A lot of series overstay their welcome in my mind. Many series seem to be interested in extending the life of their show rather than having any real story and many good series have been ruined because of this. I use LOST as an example of this because after about season 3 that show was just off the rails and was completely absurd. A wonderful story was destroyed by the producers getting greedy and extending it season after season and I hope it was beneficial to the actors that were involved in it, because almost none of those people went on to do anything particularly noteworthy afterwards.
With "The Office" though, I feel as though this show could have continued for quite a while after their 9 seasons and even though the viewership was waning, they were still pulling in around 5 million viewers per episode which is more than enough for the to justify continuing the show.
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So I am going to dive into why the show stopped with both official reasons and my own personal opinion. We'll see if you agree.
Steve Carell's contract wasn't renewed
I don't know the details about it but I suspect that Carell wanted more money and NBC wasn't willing to pay it. His departure from the show was clearly not a surprise to the cast and crew because his departure was rather brilliantly written into the story about how he was moving to Colorado to be with his wife. It was an amazing way for him to leave the show but his presence was pretty essential to the overall rhythm of the show and it just wasn't really the same without him.
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Michael's need to be the center of attention put an intense amount of cringe factor into the show and this was a ton of fun. I know that I experienced times of genuine unease with some of the things that Michael Scott would say and do and that takes some pretty powerful acting and writing.
NBC tried to fill Carell's shoes with a bunch of different people but none of them really seemed right. Even Will Ferrell couldn't fill the spot and that was a surprise to me because I was excited when he turned up in the cast. Simply put, Michael was irreplaceable and season 8, the first season without Scott, was by far the lowest rated of all 9 series and the show must have been put on notice that the end was nigh from that point forward.
Key people involved wanted to go out on their own terms
This is something that actually made me happy because once again, LOST was basically forced to carry on until the network cancelled it and the network cancelled it because the fans were fed up with poor writing and the lack of continuity. Honestly, does anyone actually know how LOST ended?
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Jim, Dwight, and Pam were the main characters in the story after Michael moved to Colorado, and they got together with the show's creators and discussed wanting to tie up the story the way that they wanted to, rather than being told by studio executives that they have to quickly end things for financial reasons. John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer, and Rainn Wilson were also interested in striking while the iron was hot to pursue other career ventures and I feel as though this is a lot easier to do if the show you became famous for goes out on a high note rather than fizzling into obscurity the way so many other series have done. What sort of work is LOST's Matthew Fox doing right now? I bet you don't know whereas Krazinski just keeps getting bigger and better roles.
I think this was a wise move on all of their parts because the show ends very well.
10 years is kind of the norm with series
Unless it is a daytime soap opera that only your grandma watches, it is quite normal for series to not go over 10 years. Even some of the most famous series didn't go on for that long and there are ones such as Seinfeld, Friends, and The Big Bang Theory that likely could have carried on for much longer but the cast, directors, and writers agreed that it was best to wrap things up. Again, this is much better than fading into obscurity and running out of ideas until your audience eventually jumps ship on you.
Streaming put a massive hit on network shows
This was true for everyone as well as The Office. With streaming taking over everyone's lives the idea of a TV show that came out with a new episode every week was a dying concept. People were much more likely to binge watch an entire series than they were to wait week by week for a new episode, and even though we are sort of returning to weekly releases as a strategy with streaming services aiming at retaining audiences, the idea of having all episodes available immediately was all the rage at the time in 2012. I think the people behind The Office were very aware of the fact that network TV was going to fail at trying to keep up and it was wise of them, or perhaps just very lucky of them, to have the opportunity to bow out when they did.
Various speculation on my part
I would imagine that like a lot of shows, the cast members were demanding higher salaries as the seasons went on. Carell was making more than most on the show with his starting salary being $87,000 per episode but by the time he left that had jumped to $300,000 per episode. Rainn Wilson (Dwight) was making $20,000 at the start and $100,000 per episode at the end. It is safe to imagine that other characters saw similar increases in pay as well. Considering there are over 20 episodes for most seasons, this is a really large payroll. With the decline in viewership combined with higher salaries, perhaps that people involved in the show realized that they needed to wrap things up or face having their fees reduced.
I also think that major actors in the show were interested in doing other things such as movies and if they wanted to do this, it was going to be very complicated to juggle that along with also being in The Office. Being in a film is far more time-consuming than filming a mockumentary like The Office so in order to tackle this they were going to need to free up some time. Rainn Wilson probably had fewer opportunities since his character of Dwight has sort of put him in a box where he will not be taken seriously as anything else. John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer likely had quite a few more offers than Rainn but hell, they made so much money off this one show that if they don't actually want to do anything else, the don't have to. They are still making money off of streaming services that show The Office every year and will likely continue to do so for the rest of their lives.
So there you have it folks. That is my list of reasons why a great show like The Office ended up going off the air despite the fact that it was still successful. I know that I was disappointed when I made it to the true final episode, but I would have rather had it end that way than to have it continue forever to the point where nobody even cares about it anymore.
The Office remains one of my favorite sitcoms of all time. You can watch it on a wide variety of streaming services but only Peacock has all 9 seasons.