One of the few things I’ve seen that has peaked my interest on the TV front is the news (long-rumored, but seemingly now confirmed) that Steve Carrell will be leaving The Office after his contract runs out at the end of this upcoming season. It’s hard to blame him. He’s been doing that character extraordinarily well for a very long time, and brought far more new to Michael Scott than I would have thought possible at the show’s opening. But the show has seemed to lack inspiration this last season, especially after Pam and Jim’s wedding, and is obviously in need of either retirement or an overhaul. I’d prefer retirement, and keep my fingers crossed that the resulting hole in NBC’s Thursday night schedule wouldn’t lead to a ratings collapse that would sink Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock. The ratings plummet seems to be highly likely, though, so my guess is that The Office will be headed for a makeover rather than a finale.

Some shows survive when the cast starts being swapped out. Law and Order, is the classic example, but even shows as disparate as Cheers, ER, and Friday Night Lights have been reasonably successful at moving from one main cast to another. It’s a flip side to the problem of television longevity that we don’t talk about as much, because so few shows make it long enough to encounter this obstacle. Generally, it has better odds of succeeding on shows like Law and Order or ER, where the procedural or the soap opera formats provide enough regular, repetitive plot structure that characters become at least somewhat replaceable. The Office’s problem is that its plots have always been mere excuses to showcase the Dunder Mifflin nutjobs, and are actually painfully boring without the additional twist of Michael, Jim, Dwight or Andy Bernard to screw things up. It’s sensitivity training day. We sell printers now. It’s Angela’s birthday. Michael wants a girlfriend. Replacing Michael Scott not only upsets the character make-up of the show, it endangers everything that has made the show work.

I don’t think it’s impossible, and despite my reservations, I think The Office with a new manager of the Scranton branch could be really great. It just seems really, really unlikely for that to be so. Plus, I worry that the final result will be eight season of the Steve Carrell The Office, followed by one tragic final season starring David Caruso. It’s just going to look so unfortunate in your The Office: The Complete Series box set, don’t you think?

I also have some problems with the way Dwight came off, and it’s an issue that rests on how plausible his character can actually be. The Office is at its best when its characters are bizarre and ridiculous just up to the point of believability, but as soon as they become too crazy to be real, the show loses all the awkwardness that makes it work so well. Michael and Meredith and Andy are all pretty good at playing with that line without crossing it, but Dwight is the most consistent offender, and this episode was an interesting showcase for watching him move from one side to the other. For the first half, Dwight was absurd in a way that’s consistent with his character. Of course he’d try to do something stupid in order to increase his sales, and of course Angela would be willing (and find it reasonable) to write up an elaborate contract on child-bearing. And escorting Pam and Jim to this hospital was a brilliant little moment for him, where he got to talk about the time he started an escorting service, he got to pause to tell Michael about that time he saw a deer, and best of all, the cop who pulls him over for impersonating a police officer yells “Don’t make this difficult, Dwight!” on the bullhorn.

Things take a turn for the worse, though, as soon as Dwight breaks into Pam and Jim’s house. Even for Dwight, the idea that he would completely destroy and then re-install their entire kitchen is beyond reasonable. Dwight is a guy who talks about doing crazy things, but whenever he tries them, they go awry. See: trying to pull a coup on Michael, leading Ryan out into the beetfields to frighten him, his relationship with Angela, etc., etc., etc. His character is built on the ludicrous plan (for example, the baby contract with Angela) that gets foiled. So watching him actually taking a sledgehammer to the kitchen is silly, but then watching him actually re-install all of their cabinets makes the whole thing preposterous.

