‘Conference Room, Five Minutes’ Is Shea Serrano’s Love Letter to ‘The Office’

Although The Office, a sitcom about the employees at a struggling midsize paper company, went off the air five years ago, the show hasn’t lost its relevance or appeal. It still performs well on Netflix and was picked up for syndication last year by Comedy Central, and earlier this year an NBC executive hinted at a possible reboot. Current workplace sitcoms like Veep and Brooklyn Nine-Nine lack the generality in characters and setting that helped embed The Office into American homes. Where Seinfeld reinvigorated the idea that “a show about nothing” could become timeless by situating it in one guy’s apartment, The Office perfected that conceit for the workplace.

However, while has contributed jokes (“That’s what she said”), , and , it hasn’t received the kind of critical thinking and dissection that other seminal shows like and have. That’s why I was thrilled to learn about , an essay collection devoted to analyzing the show.