re: The Office: is hating Jim and Pam a popular opinion?

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That's a pretty unfair criticism of the character. Jim and Pam weren't married when Pam went to art school, and they certainly didn't have two small children.

Jim was very selfish in every decision regarding Athlead. He joined in the company after he and Pam had already discussed it and he agreed not to. He invested all of their savings when it was certainly unclear if he needed to. And he was living the bachelor life in Philly while Pam was at home working a full time job and raising two children.

But yeah, Pam was the selfish bitch in that scenario.

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Pam gets hate for a lot more than just Athlead.

She turned into a different person at work, and became pretty cynical about most things and people. And she also acted a lot more selfishly, including creating a job for herself to not have to do "real" work (a.k.a. be a salesman).

And that doesn't even take into account her little emotional affair with the mic guy.


I don't hate Pam, but I do think she was a pretty selfish person throughout the series, and only got worse as the show progressed.

However, I am in the camp that them getting married (which was a fantastic double-episode, btw) wasn't the downfall of the show. I just think that any show can get sort of stale after a while, and especially with comedy shows, eventually the characters become caricatures of themselves. That happened on The Office. But it was a solid show from start to finish (I enjoyed the lag in S8, even though it was noticeably down). And S9 was really solid. I always tell people, when they say they ducked out before S9, that they missed some solid television.



ETA: Oh, and put me firmly in the "Nellie fricking sucks" camp. She's easily the worst thing about the entire run of the show. She was literally awful in every scene. No entertainment value.

Also: Office underdog/underrated character: Gabe