Dwight’s outrageous behavior is not going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for The Office, but I do hope this season starts heading in a more focused direction. I have been relying on this show to demonstrate a new way of building characters and relationships, and in its six seasons, it’s been so good about punching through the will-they-won’t-they wall, playing with and then overcoming all sorts of classic jump-the-shark situations. I’ve been confident that the baby will be another one of those interesting obstacles that it figures out how to hurdle, but it will require creative work for everyone in the office, Dwight included. The show needs some strong, long-term stories for Michael and others in the office, it needs some outside pressure that hangs around for awhile rather than just dissipating (which Sabre certainly has), and it probably needs to find something other than just adorable missteps for Andy and Erin. I know that The Office can do all these things. I’m holding out hope that it will.

The episode was an hour-long special, and although I’ve never found The Office as funny or well-edited when it’s over half an hour, the momentousness of the occasion did seem to warrant some additional attention. Without the full hour, there may not have been time for Meredith to wonder about appropriate gift return policy, or Kevin to encounter difficulty while picking up his shoes. Some moments did feel fluffier than others, and it was obvious that the entire Meemaw set-up was just an excuse to get Michael to speak at the rehearsal dinner, but by the time major wedding events began taking place, the pace felt appropriate and familiarly snappy.

I love Pam and Jim, have been excited about their relationship for years, and found the wedding deeply satisfying as a narrative ending. NBC even marketed the episode as a conclusion, with slo-mo shots of Pam and Jim looking at each other and title cards that read something like “time for the happy ending.” It makes a great deal of sense – the traditional definition of a comedy is that it ends in a wedding, and if this were an Elizabethan play (The Office; or, Michael Scott the Trickst’r), Michael would give a wry speech at the end and everyone would pair up (Dwight and Angela, Andy and Erin) and dance the night away. But obviously, this is not the end of The Office, and we will return to Dunder Mifflin next week to deal with the repercussions of Michael sleeping with Pam’s mom and probably make some great honeymoon “that’s what she said” jokes.

This is essentially a more specific iteration of my previous comments about why this show is so great, but it’s definitely worth expressing once again. The Office is so great, and it’s partly because it can achieve the emotional high and closure of a wedding and then come back to work the next week. Pam and Jim just got married, but their lives will go on, still happy and funny despite their resolved sexual tension. Shockingly, we might continue to find humor and pleasure out of following their life together, newlyweds with a newborn, and consider this character development rather than jumping the shark. This is a model for what traditional sitcoms could be. Sit up and take notice, How I Met Your Mother.

For a show that started as an intensely derivative reworking of a British show, The Office has managed to move so far out of the initial emotional and situational territory that it has far and away surpassed its original. As the head manager of the Dunder Mifflin Scranton branch, Michael Scott has developed from an unthinking, heartless buffoon into something much more complex and interesting. It’s not that he’s unthinking, we now realize, he’s childlike and eager to be liked but lacking in any rudimentary understanding of tact or social norms. Michael Scott’s childishness is also an emotional state, leading him to feel jealousy and love with equal intensity and making him incapable of dealing with either. He is also an excellent salesman, an ambitious but well-meaning boss, and occasionally a selfish bastard.

The many faces of Michael Scott

This is why television that lives for a long time can be a really amazing thing – there is no way that Michael Scott could be what he fully is today in just twelve half-hour episodes. Most of the credit for his development goes to the show’s willingness to change. Unlike so many other sitcoms or even hour-long dramas (I turn once again to you, Grey’s Anatomy), The Office has never been afraid to change. Things actually happen on The Office – Jim moved to the Stamford branch, Pam and Roy split, Michael left to create his own paper company, Michael fell in love with Holly and then had to break up with her when she was transferred. Perhaps most admirably, the writers completely refuse to limit the show to boring unresolved Pam and Jim tension and are fully able to write a funny, tense show with their two main love interests in a happy, committed relationship. Sure, like most shows, the situational status quo usually returns. Main characters who leave will come back. Mergers and takeovers happen, but end up reinstating the norm. The show has to come back to the standard arrangement, because it’s The Office, and we want to see all of our favorite characters working together. When characters come back from wherever they went, though, or they break up with each other, or get back together, they also come back as different, more interesting people. That’s how you start with one-note jerk Michael Scott and slowly arrive at the far more complicated Michael Scott of today.

