The Rise and Fall of Andrew Bernard.

The Rise and Fall of Andrew Bernard.

“His absence says more than his presence.”

Alan W. Watts.

When Michael Scott leaves the Office, he delivers all of his sales files to the least suspecting and the least assuming person: Andrew Bernard. Andy replies by pointing out, with humility devoid of pretense, that he considers himself the worst salesman in the Office, an observation that Michael Scott corrects by saying: “You are the BEST salesman in this Office. You sold everyone here on Andy Bernard, and that was a product that no one wanted to buy.”

The unpopular move on Michael’s part, true to form and in no ways devoid of mythological significance, is a proverbial rite of passage. Michael bestows upon Andy in effect dominion over the most jaded and least grateful workspace in television history. And he likewise bestows upon Andy his own plight. It is not long before Andy Bernard becomes again the Office Pariah that Dwight Kurt Schrute called him. And it is not BEFORE Andy has proven himself a hero and a martyr.

Andy first appears in the series as a hot-tempered, pretentious Cornell graduate who is stuck in his college glory days, imagines himself to be in a flirtation with schizoaffective desk jockey Karen Fillipelli (however one spells that; I won’t pretend that using Wikipedia is a mark of scholarship rather than Attention Deficit Tabbed Browsing Disorder) and melts down a bit when Jim puts his calculator in a block of green gelatin, forever establishing himself as an anti-Dwight, who never manages, despite all of his machismo and intellect, to outwit the slippery “tuna” that is Jim Halpert. (When I say “sub” y’all say “text.” Sub!)

Andy is not the only weirdo at the Stamford Branch of Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. Karen notwithstanding, Jim endures his first hiatus from Pam Beasley surrounded by uptown slackers who play Call of Duty and use Karen’s thin arms to hack and debug the faulty vending machine. You know that you are in deep water when your only friend is Karen Fillipelli. When Stamford is downsized and several of its occupants transfer to Scranton, they disappear, one by one, under the burden of Michael Scott’s well-meaning hazing, and for exceedingly absurd reasons, from stage fright tied to fat acceptance culture to a prideful criminal record (neither of which Dwight Schrute would approve of). Only Andy remains.

At first, it is easy to see Andy as a villain. I must myself confess that he reminded me of some upstarts that I knew to whom I then imagined saying, “don’t be an Andy”. But that’s mean. After all: the ladder-climbing temp worker that I’m thinking of in particular has an other name: Ryan Howard. And even Ryan is complex and nebulous. But what do we know? We only see what the cameras see, and as the show breaks the fourth wall more and more (and engages our emotions to an even greater extent) it is easy to imagine that the events actually happened, and that there is an unseen side to the story. Certainly the actors must have felt it. And without a doubt the audience does.

What Happens in Stamford.

Andrew is not without his endearing qualities, which appear tantamount to heroic in retrospect. Back in Stamford, he is one of three overtime employees who must stay up late to finish a project. The other two are Jim and Karen. Seated at the front of the row, no longer grudging of the people he has reason to suspect of turning his number cruncher into an electronic colloid, the Nard Dog busts out a bottle of Whiskey and three shot glasses. In a manner characteristic of Michael Scott, save for the fact that rose-tinted glasses are replaced by a turned back, Andy leads Jim and Karen through a simulation of a fraternity outing, and as Karen, seated at the very back, maintains both her sobriety and the semblance of participation, Andy unwittingly facilitates the budding of their romance, as Jim must ultimately rely on Karen to drive him home. Jim puts himself in this situation when he chooses drunken bicycling over the spare inflatable mattress that Andrew Bernard himself supplies. That’s right: Andy is one of those guys who sleeps in the Office overnight. What happens in Stamford stays in Stamford, I guess; the only sleeping over that happens at the Scranton Branch is usually between a man and a woman, and most often when the woman is engaged to an other man.

This is charming to consider in the context of the fact that Andy LIKES Karen. It’s all so important to note that Jim and Karen don’t let him off easily after the gelatin incident. When Jim gives Karen the unwanted chair that squeaks, Karen annoys Jim by squeaking it repeatedly on purpose, to which Jim retaliates by singing “Lovefool” by the Cardigans. Only Andy preserves the demeanour of innocence, singing along and praising the long-lost Swedish one-hit wonder. He would reprise this schtick when proposing to Angela by singing an a’capella version of “Take a Chance on Me” by the somewhat more prolific Band of Swedes ABBA.

