Although Steve Carell’s Michael Scott was also a habitual liar, as were Dwight and Andy Bernard.
ittedly, all of these characters lied for different reasons. Dwight was attempting to gain control over his co-workers through deception. Michael desperately wanted to seem cool and Andy was often likewise trying to impress someone when he exaggerated his achievements, whereas Creed was usually trying to evade the law. However, Jim isn’t the first character who comes to mind when viewers think of The Office’s dishonest inhabitants. Despite this, there is definitive evidence that Jim’s backstory was a lie, and it impacts ’s Jim and Pam love story.
Jim’s Timeline In The Office Makes No Sense
Jim’s Story Changed Throughout The Sitcom’s Nine Seasons
Jim’s timeline doesn’t make sense in The Office thanks to the show’s lax attitude toward continuity. The eagle-eyed Reddit “thesegoupto11” noted that Jim appears to have been working at Dunder Mifflin for some time by the time the show begins, as he is already accustomed to Michael’s antics and jaded by the constant chaos of the eponymous workspace. However, The Office fails to clarify whether Jim went straight from graduating from high school to working at Dunder Mifflin, or if he attended college beforehand.
Jim mentions that he put the song “Mambo Number 5” on a mixtape in junior high, meaning he graduated from high school somewhere between 2003 and 2005.
Jim is almost certainly a college graduate, but he and Dwight seem to be in their late teens in a photo from their early days at Dunder Mifflin. Meanwhile, the question of whether Jim ed the company before or after Pam complicates things further. Although The Office’s Andy doesn’t appear until season 4, Jim and Pam both work in the titular building before the pilot. In season 1, episode 6, “Hot Girl,” Jim mentions that he put the song “Mambo Number 5” on a mixtape in junior high, meaning he graduated from high school somewhere between 2003 and 2005.
Was It Pam Or Jim Who ed Dunder Mifflin First?
Jim Might Predate Pam Depending On The Office Episode
Since Jim looks like a late teen in his photo with Dwight, viewers can reasonably assume Jim started working at Dunder Mifflin straight out of high school. However, this is complicated by Jim mentioning that a college friend worked with him on Athlead later in the series, meaning he must have attended college. It might seem easier to work out when Pam ed the company, but her backstory soon proves equally complex. In season 5, episode 28, “Company Picnic,” Pam mentions that she played volleyball in college.
This Office Scene From After Michael Left Was So Good, It Made Steve Carell’s Exit Worth It
This job interview scene from The Office season 7 is one of the funniest scenes in the show after the departure of Steve Carell's Michael Scott.
As such, viewers know that Jim and Pam both went to college, even though both of their ages imply they went straight from high school to working for Dunder Mifflin. The Office reboot is unlikely to address this, considering the sitcom reboot doesn’t plan to bring the original heroes back for the new show. However, this unfortunately means that the show’s heroes are caught in a strange canonical purgatory, where their actual backstory is impossible to discern from the contradictory, incomplete information provided in the series.
Jim’s Confusing Story In The Office Is A Result Of Continuity Errors
The Office Didn’t Keep Jim’s Story Straight Over The Years
The real reason that Jim’s story doesn’t add up is that The Office didn’t plan his story out before the series began. Jim’s inconsistent backstory is rooted in continuity errors, with The Office failing to land on a specific origin story for him and stick to it. Depending on the episode, the joke, and the storyline, Jim might have attended junior high in 1999 to facilitate a reference to a pop song or attended college before working at Dunder Mifflin to explain where his new business partner came from.
The Office could have tried a little harder to keep things consistent throughout its nine seasons.
While The Office’s disastrous season 9 proves that the show’s lack of planning sometimes came back to bite the series, the show’s approach generally aligns with an earlier show’s successful strategy. The Simpsons producer Matt Selman said in a post on X that the long-running series had “Elastic canon” that changed depending on the episode and scene to facilitate plot points and gags. ittedly, The Simpsons had more creative freedom to take this risky approach since the show was animated, rather than a live-action sitcom.
The Office Should Have At Least Tried To Retcon Jim’s Story Into Making Sense
The Office Had Plenty of Time To Clarify Jim’s Story
However, it is worth noting that The Simpsons writer Greg Daniels was a major creative force behind The Office, so he may have carried this approach across to the workplace mockumentary sitcom. Daniels wrote iconic episodes of The Simpsons like “Bart Sells His Soul,” so he knew better than anyone else that a sitcom didn’t necessarily need entirely coherent canon to be emotionally affecting. That said, The Office could have tried a little harder to keep things consistent throughout its nine seasons.
Jim and Pam’s romance and their eventual shared dissatisfaction with working at Dunder Mifflin rely pretty heavily on their origins. Clarifying whether Jim and Pam went to college before working in Dunder Mifflin would have improved their character arcs as this could have given viewers a clearer picture of what brought them to the company. If Jim was working at Dunder Mifflin because he had just finished college and wanted a low-effort, low-stakes job to occupy his time, this would have been a very different motivation from him working there straight out of school and hoping to eventually attend college.
Both Jim and Pam’s backstories could have informed their character choices, making the show’s character writing stronger.
Similarly, Pam’s The Office storyline hinged on her feeling trapped in a relationship with Roy and, later, feeling similarly trapped in her receptionist role in the titular workplace. If viewers knew when she attended college and why she chose to work at Dunder Mifflin afterward, it might have been easier to see how she ended up feeling trapped by her life circumstances. Both Jim and Pam’s backstories could have informed their character choices, making the show’s character writing stronger. Sadly, The Office’s inconsistent canon made this impossible as the sitcom failed to clarify the origins of its main characters.
Source: Reddit
The Office
- Release Date
- 2005 - 2013-00-00
- Network
- NBC
- Showrunner
- Greg Daniels
Cast
Michael Scott
Dwight Schrute
WHERE TO WATCH
- Directors
- Greg Daniels, Paul Lieberstein, Paul Feig, Randall Einhorn, Ken Kwapis
- Writers
- Ricky Gervais, Greg Daniels, B.J. Novak
- Franchise(s)
- The Office
- Creator(s)
- Greg Daniels
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