You will never win

Seeing green with The Office and S2E3: ‘Party’

This piece is part of a series on The Office (UK), running up to the 20th anniversary of its finale this Christmas. Don’t miss out by following me on Medium.

Next on the list for Merchant and Gervais is depicting birthdays at work, the group gifts and mid-afternoon booze at your desk and continual cake. (The birthday girl of the episode, Trudy, said last episode that the Slough branch of Wernham Hogg got away with murder: they sure throw a lot of parties.) The real theme, though, isn’t birthdays but what they make a certain kind of kid feel: jealousy — in the literal sense of possessiveness and in the vernacular sense of envy.

For the first time, however, these feelings come with a different inflection. The episode might seem typically ‘middle’: characters in it reiterate conflicts rather than undergo any dramatic changes; the episode comes in the middle of the series. But really it’s a hinge-point: a show-defining shift in our perspective on David Brent.

The most conventional jealousy of the episode, romantic, we see coming from Dawn towards Rachel and Tim, and see it has grounds. The two of them are running through the steps of flirtation: they ‘inadvertently’ keep touching each other, as accents to their chat, as gimme-tens and celebratory bum-bumps. They refer to one another’s sexual characteristics: she asks whether Trudy’s birthday gift of a dildo looks like his penis; he points out she’s spilled wine on her [whistles]. They close the deal not with a handshake but The Reciprocated Touch, caught on peeping camera: him stroking her back and her stroking his hand.

Having watched all but the last, Dawn tries forcing fun with Tim such as playing a prank together. As deftly performed by Lucy Davis, Dawn is so anxious to intercept him from Rachel she hasn’t thought of what prank or on whom, and flounders for candidates. Tim suggests the prankee, Gareth; but, when it comes off even better than expected, Rachel intercepts Tim from Dawn with a congratulatory cock-block.

In the last episode Rachel had asked Tim out in safe-mode: inviting him to join a night-out with her and her friends. Not so safe for Dawn, who was in the room at the time and so witnessed first-hand how Tim wasn’t going to…