is the office ruining jim and pam?

what happened to you guys??? // screencap from "blood drive"

Lately, I’ve been reading around the internets that some people are unhappy with how Jim and Pam have been acting this season on The Office.  Meanwhile, I’ve been complaining–as you can probably imagine–about how little attention they’ve been paying to Baby Tuna.  I wonder, then, if the two complaints aren’t somehow related.  Hear me out.

People who don’t like the Fancy New Halperts seem to be arguing that Jim is boring and Pam is a bitch.  But, really, what the show’s doing is letting them grow up.  Their progression over the last two-and-a-half seasons has shown them becoming adults–buying a house, getting married, and having a baby.  And, yeah, this is changing the characters.  But it doesn’t necessarily have to change them for the worse.

There are two problems.  One is that the show isn’t doing a good enough job right now of showing why these characters are changing.  We’ve gotten a couple of subtle hints about how impending fatherhood is weighing on Jim–he and his bride were thisclose to having a conversation about the kid in last week’s “Murder”–but ultimately he’s coming across as someone who’s settled for a future at Dunder-Mifflin.  The producers said at the beginning of the season that they were going to refocus the series on Jim a little, and they haven’t done that yet.  Yeah, we’re seeing a new side of Work Jim, but nobody cares about Work Jim.  We know Jim doesn’t want to sell paper–he’s doing it because diapers are expensive, yo.  SO TELL US THAT.

Show us Conflicted!Jim, show us (Wish I Was In) Philly Jim–don’t show us Middling Manager Jim–he’s kind of a loser.

Most of all, please show us Daddy Jim.  He hasn’t even mentioned Baby Tuna since the premiere, and I’m sitting here wondering how this show can be sitting on such a huge gold mine and not do anything about it.  I know this isn’t The Jim and Pam Show, and I don’t think I’d want to want The Jim and Pam Show (oh, shut up, you know I totally would), but I seriously don’t understand why they’re not milking it (heh) for all its worth.

Here’s hoping there’s good baby stuff coming up in the Christmas episode, eh?

As for Pam–yeah, she’s kind of a bitch. But she’s always been kind of a bitch; Karen pointed this out in “The Job.”  Embrace the bitchiness.  No, Pam’s not at her best when she’s fighting a stupid unwinnable battle (such as The Microwave Mess Battle of ’08), but I love moments where she abandons the Coalition for Reason, like last week when she participated in the fake hold-up with Michael, Dwight, and Andy.  I love just about any scene she has with Angela.  And, yeah, that whole throw-up thing was awful.  I know.  I’ll let y’all have that one.

But what I’m saying is that I think a lot of the problems could be solved by giving Jim and Pam more explicit reasons for changing.  I know we can see the reason every time Jenna Fischer’s faux baby bump gets kicked up in size, but they need to do more to address how rapidly and how hugely these characters’ lives are changing.