By Nath Pizzolatto
DO LIBERALS SEE TRUMP IN ‘THE GOOD PLACE’?
Michael Schur is, arguably, the king of the modern network sitcom among a certain set (namely those for whom it isn’t Chuck Lorre). His work as a writer and producer on “The Office,” the single-camera “mockumentary” based on the British sitcom, informed the shows he would later create such as “Parks and Recreation,” “Brooklyn NineNine” and “The Good Place,” which was nominated for a Golden Globe for best musical or comedy series, though it didn’t win at last week’s awards ceremony.
Watching and thinking about Schur’s shows — and I don’t think this is intentional so much as uncanny — I observed how much the fundamental attitude behind the premises seems to reflect the prevailing liberal mindset of the times.
“The Office” premiered in the spring of 2005, several months after George W. Bush won reelection. For liberals, it was a difficult time, as they’d imagined Bush to be less popular than he was and saw him as an incompetent bumbler screwing up matters of vital importance. (The inadequate federal response in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina reinforced that in the national imagination, causing Bush’s popularity to crater.)
Bush found his television parallel in the character Michael Scott (played by Steve Carell), a great salesman (perhaps, even, a guy you’d want to have a beer with) who has been promoted to management and proves ill-suited for the role. Michael’s desire to have his office function as a surrogate family often interferes with his subordinates’ productivity, sometimes in calamitous ways, and his neediness and immaturity are very off-putting in those attempts.
For the workers of Dunder Mifflin, the office motto seems to be: Yes, the boss is a buffoon, but if we just put our heads down and work, we can plow through this.
This attitude is remarkably similar to the attitudes of liberals in 2005: They saw Bush as similarly buffoonish, but his re-election killed any hopes that they’d be rid of him anytime soon. So the attitude became: We’ll get through this and get ’em in the next election. (And they did, taking back Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008.)
After “The Office,” Schur created his first sitcom, “Parks and Recreation,” alongside co-worker