Jim and Pam, defying sitcom standards

It would be unfair to finish off this paean to The Office without mentioning the rest of the cast. After all, it is an office full of people, and each character is fully formed, and funny, and capable of carrying entire plots and subplots by themselves. I loved Phyllis’s wedding to Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration. I loved Kelly’s relationship with Ron from the loading dock. And maybe I love Andy Bernard most of all. (Any episode where he sings or deals at all with his college acapella group Here Comes Treble is an instant classic for me.)

Your heads may be turned by the shiny new programs, the sexy vampires and sexy doctors and sexy lawyers, the biggest losers and real housewives and people who think they can dance. You may be distracted for a while, but every week, The Office gives us another example of How To Make Good Television. We could do a lot worse than to pay some attention.

Glee – It could be amazing, or it could crash and burn. FOX made the decision to air a pilot episode last spring, and I was encouraged by its unlikely combination of irreverence and snarky enthusiasm. I also have a particular weakness for catchy song and dance numbers, so this show has the potential to be a personal critical kryptonite. (Case in point: I watched the pilot and thought to myself, “now, how are they possibly going to maintain that tone over an entire season? And the lead guy is really not that great an actor. Also, how silly does the teacher look in this teaser?” And then I watched the final “Don’t Stop Believin’” scene like twenty times, and then downloaded “Don’t Stop Believin’” for Rock Band. Twenty one, I just watched it again on hulu.)

They just look so happy when they sing... I am a sucker.

The Office and 30 Rock – I am perpetually encouraged by The Office’s ability to develop Michael Scott’s character in a way that makes me feel so deliciously ambiguous toward him. He does something completely awful, and you hate him. Then you remember he’s essentially a six-year-old trapped in a grown man’s body, and you’re full of pity. Then suddenly he’s actually a skilled salesman, and you’re impressed. A lot of that is Steve Carrell, of course, but The Office also refuses to fall victim to the general long-lived sitcom trends. Instead of allowing Michael Scott to become a further caricature of himself, he got more complicated and sympathic. Rather than continue to play will-they-won’t-they with Pam and Jim, the writers decided they could still be funny with Jam in a stable, long-term relationship. It’s really impressive, and gives me hope for this season. As for 30 Rock, whenever Liz Lemon says something about Star Wars, I melt. The end.

Dollhouse – Shockingly, this show didn’t get cancelled, and the unaired thirteenth episode they made (starring The Guild’s Felicia Day) was truly ballsy. I am trying to have faith that Joss Whedon will make the most of this adrenaline-fueled, brush-with-death, near-cancellation experience and push Dollhouse beyond the weirdly uncomfortable and well into mind-twistingly disturbing territory.

Private Practice – Hahaha, not really. But last season ended with the practice’s pregnant psychiatrist splayed on the floor of her living room while her psychotic patient tries to cut the baby out in order to steal it for herself. C’mon, tell me you don’t want to see how that ends.

Tim Riggins

Friday Night Lights – I am happy to sing the praises of this show in any place someone might possibly hear me. The new season will only be available on DirecTV until NBC airs it in 2010, but as long as somehow this show continues to exist, I’m tickled pink. Friday Night Lights is up there with Mad Men as most visually appealing television ever produced, and I’m not just talking about Tim Riggins over there. Nothing about me makes it likely that I will find a show about Texas football attractive, but the treatment of landscape alone makes me want to pause the show and just stare. On top of that, Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton create one of the best fictional portrayals of a marriage I’ve ever seen, the writing is smart and emotionally sincere, and as long as we all pretend that crazy murder plot never happened in season two, Friday Night Lights has been consistently excellent.

This show makes Texas look so good

There are more shows to talk about and preview, but for now, let’s all take a moment to celebrate a time in the near future when Secret Life of the American Teenager is no longer the most notable new thing on television.