But in this place, in this moment, mankind is us, whether we like it or not.
-Vladimir to Estragon, En Attendant Godot
Although David Brent, the boss on the BBC series The Office, does not start off Season One with much that could objectively grant him bragging rights -- a low-level management position in an office of people who consider him, at best, a clown, coupled with an overbearing demeanor and an in ability to read social cues -- he boasts unapologetically about his skills as a businessman and an entertainer, offers unwanted advice, and fails to navigate even the most straightforward personal encounters again and again and again. His is the swaggering persona you long to see taken down, not subtly with a well-placed jibe, but dramatically and decisively, perhaps with a battering ram.
Over the course of Season Two, he is, indeed, taken down until he is face to face with the pathetic fragility of all the separate failings he was once able to assemble into an identity. I imagine the arc of his career like the trunk of this elephant: one grand swoop down.
Of course by this point it is not satisfying for the viewer, but sad and humbling, and it would be entirely unbearable were it not for the very slight rise at the bottom of the trunk. It is hardly noticeable, hardly a rise at all, but unmistakably present, a leveling off, a flaring out. At the end of this trunk is the residue of humanity accorded to David Brent and to all of us.
The minimalist aesthetic of The Office -- the dingy set, absent soundtrack, and its willingness to linger in the awkward pause after a joke has fallen flat or an exaggeration been unmasked -- is perfectly suited to its ethical project. It does not turn away from its characters. It does not punish the weak and then stalk off in self-congratulatory triumph to celebrate with the noble. Instead, it lingers far longer than we expect with the misfortunate, considering how it is, and what it is like, to continue on, and on and on, even as the outlook bleakens.
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