A Toast to My Favorite Fictional Couple, ( in Which I Take Television Much Too Seriously)

And I think that we are one of those couples with a long story, when people ask how they found each other. I will see her every now and then, and... Maybe one year she'll be with somebody, and the next year, I'll be with somebody, and it's gonna take a long time... And then it's perfect. I'm in no rush. - Michael Scott, The Office, Season 5

At the end of a long day of tedious tasks and annoying phone calls and endless emails, there is nothing I love more than putting on my pajamas and curling up in front of the television to get lost from reality for a couple of hours. Yes, I know that this is probably a complete waste of time and brain cells. Yes, I could probably spend that time doing something productive or God-forbid, social. But I like my time-wasting, brain cell-reducing, social-life ruining prime time hours, thank you very much.

See, I tend to live vicariously through television. I realize this borders on pathetic but I swear I'm not some crazy lady living alone with nine-hundred cats and newspapers stacked to the ceiling. (Only PART of that is true ). I do have a life but I also do LOVE television. I always have. I love the serialized plot lines and the wacky background characters and the weekly heartaches and hilarity. I love the cliffhangers and the tear-jerking series finales and special episodes. And most of all, I love the escape from reality. When I want to know what it’s like to be deserted on a freaky island that is skipping through time I can turn on LOST. If I want to get caught up in the intensity of high school football in a small town in Texas I watch Friday Night Lights. If I want to remind myself why I need to be thanking my frickin’ lucky stars that I’m not a woman in the sixties there's Mad Men. And if I want to experience an office environment ten times more interesting than my own, I watch The Office. With the simple click of a remote I am somewhere new.

In real life so many of these characters and situations would be obnoxious or irritating but on television, they are endearing. We can laugh at the peculiarities of a Sheldon Cooper and the womanizing ways of a Barney Stinsen. We can appreciate the brooding arrogance of a Tim Riggins and root for an evil-doer like Benjamin Linus. In television we are taken on a journey into the lives of these characters, we come to know them and their ambitions and wants and desires, their loves and repulsions and quirks. When written well - these characters come ALIVE.

I am so easily drawn into to the lives and worlds of these fictional beings. I cheer them on and want them to win that football game and find a way off the island and figure out who the bad guy is and win the election and find Earth and save the patient. And most of all, because I am an utter sap, I want them to get the guy or get the girl and find that happy ending. I adore watching love stories unfold, watching two characters meet and fall in love – again, maybe I’m living vicariously. But it’s fun to imagine a guy standing outside my window with a boom box over his head playing “In Your Eyes.” It’s nice to imagine there are guys out there who would buy you a wall or take you sailing for the summer, fly around the world to be with you when you've been hurt, bring you back to life even if it means never touching you again, profess his love in the middle of a parking lot or drive between two New York airports to tell you not to leave for Paris. It's over the top and saccharine and schmultzy... but I love it all the same.

From my earliest television watching days I have found myself sucked into these romantic plots, obsessing over the "will-they-won't-they" story lines. Cory and Topanga (he kissed Linda Cardellini at the ski lodge! Her parents moved! He proposed at graduation!), Joey and Pacey ( Stupid Dawson! Sidenote: the picture to the right will never not make me laugh. I include it because I can) and on through the years with Josh and Donna, Logan and Veronica, Tim and Dawn, Ned and Chuck, Starbuck and Apollo and of course, the ever adorable office sweethearts, Jim and Pam.

The very first episode I watched of The Office instantly drew me into the Jim and Pam storyline. It was Season Two’s Booze Cruise, an episode that remains to this day, one of my all-time favorite episodes of the show. In that agonizingly silent moment on the boat deck - the lights on the horizon glowing behind them, the cold January breeze blowing through their hair, looking so much like they wanted each other - I was hooked.

These were two characters that were so achingly normal amidst an office of chaos and crazy, the eyes through which we saw the hijinks of Dunder Mifflin Scranton unfold. I can look at characters like Michael and Dwight and say, "man, I KNOW someone just like that." But with Jim and Pam I can say, "I've BEEN there. I KNOW that feeling." They resonate with the audience because so much of their story is the same story we know in our own lives. Terrible bosses, annoying co-workers, failed ambitions, lack of direction, suffocating relationships, unrequited feelings. It's universal. Jim's struggle with his feelings for the engaged Pam seemed to so simply epitomize the feeling of unrequited love that I believe most of us feel at one point or another in our lives. I rooted him on and watched with bated breath (in between the laughs) every week, wondering what would happen because, man, I've BEEN there.

And now, after four seasons, we've watched them take this rewarding and satisfying and frustrating journey through her engagement to Roy and Jim’s sojourn to Stanford and subsequent return, his relationship with the purse girl and Karen, teapots and secrets and fabric softener and games of jinx, an assault attempt, a job interview in New York, art school, that guy from Mad Men, long distance phone calls and misunderstandings, the Dundies, Michael’s “dangling participle,” a failed proposal, promotions and new companies and pranks, a night at the Schrute Farms Bed and Breakfast, a rain-soaked proposal and a surprise pregnancy. From the ache of unrequited love and parking lot confessions to the incandescent happiness of finding that one person, that one person that makes this whole thing worth it - I have loved watching this journey. These two characters are not perfect by any means but they are perfect with, and for each other.

It is a testament to the lovely acting abilites of Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski, I suppose, that this relationship feels so real and organic. They have both killed some of the hallmark scenes of this relationship ( i.e. the parking lot confession of love) and I cannot even begin to imagine any different actors in those roles. The fact that neither Fischer nor Krasinski have even been nominated for Emmys is a complete travesty, a travesty I say.

And as a sidenote: I bow to the writers for not sticking Jim and Pam through a series of ridiculous breaking up and getting back together fiascoes. As much as I loved Ross and Rachel, by the time Friends went off the air, I didn’t care much about their on-again/off-again/on-again/off-again relationship. So Office writers, my hat off to you for never letting Jim utter the words, “We were on a break.”

So to the cast and crew, to the writers, and to Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski, I give my heartfelt gratitude for creativing such a lovely show and a couple that I can fall in love with and finally say to...

Happy Wedding Day Jim and Pam!
Thank you for six years of stories and laughter and entertainment... may your fictional lives be blessed.