BAD MANAGERS - 'THE OFFICE'S MICHAEL SCOTT AND TRUMP

        

          We're about halfway through a total binge of "The Office", having never had the time to watch a single episode when it originally aired.......

               Beyond its superb, excruciating depiction of every human foible imaginable (plus a few unimaginable), we're struck by similarities between Steve Carell's Michael Scott and Baby Orange.....

               The difference being that the show sometimes shows pity and sympathy for the blundering, blustering, profoundly imbecilic office manager. At times, Michael Scott can be deeply humbled and humiliated into moments of self-awareness.  

                 .......and we feel for him, as do his beleaguered employees who mostly suffer silently through the outrageous slings and arrows of his non-stop idiocy.

                  Baby Orange, on the other hand, could never inspire any such emotions.......unlike Michael Scott, he proudly waves his bigotry, cruelty and overwhelming stupidity like one of the American flags he loves to hug for the camera. 

                  And no self-awareness, vulnerability or empathy for others ever reaches his warped, diseased mind.  He remains a hellish, impregnable force, driven only the one great love of his life.......himself. 

                  Part of the fun of the "The Office" comes from watching Michael Scott duck and weave and somehow worm his way out of whatever chaos his foolishness has generated.  Through it all, he's never less than human.........he's a collection of every bad choice we've ever made in our lives........and we all, at one time or another, experienced that same haunted look on his face.......when he knows he's landed in deep shit of his own making. 

                  Baby Orange, a disturbed sociopath with no moral compass, will never display that kind of humanity........he doesn't have it in him. And never did. There's simply nobody home.......

                   Which is why we laugh out loud at Michael Scott, who thinks he's the best manger, but is actually the worst (and at times, he knows it).......and cringe at Baby Orange, the worst manager with biggest management job in the world......who, unlike Micheal Scott,  will never recognize and acknowledge how unfit he is for his position.....

                     And that, we guess, marks the difference between comedy and tragedy........