Ultimately, a compromise is reached between Jim and Karen, as an unsuspecting Andy discovers that his own chair is squeaking. Karen switched, apparently, whilst Andy was not looking.

The Nard-Dog and the Cat Bitch.

Scranton is not much kinder to the Underdog than was Stamford. Dwight sums this up when he calls Andy Bernard the office “pariah”, and he demonstrates this in a brutal display of alpha male competition.

Michael Scott thinks little of Andy at first. Andy has made his success entirely by sycophantic and manipulative means that are typical of corporate salespeople but that tempt us towards scapegoating when they are themselves mirrored back to us by the guy who all ways mirrors people. This is most hilariously demonstrated when Andy first meets Dwight, and neither of them has the humility to break off the handshake first.

It is not long before Jim, inspired by Pam and empowered by Karen, gives pranking Andy an other go. Jim represents the Popular Consensus, as most bullies do, and so it’s no weight on his heart when he places Andy’s cell phone in the ceiling.

What no one expects, not even Andy himself, is that the Nard Dog will punch a hole in the wall more gaping than Michael Scott’s naivete about New York City (especially when Michael calls Sbarro a hole-in-the-wall restaurant). Andy is sent to (Anger) Management Training, which he finishes in half the estimated time by using the same techniques as he uses in Sales. Yet even though he grows into the show’s second or third most lovable character in the wake of that disappearance, one in a line of disappearances that apparently come with adjusting from Connecticut to Pennsylvania, he has not yet sold himself into anything but servitude and humiliation. I guess it’s family karma.

Having been steered away from yet an other adorable girl by a jealous Jim Halpert, and having had his hopes with Karen dashed by the same man (whom Andy never once blames for anything, I think, in the entire series, further reinforcing his identity as anti-Dwight and as Scott’s protégé) Andy sees something in Angela that no one sees: Sweetness. Even Dwight is not so generous to his paramour, who is only as attractive to Dwight as she is cruel (MIRRORING his own sadistic power drives). Pam discourages Andy initially, but the forthcoming gentleman points out that his White Anglo-Saxon Protestant background is compatible with Angela’s Christian idealism, and Pam tentatively reconsiders her own position. (Probably contributing therefore to her romance with Jim.) Andy sees only the best in Angela, whose idealism is betrayed by her ongoing affair with Dwight, who maintains a physical relationship with her even after she broke up with him for putting one of her cats in a freezer (and leaving him to die in there, pa[ren]thetically).

When news gets out (read: when Phyllis gets tired of blackmailing Angela) Andy does what by this point only lovebird Jim has been able to do: outwit Dwight. Not only does the cuckolded Andy, who is engaged to Angela by this point, demonstrate his moral superiority to Jim, who kissed Pam when she was still engaged to Roy. He all so demonstrates a surprising degree of intellectual acuity and wile by pandering to Dwight’s narcissism and then proceeding to run him over with a slow-moving car. It is only when Dwight discovers that Angela had all so slept with Andy, shattering one of her many flattering lies, that both relationships end, and Dwight and Andy become friends.

Their friendship proves sturdy when Pam leaves the company and a new Receptionist occupies her old desk, and Dwight surrenders her to a doting Andy. But it is not long before the Loving Underdog has his heart broken again, as his puppy love with Erin is demolished by the aftermath of his ordeal with the Office Cat Lady Angela Bernard-Schrute.

The Nicest Person that He Ever Met.

I don’t need to tell you for a second time that Erin is perfect. But as Carl Jung said (I hope hyperbolically): no one can live with a saint. Erin and Andy hit it off immediately, though neither of the two lovebirds has the language and tenacity necessary to consummate their love for quite some time. Their romance across the Receptionist’s Counter begins to mirror Jim and Pam, except that where Pam’s engagement and Jim’s diplomacy held Everyone’s Favourite Cheaters apart, in the case of Erin and Andy: it’s just innocence. They fall in love as kids do. And the question becomes: can the eternal boy and the perfect girl survive the years of growth they have ahead of them?

