Photo courtesy of NBC Universal and www.halpertbeesly.com
So, the kids are grown up all set to leave the nest together… and I’m not talking about Pam and Jim (yet), but rather social media (aka SM) and its sibling user generated content (or UGC).
We all remember the TIME Magazine cover at onset of 2007 (gosh has it been THAT long?!), and the more recent (June 2009) Twitter cover, proclaiming the arrival of UGC and SM into the big leagues… clearly, that train hasn’t slowed down since leaving the station.
Last night, my wife and I (as the rest of The Office watching world) tuned in to perhaps the most monumental sitcom event since the end of the Seinfeld era (g’head argue otherwise)... finally, after years of torment, countless times of looking away due to Michael’s uneasy jokes, all the laughter, some tears etc etc… the moment came. There they were, our Pam and Jim… FINALLY getting hitched.
What ensued was a spoof of the famous YouTube clip “JK Wedding Entrance Dance,” a home video that garnered over 27 million hits as of the morning after the episode aired.
I have not seen the video above until after the show aired (I’ve since given up my residence under a rock), which is a sweet embrace of a special moment in the real couple’s lives (whom should also be commended for using their new found web-fame for charity purposes). It was mimicked nearly to the T by the Office crew (see the full scene here) as the ending of the highly anticipated episode.
What I took away from this (because quite honestly it was rather anticlimactic for me and not any funnier than other episodes) was the fact that here it was, the top grossing sitcom around now ‘borrowing’ on the UGC movement, for an episode of this magnitude... seems risky (lazy even), but then again 27 million YouTube hits can’t be wrong, right?
Undoubtedly, UGC has arrived, but it has never looked so overproduced and sappy…
We all know that traditional media is struggling, and TV is no different. Reality shows are in-style for a reason; their lack of writing and acting staff along with other major overheads that’s pushing traditional media underwater… so where to turn other than into predetermined, built-in and established audiences? Besides even in TV terms 27 million people is a big share.
So it’s understandable, but disappointing nonetheless, at least from the standpoint that fictional characters should have fictional lives. I would've liked to see, what Doc Brown of Back to the Future called, a parallel reality... a parody of The Office world itself, than our real life events.
Also of note, when I started searching for the original video, I stumbled upon the below clip, which calls out several other 'borrowed' parody pieces within the wedding episode (puking scene, and the T shirt, both questionable according to the comments). Some food for thought though, pun intended.
Where will this 'borrowing' trend net out? We’ll have to wait and see… and through the years of training we all received from Pam and Jim’s back and forth escapades on The Office, we can hold out for quite a while.
So, to summarize and quote the touching ending to Jim’s rehearsal dinner toast… here’s to waiting!
