The Office has jumped the shark

I found the first four episodes of this season of The Office to be distinctly worse than the best episodes of past seasons. The show is getting too weighed down by several long-running plot lines, none of which are interesting dramatically. (Jim and Pam's story was never interesting, and neither was the equivalent plot in the British Office.) Hopefully this is just a bad streak, but I think it's more likely that the show has just jumped the shark.

Mad Men

We started watching Mad Men a few weeks ago, and now we are addicted. Matthew Weiner, who wrote for The Sopranos, is the executive producer, and as one would expect the writing on Mad Men is amazing. The show is also richly detailed in terms of props, costumes, etc., and the acting is fantastic. There was a nice interview with Weiner on NPR this past weekend about the show. Anyway, it's definitely worth a look, and if you do start watching, be sure to stick with it until Episode 4, which in my opinion was the first great episode (Episode 7 from last week was the second).