Considering how swiftly one can watch the story told when one is binge-watching it, it becomes surprising to remember that Andy was around since the first third of the series, and Erin came along as early as halfway through, when we HOPED she would become More, only because she felt so pure and angelic. (Not to mention: mysterious and naïve.) But then one remembers that they were in love for YEARS, not days. And the only reason that it feels like days is because most of that time was off-camera.

Andy does it all right. His blunders are perpetually redeemed by his triumphs. When Christmas rolls around and he is chosen to be Erin’s Secret Santa, the Nard Dog brings out Erin’s willful side when she shows up to work with a torn cheek; the milieu of exotic birds that her True Love Gave to Her throughout the consecutive Days of Christmas had decided to take out their aggression on her. But it all pays off when she is greeted in the Parking Lot by an entire Marching Band whose lead cymbalist is Andy Bernard.

Finally, he gets the guts to ask her out. Initially he does so in the context of a campy Southern Mystery Game that Michael Scott brings in and that, as a good omen in the Nard Dog’s favour, catches on in popularity despite its initial reception as a ridiculous waste of time. But he backs out when he is led to believe that the date was only part of the game. It is at this moment that Erin confesses to the cameras that she was hoping that it was a date in Actuality. This may very well have been her first interview.

Erin and Andy end up kissing in a junkyard, of all places, when another of Michael’s poetically just foibles brings the two nicest people in the Office out in search of that ever-present mythological grail: the Client Folders.  Their kiss is monumental, and it serves as a centerpiece to the entire story, eccentric as it might have been in every sense (since we are probably past the True Middle of the series by this point). Here they stand: the only hope we have in a World of Refuse. Even Andy’s hero the Bard could not have told it more fantastically.

But then Erin learns about the engagement to Angela. Angela was put from Andy’s mind by Erin herself. But when Andy persuades Michael to take Erin out to eat at her favourite restaurant, defending his new girlfriend’s honour when a hesitant Scott calls her a “rube”, things end poorly for the loving puppies. (I do not belabor this metaphor any more so than the show itself does.) Erin learns about the engagement to Angela, throws a screaming fit as she covers her face in her own hair, and tells Andy that she wants to be alone for a while. She does not formally “break up with” him, so technically what follows when she starts to date Gabe in the following season is an extramarital affair. But we let this slide because it’s Erin. Even I did not notice the informality of the breakup until she drew attention to this habit in Season Nine. The ambiguity: yes. The informality: no.

As the result of this same outing that Andrew Bernard had arranged (before an Outing with the Boss would mean a date with the Nard Dog Himself) Michael and Erin develop a sweet Father-Daughter dynamic. When Erin and Gabe break up and Erin considers dating Andy “again”, he gently advises her against it, only to preserve her autonomy in a manner that fathers often do with what Marie-Louise von Franz called incestuous underpinnings. By the point that Phyllis uses her own maternal relationship with the foster girl to nudge Erin in the right direction, (under what Phyllis has at this point discovered to be false auspices, and as she has all so neglected to mention to Erin) Andy is all ready operating under the burden put upon him by Gabe. Although Gabe’s confrontation with Andy in the men’s restroom seems inconsequential, Gabe’s eventual disappearance from the Office and his ongoing influence in absentia (Absence: a theme I shall expound upon shortly, for it was in defense of this same ideal that I was moved to stop watching after Episode Fifteen of Season Nine, so as to be able to write) proves that the confrontation had one principal function: to frighten Andy into a state of abstinence. Gabe won by stalemate, which is really all that one can hope for in games so evenly matched in both sport and sportsmanship.

We are made to suffer then through Erin’s Unrequited Love, as Andy, despite personal feelings for Erin that endure, pulls a Jim and starts to date an other woman. Erin owns part of her repressed vixen at a party when the World’s Creepiest C.E.O. invites her to try alcohol for what appears to be the first time. She oscillates betwixt loving support for Andy and his new belle and seething, murderous and outspoken drunken contempt. In short: she would give Nancy Wheeler a run for her money; I.N.F.P’s are notoriously cuter drunks than E.N.F.P’s. Andy berates his spited lover by using the same line on her that he used on Michael Scott: “that’s my GIRLfriend.” But what appears to be hypocrisy at first, reducing women to their marital status in respect to one’s self, in retrospect could pass for nothing more or less than Chivalry at its Finest.

