THE OFFICE: THE COMPLETE SECOND SERIES DIRECTED BY RICKY GERVAIS AND ...

THE COMPLETE SECOND SERIES DIRECTED BY RICKY GERVAIS AND STEPHEN MERCHANT BBC VIDEO

IT'S HARD NOT to be of two minds about Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's decision to stop production of The Office after a mere two seasons of six shows each. On the one hand, there's pleasure in knowing the 12 half-hour episodes (and one Christmas special) will forever constitute a tight, complete, near-perfect work of art, without any sag, burnout or repetition allowed to set in. On the other hand, nothing funnier will appear on a screen (big or small, UK or U.S.) anytime soon, and the show was burning bright right up to the final cut to credits. Few would complain if The Office became a British Simpsons, with dips and renewals. But as Gervais told the Onion last week, the Simpsons has 20 writers to The Office's two, and those two are determined to move on. Whatever their next project, Gervais and Merchant are unlikely to come up with a concept as good or a cast as memorable and pitch-perfect as that which played David, Tim, Dawn and Gareth.

More so than the first, the second season of The Office holds up as a three-hour film. The episodes bleed into each other like morning turning to afternoon, with a well-paced double plotline driving the shadows. The Swindon and Slough branches of Wernham Hogg paper company have merged, bringing new characters and a new office power arrangement that inevitably results in David Brent's (Gervais) forced "redundancy." In the run-up to his firing, Brent's puppylike attempts to prove his own coolness and popularity against Neil, the widely and genuinely liked new office manager, grow increasingly pathetic, until finally Brent's asshole traits melt into a puddle of pathos. The show's major subplot, the suppressed romance between Tim and Dawn, also reaches a predictable culmination, but not without first raising their tortured, workplace minuet a dramatic notch; the result is a bittersweet love story that would be a mini-triumph even if it weren't embedded in a milk-spurting-out-of-your-nose comedy.

Most of the milk is spurted care of the tie-fiddling Brent, whose social ineptitude around his new employees, especially the black and handicapped ones, provides the series' best fodder. Another rich vein is opened when Brent is hired by a third-rate management night school to lecture on motivating employees. In a scene belonging in the entrance to the BBC hall of fame, Brent closes his first haltering, cliche-ridden talk by blasting Tina Turner's "Simply the Best" and running out of the room.

Like the first DVD, the second includes 40 minutes of strong outtakes that would have made a fine 13th episode.