As much as I liked S9, the faux pilot episode for Dwight's spinoff "The Farm" show was pretty horrible, I can admit that. But overall, S9 was solid IMO.

Ryan and Kelly being gone actually made the show better IMO...at least Kelly. I did like Ryan's presence throughout the show though.

The sound guy storyline was stupid, but I get why they did that. The show lived on Jim and Pam for the most part. It was always the main underlying story in the first half of the show, and it's also what got (IMO) women watching the show. So they dabbled with it a bit and tried to give it a little drama, so that they could then come back full circle (like with Jim and the DVD) and make everything sort of "happily ever after" for them. As much as I don't like the whole sound guy angle, I get it and they wrapped up Jim and Pam's bullshite pretty well...and even had Pam on board with Athleap in the end (like she should've been anyway). Pam's character made a nice comeback near the end of the show's run. I think the writers knew how much she grated on people at that point and even had her comment within the show about how much she sucked. So for her to finally come around was a nice ending for them.

Also, Michael was only in the finale for a few minutes/scenes because it wasn't his show anymore. He already had his finale, and it was a two-parter anyway. So him being in the actual finale was nice, and the time that he was in it was perfect IMO...it was a chance to catch up with him and see that things turned out GREAT for him, but it still took a back seat to the show itself and let the finale be about the show and all of the characters instead of about Michael.