for the love of karen

"to love another person is to see the face of God."
or so the saying goes.

ah, television. a medium with so much drivel to wade through, though i suppose it's no different than film. or art. or music. or literature.

can i admit right now that i miss alias? yes, i loved victor garber as jack bristow and ron rifkin as arvin sloane. i said it, okay?! character evolution... imagine that!

while i could do without the box in my living room, there are two shows i watch regularly.
lost.
and the office.

lost. oh, there's so much to say about you, lost. your writers are just so good, and i love them for it, but they are, undoubtedly, the biggest bastards in the world. without qualms, they kill off all our favorite characters. your writers even dangle it in front of us, your faithful viewers, for weeks on end, yet we feel violated when they actually follow through. what kind of twisted individuals could kill charlie? your writers, that's who. we know it had to happen, because you've been leading up to it for months, but it still seemed so unfair. you never cease to surprise me, lost, with your intricate plots and your complicated characters. and if that weren't enough, you make me wonderfully uncomfortable with how unflinchingly you examine the darkest aspects of being finite and mortal. you openly and regularly extend the assumed boundaries of time and space and the spiritual realm and reality and the divine and psychology and what we want and what can/can't be and miracles and a higher being and social constructs. your writers know that these are the boundaries we assume because, without them, we fear that we might not even be functional. so they expand and contract them, and we all know that, deep down, this disturbs us. thank you, lost, for being willing to explore these things, because the world hides from them too often.

but this blog isn't even about lost. it's about the office. thanks to mary beth, i am obsessed. i've seen all the episodes, and am constantly amazed by its exceptional cleverness.

like any faithful office viewer, i am rooting for pam and jim. we all know that they belong together, and we detest karen and roy for getting in the way of destiny.

but as i've watched, i think something needs to be said in defense of karen. though i know it's my proper place to advocate jim and pam, i can't help but feel a bit sorry for karen. i mean, she's not a bad person or anything. she doesn't treat jim poorly as roy did to pam. unlike roy and pam, she and jim have a lot in common, and though she has reason to get a little crazy at times, she keeps her cool. anything that she's ever been uncomfortable with is within reason. anyone would feel a little disconcerted if they found out that their boyfriend had a thing with a co-worker and had never mentioned it before. or how about... he ran away because he got his heart broken by the receptionist. what??

but i've gotta say that, above all, i think that maybe i simply feel for karen because i see some of myself in her.
for example

or

or


she's got spunk, that karen. she's competitive. she tries to say it like she means it. she's awkward. she's intelligent. she's understanding. really, i like karen. the only reason she's screwed is because she doesn't know enough about what's really going on. i've been told over and over again that you can't do anything about how a guy feels about you. either he likes you or he doesn't, and it doesn't matter how hard you try. or maybe he really does like you, but not as much as somebody else. i really believe jim likes karen. but she's not pam.
it's nothing you did, karen. there's nothing wrong with you. really, really. honestly, the reason jim went back to pam isn't about you. it's just... well... you're just not pam. you can't say or do or try or fix or want or give anything to make him change his mind. it really is that simple.

i don't know how it happens, how some women are karens and others are pams. there's nothing wrong with either type of person. though office fans everywhere are rooting for pam, i must step up and say that we karens are perfectly fine... we're smart, pretty, compassionate... but we just can't seem to get the guy to see us instead of the pams. we wander around the dating pool, confused because, by all accounts, we haven't done anything wrong. in the vastness of it all, most would agree that we're a decent catch. we're cool. we're good friends. we get along with guys. getting their attention isn't the problem. and when asked, the jims of the world can't explain why the karens aren't quite right. and as a member of the karen variety, i will say that it's frustrating not to understand what's wrong, when really, really, really... we try so hard.

as season 4 comes around, i propose that we cut karen some slack. being dropped for no apparent reason, for no tangible, definable characteristic, isn't easy. watching the pams defeat us time and again, and not knowing what they have that we don't is difficult.

karens, here's to perseverance.