Finally, Erin does the only thing she can do: she disappears. Without warning, she moves down to Florida and gets a job. Andy expects her to return, but he learns in a Skype call that that is not in the cards. So he does what any rational man would do in that situation: he abandons post, driving all the way down the coast to win Erin back. Along the way he must win her over despite the hazing that her employers, with whom she lives, treat him. She runs after him and shares their first kiss in years. They do not kiss again until after they pay a visit to his current girlfriend, who is hosting a bachelorette party. When his lie that he is a homosexual (which they are not alarmed to “learn”, as he himself questioned his own heterosexuality under pressure by suggestion) falls flat and casts post-modern doubt on his honesty with Erin, he returns to break up with his most recent ex with dignity. As tends so often to be the case, the Policy of Truth is met with disdain by those who cannot handle it, and Erin and Andy barely escape the spiteful pity-party unscathed.

The Moral Middle Man. (And the Oscar Goes to…)

When Andy returns, he finds that his job as Regional Manager was stolen by one of his former business rivals from the interviews: Nellie. During a very temporary and Romantic leave, a sort of Spiritual Emergency worthy of both the Orient and the Occident, (and spanning no more or less than the American East Coast) Andy has been usurped by a neurotic and manipulative nymphomaniac with an English Accent. And his C.E.O, an other former rival for the same position, cannot move past her sexual cajoling to the point that he would rob her of the seat of power.

Andy only triumphs by persuading David Wallace, a recent multi-millionaire with an equally troubled fall from corporate grace, to buy back the company from the psychotic printer salesmen that took it over and made all of this possible. When Nellie quoth Shakespeare, playing the “Bard Card” as Andy calls it in a plea for corporate mercy, the Nard Dog yields to his rival, however grudgingly. Season Nine finds him struggling to get her to quit, for just as he had reason to regret his reflexive kindness when Gabe asks politely for permission to date Erin, Andy Bernard feels justifiably uncomfortable sharing an Office with a woman who usurped him while he was winning back his Light of Love. Pushed, Nellie lies about Andy’s ancestry. Alienated from his superficial parents, Andy requests a genealogy report, which gives Nellie something to Actually DO around the Office. Of course: Andy’s Heroic Quest to uncover and transcend his past looks unprofessional and narcissistic to the public eye, though in fact it is simply self-absorbed in a healthy, Jungian way. Nellie pretends that Andy is related to Michelle Obama, and the Nard Dog rejoices to be related to the First Lady, devoid of ethnic prejudice. But this cannot be said of Oscar Martinez, the token Democrat who illustrates everything wrong with neo-Liberal “morality” (completing the satire of Corporate Culture as beautifully and with as much folly as does the Vonnegut character who tells the narrator of Cat’s Cradle what a pissant is and sums up Republicanism.). Oscar RUNS WITH Nellie’s lie, presuming several things:

1.      Andy’s ancestors were slave owners. (Precluding all possible undocumented interracial romances that were NOT rape.)

2.      Andy’s at fault for being born into a life of physical comfort and psychological distress and neglect.

3.      Andy owes everyone in the Office something.

4.      This should affect Andy’s leadership style.

5.      This overshadows Andy’s own enthusiasm to be related to a successful black woman.

6.      This dirt stinks worse than any dirt that Nellie could dig up on everybody else within the Office.

7.      Nellie is not a damned bitch who lies, cheats, and steals.

8.      This is all a more tangible evil than Oscar’s homosexual affair with the husband of Angela, a Christian woman who had all so cheated on Andy but who would go so far as to hire a hitman to remove Oscar’s kneecaps when she learns about her husband’s infidelity. And it does not matter that Oscar repeatedly mocked Angela for dating a politician who was “not a real Senator”, but who ended up using both Angela and Oscar for political reasons. And who was actually gay, which should make you wonder just how much Oscar should get away with just for being part of that minority.

