Nerd Rant Jr.: The Office

This is only a nerd rant junior because I still like The Office, but I think it has some issues. I finished watching the third season this past weekend, so like most TV posts I do, I'm a good year behind. Obviously, that won't keep me from writing about it in a whiny, fanboy manner.

I'm firmly in the "the British version was better" camp, but I don't even know if it's fair to compare them anymore. So I won't. I'll just list my gripes with this third season:

• The extended episodes were kind of lame. I realize NBC wants and/or needs to squeeze every possible advertising dollar out of this show, but even on DVD without commercials, the extended episodes felt overly long.
• I've never really worked in an office, but seriously, who wants to date someone with whom they work? Nearly every major character as well as several secondary characters are dating a co-worker on this show. Lame. The show stopped being even remotely realistic a while ago, but since it's still filmed in this vaguely documentary style, you'd think someone would pipe up about how incestuous it is at the Dunder Mifflin Scranton office.
• Also (and this is gonna get really nerdy here), the whole Jim/Pam thing kind of reminds me of the Kevin/Winnie thing from The Wonder Years. Kevin Arnold passed up some fine women over the years due to his crush on Winnie. I think they made Karen almost too likable on The Office, 'cuz I was rooting for her the whole time. The last episode of season 3 made me not like either Pam or Jim as much.
  
• The shark was jumped, as far I'm concerned, in the episode in which Michael wants to show the warehouse guys that working in the office is dangerous, so he threatens to jump off the roof onto a bouncy castle. That was probably my least favorite episode of the whole series, because suddenly Michael Scott became Homer Simpson-stupid. Bleh.

Otherwise, I still think it's a funny show, though I can't say it's currently the funniest show on TV since I have no basis of comparison outside of Adult Swim. I might give 30 Rock a try, but for the most part I'm not too pumped about TV comedies. My real life is hilarious enough.

Maybe current watchers can assure me that the fourth season is still funny, without giving away much of what happens in terms of the ongoing story arcs. Just wondering.