning member of society, and it made sense that he could be bullied into staying with Jan—but a working romantic relationship with someone equally strange? In the daydream in which we’re hired at a ludicrous Hollywood salary to become an Office writer-performer, we’ve now got our work cut out for us.

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• Archive: “Guides”
• Articles by Ben Mathis-Lilley
• Table of Contents: Sep 1, 2008 issue of New York | Subscribe!