The Office (UK) "Episode 1" (2002)

Taking place two weeks after the season one finale, the new season kicks off with the merger between the Slough and Swindon branches which has David in "entertainment" mode more than ever as he has a whole new group of people to win over. He also has a new boss, Neil Godwin (Patrick Baladi), who received the promotion after David was made ineligible due to his high blood pressure. He immediately begins a rivalry with Neil, who is a much better people person and has the respect and favor of all the new employees from Swindon. His opening speech to the troops even has the Slough employees laughing with his poking fun at both Slough and David. Of course, David feels the need to top this well received welcome as his speech consists mainly of more and more jokes which continue to fall flat, the next more so than the previous one. In the episode more than any previous one David has become someone you just wish would keep his mouth shut. He constantly drives his employees away with his inappropriate remarks and that only fuels him to try harder.

Jennifer, who tolerated David a lot better last season, is very aggressive with him here as he has a complaint made against him for telling a racist joke by two of the new Swindon employees. I'm a little worried for him as Neil already does not think too highly of him and I'm wondering how necessary his job is. Jennifer oversaw the two branches which David and Neal were the managers of and now there's just one branch managed by David with Neil as his direct supervisor. Essentially there are two managers and I'm sure if the company is in troubled times and looking to let people go that redundant high salary jobs like that would be the first on the list to cut.

Regarding management, Tim is taking his role as senior sales rep very seriously, so much so that he seems to be driving Dawn away whether intentionally or not. He's thrown himself into his work, most likely to make up for his lack of a personal life and this may be the silent decision he made in the season one finale. Gareth does not believe that Tim outranks him, but Tim is adamant that his position is real while Gareth's Team Lead title is purely honorary.

"'Team leader' doesn't mean anything, mate. . . . It's a title someone's given you to get you to do things they don't want to do for free."

This show continues to scare me with how close to real life it is. I was up until recently a Team Lead at the office I worked at. I stepped down over a salary raise I was promised and after four months of being postponed I had enough. Trouble was I had already done all the hard work and the team is better able to function without a leader now than it would have been before I was promoted. So I essentially had to do the work no one else wanted and I ended up doing it for free. I had to pause the episode after this scene as it hit a little too close to home.

On the Tim/Dawn front, it looks like she is still very much engaged to Lee while Tim has a interest in a new employee, Rachel (Stacey Roca) who Gareth also wants to pursue. Tim seems to want to expand his horizons as I'm sure he realizes pining after Dawn is not going to make him feel any less lonely. He also seems antagonistic to Dawn, telling her she's spending too much time away from reception and when she asks if he would like to wind up Gareth since she's very bored, he tells her they're both very busy as she should be as well. Ouch. I wonder if Tim even has authority over Dawn, seeing as how he's senior sales rep. I would assume that gives him authority over the sales team but I could be wrong. Hopefully, Tim can make peace with Dawn as he seems to do at the end and also find some happiness in his own life. He still holds a candle for her however as Lee is not happy to find out about when he sees them dancing in the office.

Favorite moment: After spending the entire episode getting on Dawn's case he starts to realize that he hasn't been real friendly to the person in the office he's closest to. His bit about her and him ignoring their duty to wind up Gareth and having a twenty minute window of opportunity is a sweet moment. It was funny to see them go into the conference room and only hear off-screen the start of the wind up ending with Dawn's laugh. As we see though Tim had good reason to keep his distance as he can't just be friends with Dawn as his feelings will continually come back to haunt him.