One of my favorite television shows for the past 5 years (wow… really?!?), The Office has reached a strange point for me.  I’ve struggled all season finding the words to articulate my lack of enjoyment/excitement surrounding it… so thankfully Travis Fickett (over at IGN) picked up the slack for me.  Check out his review of last night’s episode below (with some commentary on the sluggishness surrounding the whole season).

March 6, 2009 – “Blood Drive” is familiar territory, but it has plenty of fun moments. Jim and Pam’s awkward lunch is done well. It’s nice to see Dwight’s overzealous salesman side again. Most of the supporting characters get good bits here, including Oscar – who is consistently excellent in this show.

The opening scene raises a question that the show does, in fact, need to answer. The question isn’t why Dunder Mifflin needs Pam – but why she still needs Dunder Mifflin. Jim and Pam still work there because, well, that’s part of the show – but there really isn’t a very good reason as to why these two would still be at this dead end job.

Now, granted, the show didn’t work very well when Pam went to art school. However, it was interesting to see something different, and it did seem – for a minute – that those stories were actually going somewhere. Instead the show seemed to want to correct course quickly – and Pam came home. It was the right instinct to restore the core dynamic, but now the show feels as though it’s stuck in neutral.

Steve Carell is great, as always. His scene with the mysterious blood drive lady is really well done. It’s The Office at it’s best – inventive and funny, but charming and believable all at once. And, true to form, the story doesn’t end up quite how you think – but Michael still manages to find reasons – no matter how convoluted – to be hopeful.

Here, in this fifth season, it’s getting increasingly difficult to shake this feeling of general malaise with The Office. It’s still funny, and the characters are good, the writing and acting still work. And yet, everything about the series seems to have lost a bit of of that aura. Perhaps it’s a slump, or perhaps we’re entering that inevitable slide as a series nears it’s natural end point. While the latter is a bit of a sad thought, hopefully NBC will have the sense to let The Office end before it overstays its welcome.