Will Film Stars Like Jim Carrey and Will Ferrell Boost The Office Ratings?
Last year when Steve Carell announced that he would be leaving The Office, NBC was not sure how to replace the actor, who had gone on to develop a successful film career for himself. Would they promote from within Dunder Mifflin or hire an outsider with as much star power as Carell? In a surprise move, NBC overshot expectations by recruiting two of the biggest box office stars (comically speaking) to Scranton: Will Ferrell and Jim Carrey. Can these comedians boost ratings for the series, which in its seventh season, is slumping number-wise?
If you're a fan of the The Office, you might recall that NBC found great success with the A-list actor stunt once before in its fifth season, when during the Super Bowl lead-out episode, Jack Black, Jessica Alba and Cloris Leachman (she'll always be A-list at Movieline) guest-starred as actors in a movie that Andy, Pam and Jim pirated. Thanks to the prime time slot and special guest-stars, The Office hosted its largest audience ever at over 22 million viewers.
Hoping to replicate (at least part of) that ratings boost, The Office brought Will Ferrell on last week for a four-episode arc as Deangelo Vickers, the paper company's temporary manager. As hilarious as he was, and as big of a draw Ferrell's name was for the network, the episode "Training Day" was only the third highest-rated of the season and was watched by over a million less people than last season's "Niagara" episode which featured Jim and Pam's long-awaited wedding. (It failed to attract 8 million audience members which the series has regularly done in seasons past.) This proves that either: 1) Loyal Office fans don't care about big names; 2) Will Ferrell's debut was not promoted enough or 3) Nothing can boost the series' ratings during its seventh-season stretch.
Either way, fans will get another chance to tune in for an A-list turnout on May 19 for the season finale in which Jim Carrey (JIM CARREY!), Ricky Gervais, Will Arnett, James Spader, Ray Romano and Catherine Tate all compete for Steve Carell's office manager position. Do you think that any combination of A-listers could boost a seventh season series at this point? Weigh in in the comment section below.
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Comments
I think people are missing the bigger picture here. There are two main things that are hurting the ratings for The Office at this stage.
The first being that The Office has been sliding away from the original roots ever since the "writer's strike" that occurred back in the fourth season. The entire "feel" of the show changed dramatically at that point and to make matters worse, the characters started to go through serious personality changes that completely altered the show. I won't go into the details, but anyone who has been watching the show from season one doesn't need to be told that Dwight went from being completely submissive and loyal to Michael to being incredibly cocky and insulting to Michael in the sixth season (yes, I know this article is about the seventh season; this is just an example). Things like this have been ruining the dynamic that drew people in to begin with. "If it aint broke don't fix it."
The second main problem with The Office ratings is that more and more people are moving away from cable television, which is costly, requires you to schedule your life around a TV program if you want to see each episode, and can not be watched in succession (setting aside, of course, things like TiVo which only add to the already high cost of entertainment) forcing you to wait an entire week for the next episode. The appealing solution many are turning to is simply waiting for the current season to come out on Netflix, or even websites like Hulu, and watching a few episodes at a time, in HD, whatever day or time of the week (or every day) and scheduling their time watch shows around their life, instead of their life around their time watching shows. Brilliant, and the way it ought to be.
End rant.
Considering the lead in the Office gets from whicheve new horrible show is on at 8:30pm then the numbers are not too bad. It is the higest rated sitcom and 18:49 show outside Sunday Night Football.
Now, it doesn't matter if they get 15 million viewers with all these casting stunts, the big question is what will happen come September when Steve Carell is not the boss anymore.
Being a huge office fan, I was curios what they would do when steve left. When I saw will ferrell on the screen in the opening of the episode, I was hoping it was going to be like when he met david brent that day. A short interchange between them and that's it. When I heard he was going to possibly be the new manager, I watched a little bit more, then turned it to something else. Boo will ferrell
I am hoping the Office continues to do well. I would rather the show end then it turn into something like SCRUBs final season though...
I agree with Gary, I really hope 'The Office' doesn't turn out like the last season of Scubs. Such a sad ending to a great series. Also, I really hope they can get that magic we all fell in love with from the seasons prior to season seven. I mean, season seven isn't bad, it's just...not the same. It still provided some laughs (the Christmas episode with the Jim-Dwight snowball fight--great stuff), but the feel from before--I have faith that it's not too late.