Most comedies are driven by jokes, which seems like a simple idea. But NBC's "The Office" is different. The driving force behind the show is the characters who sit behind the desks at the Scranton office of Dunder Mifflin paper company.
That's what allowed tonight's one-hour wedding of Pam and Jim to move along nicely, despite doubling the normal length of the show.
In fact, I would have been happy with 30 minutes more.
It's no spoiler to say that the cute couple that provides the human core in an "Office" full of loons did actually tie the knot. There are tons of great details, many of them coming from Kevin -- including his great line, "I'm not gay, I'm Kevin," and his tissue-box shoes.
If it's still on your DVR, watch for Michael's post-nuptial hook-up. Yeah, you'll probably see it coming. But it's still worth seeing.
I'm guessing I'll watch it once more before I go to bed tonight, a normal practice for me when it comes to "The Office."
I had some doubts about this wedding -- since successful marriages could spell doom in a traditional sitcom. But "The Office" isn't a traditional sitcom. It's more realistic than most television. As funny as it is, there's often a melancholy air to the mundane world these folks are stuck in.
There was nothing melancholy to Thursday night's episode -- although you may cringe a couple times.
All in all, it was a pure joy.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
