TV Letdown

So I, hopefully like the other eight of you, was all excited for a new episode The Office this last week, as it had been a month since the last one aired. Instead of getting an actual episode, we are shafted with a half-assed clip reel sparsely interspersed with original material - none of which was all that memorable. A clip reel? Come on. It's 2010. Fans of the show have either a) purchased the DVD boxsets for each season, b) illegally downloaded the episodes, or c) use to Hulu. Clip reels served a purpose back in the eras of shows like Cheers and Seinfeld, where unless you religiously taped episodes, it would be hard not to miss one here or there. Even with syndication, the scheduling of was too erratic to catch unseen episodes by anything other than dumb luck.

That was then, though. Nowadays, when a show implements a clip reel, it can only mean that writers are running low on ideas. I'm careful not to call them "lazy", because I can only imagine how difficult it is to continually come up with fresh material for 25 episodes a season. So I will place the blame on NBC, who should have just shortened the season by one episode and not tried to pass off this outdated convention as a legitimate entry in the series. I would have much preferred a rerun. But how about doing something different? Interviews. A documentary. Yes, things of this sort have been included on the boxsets, but with varying degrees of quality - the forum set up with the cast (special feature, Season 5 ) was a great idea, but poorly executed, with the audio being a mess.

Again, I will invoke the word "legitimate". That's all I'm asking for here.