How should I wear my problem hair, my dirty, no-good problem hair?

[pellnell]

I should really be working on either my second Wendy and Lucy essay or procrastinating with my ficmix (Post-Basterds, set in Boston fo sho), but this popped into my head during work today, fueled by knightseri being totally annoyed by my fangirling over Ryan Howard's hipster glasses last night, and would not leave me alone. Pretty much structured like my

Comments

[glenvorian]

Ryan has really bad self-esteem issues. I sympathize with him a lot in that regard.

It's nice people are thinking about his character, though. Everyone just calls him a 'douche" and ignore him.

[pellnell]

I definitely want to call him a "douche" pretty often, but I still sympathize with him enough that I want to understand his behavior.

[author_by_night]

I enjoyed this. I think you've made a lot of good points.

Ryan's also possibly the guy who was always sort of unsure as to what he wanted to do. A friend of mine has an ex boyfriend like that - he wanted to be a fireman, then a chef, then a lawyer, and just about everything else. Ryan's done this a little bit with his career, but I think he's mostly expressed it through his personality.

But he's also not the only character who seems to have changed, and I wonder how much they just get so sick of Michael, they finally snap. Phyllis went from actually being a nice enough person to, well, the office passive aggressive. Even Kelly was quiet at first, and even wore very conservative clothing, not unlike Pam and Angela. Somewhere along the lines she went from a quiet, down to earth character to the ditz.

[glenvorian]

Angela is starting to be her old self a bit?

[author_by_night]

I don't know that Angela changed - the love triangle did seem a bit OOC, but I guess it's not so drastic to me because I actually did know someone IRL like Angela - very religious, dressed in long sleeved shirts and the like when it was 90 degrees out, and not the most pleasant person. Despite being so "holier than thou", she ended up cheating on her husband with another man. I think both she and Angela needed to do something naughty - unfortunately it wasn't exactly morally sound. (It is my opinion that you never cheat. Ever.)

Which is odd, because I usually hate it when the nice girls get into love triangles*, but Angela's not a nice girl. Despite being very religious, she's also always been catty (heh) and mean. She just took it to another level.

* Ones like Angela's anyway.

[glenvorian]

I'm a bit irritated at Stanley's storyline. I can't believe the writers decided to do the cheating thing twice.

[spittingfish]

What gets to me is I don't think that the writers... give a crap, to be honest. Ryan has just become another throw away joke like Jan.

[pellnell]

Yeah, that's what makes me sad. I think B. J. Novak has always maintained this "could-care-less" attitude about his character on-screen.

[bridgetmoon]

I like your analysis! I've been thinking along the same lines a bit.

He needs to believe that he's a soul no one gets because it staves off the notion of himself as a typical person.

That need to be exceptional is pretty key, I think. Deep down he suspects that he's worthless and counters that by trying to prove that he's special.

People compare Jim to Michael a lot, but in this fundamental way it's Ryan who is more like Michael than he would care to admit. They both have a narcissistic wound at the core, but Ryan is smarter and more subtle than Michael and hid it better in the first two seasons behind realistic sounding goals - he had a five year plan, temping at the office was just a whistle stop on the way to success, etc. You only saw the underlying woundedness in his understated pained reactions to anything that smacked of failure or embarrassment, and in his desire to keep the upper hand with Kelly.

Then his quick rise and fall basically ripped the scab off the wound, so to speak.

[pellnell]

Yes, exactly! That's really fascinating though, to think that he's really so much like Michael. I guess then there's the question of why Michael loves Ryan-- because, as with Andy, he did see himself in Ryan?

[bridgetmoon]

Yes, I think they both cling to an image of themselves as cool guys, but whereas Michael initially bought into Ryan's coolness, Ryan could never buy Michael's and thus had no use for him at first. But there's something else going on there, since if Michael only liked Ryan as a narcissistic reflection, once he was branded a failure he wouldn't want him around any more - like when Andy started to break down in TS/TR, and Michael was repulsed by him.

[pellnell]

I think Ryan also represents all of Michael's own hopes and dreams for how his life would turn out, and, on some level, he can't stop believing in Ryan as a person because that would mean he stopped believing in himself. Michael obviously still has his aspirations, as in the latest episode, and wants to accomplish things, and I think he believes Ryan can do that too, even if that's just within the office.

[miss880]

I really liked reading your analysis. Not too many people think about Ryan and why he is the way he is, which is sad because I think he is the character with the most interesting story arc

[pellnell]

I really wish Pam's feelings about her art career had been expressed more on-screen though. I understand that her art school experience sucked, but I feel like they should have explained how seemingly simplistic it was to really give up what she'd worked toward for four seasons.

Failure, as on the original series, is one of the main themes of the show. The characters seem to mainly experience setbacks, intercut with little victories. Pam's and Ryan's failures are the culmination of this theme, I think, though I still wish it was expressed better, and not just in deleted scenes.

Hopefully we'll see more of this in the next episode, which has a Ryan subplot.

Also: MSPC?

[miss880]

Pam- that's what I was saying. The writers should have gone into depth more about Pam and her art situation. But they didn't. So I don't think you can focus in on Ryan and say the writer's don't care about him, when they have failed to dig into other characters as well.

As for failure, I'm not sure if you are disagreeing with me, or just adding on...Ryan fails at everything, and I never said that it wasn't a theme of the show or shouldn't happen. It most definitely should. But Ryan gets back up and tries again, and fails again, etc. He doesn't give up trying, and the writer's will always have something to write for Ryan because of that. Right now he's trying to reinvent himself. I like that the writers are doing that, and don't think it is a fluke.

MSPC- Michael Scott Paper Company. A lot of people were wondering what the heck the writer's were going to do with Ryan once BJ Novak came back...and they found the perfect situation, realistic to Ryan's arc.

[pellnell]

Yeah, I agree. I think a lot of the characters have become more like stock sitcom characters as the series goes on.

I was agreeing with you when it comes to failure. It's an integral part of Ryan's- and the human- experience, and they've definitely created a precedent for failure among the characters. Ultimately, the show is hopeful though, and I think the writers love the characters and want to see them get the nice things they deserve, though I don't always think that's truthful to the whole concept of this being "real life." That said, there are lots of pseudo-unrealistic things that happen in the series that I love because they do feel so deserved, like Pam and Jim's happy ending in "The Wedding."

Oh, okay! I love the MSPC arc and the way it relates to Ryan as a character, his weaknesses but also his business-savvy side, and what it had to say about Michael's capacity to believe in people who have messed up, like Ryan.