The immediate consequence of this is that Andy, ever the accountable golden boy that he wants his parents to love him for being, calls his parents up in front of the entire Office, spurred by the moment. He discovers, with total transparency and to both his personal embarrassment and public humiliation, that while his ancestors never OWNED slaves, some of them did work on the sailing vessels that transported them. Of course, a rational man’s first response would be this: this disproves Oscar’s theory and casts doubt on Nellie’s finding; even if you COULD and WANTED to rape human cargo, who would possibly keep a record of that incident that might survive throughout the pregnancy, the birth, and SEVERAL HUNDRED YEARS up to the point that an expatriated English woman could look it up on an American computer??

But people suck. Of course.

Andy forgives his family instantly (a trying feat in his position that perhaps only recipients of the Cis-White-Male Award truly can fathom) and covers for them with such candor that even HE might be talked into believing he is doing it to save himself, for it is without any apparent planning or contrivance. He simply speaks THE TRUTH:

1.      His family was entitled, as all families are, to the pursuit of happiness (which remains relevant even when “property” is shamed). And that is to say nothing of their own survival and the survival of their children. As Ryan Howard says: a toast to the troops on BOTH sides. And only someone so far down the neo-Liberal rabbit hole that he would sequester slavery from pacifism would deny the relevance of Ryan’s diplomatic toast.

2.      His ancestors were “moral middle men”, literally, no more at fault for the establishment of the African Slave Trade (which has operated since the Ancient Egyptians used Jews to build the Pyramids) than the German People remain at fault for the Holocaust. And they were almost certainly more civil than Oscar, who could just as easily be blamed for “homophobia” because he is a member of the L.G.B.T.Q. which formalized the term and made justifiable the condition. (Even Foucault himself would have to admit that there can be no “homophobia” until someone coins the term.) They did not OWN slaves. They simply did their jobs. Any one working for a Corporation is equally at fault by default.

The Black Andy.

Daryll does not agree, though he is much too passive aggressive and self-pitying to engage Andy in direct discussion about it. At one point, Daryll from the Warehouse is the only Voice of Reason in the midst of all the chaos. He is truly the Salt of the Earth, working daily to provide for himself and I am guessing to pay child support for his daughter whom he can only see when her Mother permits it and when the girl herself considers him a fun guy. He all so serves the added function of being Michael Scott’s chief African American consultant, using this authority to teach the latter slang terms of his own device so as to add to Michael’s all ready ludicrous street credibility. A warm and blunt working man, Daryll is all the things that Michael wishes of Stanley Hudson, and he is the closest thing to Uncle Iroh that this entire Paper Company has seen.

But Daryll is all so a bitch. He uses his influence over Michael to pressure Scott into acting as a spokesperson for Daryll’s burgeoning Workers’ Union. Michael is forced to confront Jan Levinson about it, driving somewhat of a wedge between the two that is painful to pull out. (And no: it’s not for the best that Michael and Jan keep their professional distance. Michael loves Jan. All of their interpersonal difficulties result from power struggles the likes of which Daryll produces: between what she deems best and what he is forced to consider right.)

Daryll’s games don’t end there. Among the Warehouse workers he is a Leader and an Authority who makes Michael look ridiculous whenever Scott tries to do any thing remotely hands-on downstairs. (No innuendo intended, though Jan does go down there when Michael comes up on Women’s Day.) Upstairs, he is the token black, especially when Stanley Hudson does everything in his own power to blend in. No one is more sympathetic to his plight, perhaps, than Toby, the Human Resources Manager. Yet when Dwight buys a bulk load of popular Unicorn-girl dolls and sells his last one to Daryll, Daryll profits off of Toby’s desperation. Toby, a divorcee with a somewhat estranged daughter and an abusive ex-wife, is in an even worse situation than Daryll, who at least gets to see his baby girl on a regular basis. (The daughter. Not the mother.) But Daryll does not GIVE the toy to Toby in a generous holiday Spirit. He sells it, and when Toby is disappointed to discover that the doll is dark he eyes the miserable pushover sternly. Sure: Dwight made the real profit. But he bought in bulk; what was he supposed to do? Someone has to counterbalance Michael Scott and Andy Bernard.

