With The Office’s fake-documentary aesthetic and mundane workplace setting, NBC’s American version of the show typically thrived for a realism uncommon to network sitcoms. (It looked especially grounded when compared to fellow Thursday night comedies Community and 30 Rock, which frequently leapt into surrealistic flights of fancy.) But in at least one respect, the show demanded a complete suspension of disbelief: How, longtime viewers had to wonder, did transgression-prone paper-pusher Dwight Schrute manage to remain employed at Dunder Mifflin throughout The Office’s nine-year run? Sure, Michael Scott fired him once—a termination that lasted exactly one episode—but that was for betraying his trust, not for any one of the lawsuit-worthy incidents he was involved in before or after. Over the course of the series, Dwight quoted Hitler and Mussolini during an acceptance speech, egged a potential client’s business, kidnapped a pizza boy, had sex with a co-worker on company property, fought another co-worker on company property, viscously dismembered a Rescue Anne doll, and caused mass panic (and a heart attack) by staging a fake fire. (Those last two actions happened within days of each other, by the way.) But the series reached a point of no return, at least as far as plausibility is concerned, when Dwight discharged a firearm in the office, temporarily deafening Andy, and still held on to his job. Great salesman or not, there’s no coming back from that.
