The Office: are you on Team Karen or Team Pam?
by Carmen Van Kerckhove
Hehe… The Best Week Ever blog is fanning the flames of a war between The Office
Now that the midterm elections are over it’s time to start making some very serious decisions. Namely, who are you rooting for Jim from The Office to get with: Pam or Karen?
Lindsay Robertson and Claire Zulkey have chosen sides (Lindsay = Pam, Claire = Karen) and have posed arguments on each others’ blogs. They’ve even made T-shirts. We already know which one we’re ordering… Sorry Pam.
I have to say, The Office is probably one of the smartest shows on TV right now in terms of the way they handle race. All those painfully awkward moments… and I absolutely adore that ditzy Kelly, a character who would probably traditionally have been a dumb blonde, is played by the brilliant (and desi) Mindy Kaling. Take that, model minority myth!
I’m also curious to see how the race thing is going to work out with Rashida Jones’ character. Like, is she basically playing white in this role? Or will she turn out to be black and/or mixed?
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Andrew wrote:
They’ve acknowledged that Karen is mixed, from this week’s commercials. She walks into Dunder-Mifflin Scranton, and Michael’s like, “Wow, you look exotic. Was your dad a GI or something?”
Karen’s smile immediately becomes an awkward frown, and realizes what kind of boss Michael is.
I like Michael. His heart is always in the right place, it’s just that he’s a well-meaning idiot.
Especially in the last episode when he was trying to get everyone’s jobs back when Jan told him they were closing the Scranton branch.
Anyways, I don’t know what to choose. At first, when Pam rejected Jim at the casino party, I was stunned, and thought that Jim should try harder to win Pam over, especially since she didn’t go through with the wedding to Roy.
Then we meet Karen, who obviously likes Jim. Smart, hot, kind… I dunno, Karen and Jim seems pretty good right now.
I’m pretty sure what the writers will do is have Karen and Jim go out at first, and then have Pam go after Jim. Roy’ll be there in the mix too, I wonder how.
So yeah, I’m kind of a “Jaren now, Jam later” kind of guy.
Posted 15 Nov 2006 at 10:39 am ¶
Carmen Van Kerckhove wrote:
LOL! “Was your dad a GI or something?” Wow that is so spot-on. I guess I missed the preview for this week’s episode.
Posted 15 Nov 2006 at 11:19 am ¶
Sarah wrote:
Ah, I must disagree with Andrew up there – I think they’re leaning more towards saying Karen is Italian, more than she is bi-racial. Not that I’m saying it’s not possible that she is both Italian and African American… It just seems like they are portraying her character as only Italian (at least that’s how it sounded to me).
Posted 08 Dec 2006 at 7:09 pm ¶
louise wrote:
they are saying that karens character is only itallian
Posted 21 Apr 2007 at 12:33 am ¶
dustin wrote:
what is a GI
Posted 31 Jan 2008 at 3:21 pm ¶
Colin wrote:
GI was a term used for US soldiers in both of the World Wars. Wikipedia says it means galvanized iron, but was assumed to mean “government issue” or “general infantry”. Either way it referred to the US military during that time period.
Posted 31 Jan 2008 at 4:09 pm ¶