From the Dundies to the dinner party house tour to Jim and Pam’s first kiss, a totally subjective and absolutely definitive ranking of the show’s most hilarious and heartfelt highlights
Twenty years ago this week, The Office premiered on NBC. The network was in a mild state of panic at the time. Friends and Frasier had both recently ended, Matt LeBlanc’s Friends spinoff Joey was flailing in the ratings and costing them a fortune, and ER was long past its prime. While the original U.K. version of The Office, an acerbic cringe comedy starring Ricky Gervais, had been a cult favorite, few people thought a U.S. adaptation — centered on the mundane lives of employees at a struggling paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania — would do much to turn around the network’s fortunes, especially since the most famous face on the show was a former Daily Show…