Toby forgives Daryll, of course. When Michael Scott demands Daryll’s respect in front of Toby, Daryll complains about the fact that Michael never promoted him or encouraged his ascent. Daryll is Scarface, and the analogy is no prejudiced parallel; Daryll himself cites that as an influence. He finally gets an Office upstairs, and as far as anyone is aware he does and accomplished ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Yet as he deteriorates in existential importance he excels in status. Daryll goes so far as to apply for Regional Manager, hoping to use only his reputation and Black Privilege. He spaces on the Interview, for which he has taken no pains to prepare. But eventually he lands Assistant to the Regional Manager, which is Dwight’s old title. Andy conscripts Daryll to back him up during the witch-hunt that Oscar is heading. But when Andy fails time and time again to assert his equality to a group of liberals led by a Gay Hispanic Man, Daryll abandons Andy. Resolving himself to self-pity and misery, he manages to win a place in Jim’s new company, encouraging Jim to spend more time away from Pam as the two of them become situated in Philadelphia. Again, he botches the interview, but when he is assured that his job as a warehouse worker is equal to that of a lawyer or business owner he gets the gig. His new employers even let it slide that he ended his interview by tossing a basketball at an angle that missed a hoop (adorning the Headquarters for the Athletic Equipment Company) and knocked a lamp overlooking a fishbowl into the bowl, electrocuting all the fish within. But no one’s perfect. And I’m not making this up.

Daryll’s rise to the top is achieved by a combination of laziness, self-entitlement, manipulation, and stereotype. Along the way, he has an affair with a coworker, who all so happens to be black and whose boyfriend is black as well. His ambitions leave him with all of the pretensions of a ghetto criminal but without the loyalty. When his old homies downstairs win the lottery, he does not rejoice, but simply gripes and considers unemployment. His bosses persuade him to get back on his feet, but he takes them for granted. When Dwight tries to arrange a fun outing to persuade Daryll to stay, Daryll only suspects Dwight of trying to clip his wings for profit (even though it was Dwight who sold Daryll that toy, and without Dwight it would not have been in supply. All so Daryll has Dwight’s old job). When Dwight tries to level with Daryll by pulling a prank and tossing a shake back through the drive-through window from the window of the company truck, Daryll steals the keys from him, so that Dwight has to suffer the consequences of not only his own actions but of Daryll’s disloyalty. Daryll’s sympathy for the working class is narcissistic; whereas Dwight knows that food service is a SERVICE and that customers have the moral right to DO that, Daryll only thinks of the EMPLOYEE. Dwight is made to clean the mess, and in the process he falls victim to the same prank, made more embarrassing because the pranksters get away with it. This is not justice; their intent was no different than Dwight’s. But Daryll treats it like it’s karma. Enjoying the fruits of his disloyalty, he sits in his office at the end of the episode, watching a YouTube video of Dwight’s humiliation. Such is the case with people who start Unions: they would rather watch their close friends suffer from afar than to laugh with them from the passenger’s side.

I entitled this chapter “The Black Andy” to be ironical on purpose. Daryll is NOTHING like Andy. He simply serves as the Ideal character foil. As Daryll rises in status and deteriorates in character, Andy falls lower and lower. Even as Manager, Andy eventually has neither power nor respect. He even loses the Love of his Life. And no part of it is his own fault.

And all so Daryll proves that so many as three of Andy’s competitors for the position of Manager have betrayed him. It may seem a little ridiculous that I would go so far as to call Toby Daryll’s moral superior, so as to defend him in his oppression, whilst I defend Andy’s equality in the face of American History. But it is a LOT easier for a TRUE Liberal to sympathize with a man who uses his money chiefly in the service of Others than it is for me to sympathize with someone who exploits desperation. Even Dwight does not exploit his fellows; he simply BELIEVES that he is doing so, as Han Solo would. Maybe Toby Flenderson is not a philanthropist. But Toby remains a victim. And Andy remains a philanthropic martyr. And Daryll was never either.

Andy does not have to worry about White Privilege for long. It is as fleeting as the memory of his own oppression on its behalf. When his Father steals the family wealth and runs off with a paramour, the Bernards go broke. For once, Pam notices Andy transforming into something formidable. His office hours are spent managing his family’s finances. Erin (bless her Soul) is the most supportive girlfriend you would not dare to ask for. When he is forced to sell the Family Boat, she consoles him and defends him. Daryll is less sympathetic; all he ever did when he was young was work at Jiffy Lube. But Daryll’s lower-income grandeur is promptly stripped of its gilding. When Erin tries to level by saying that Daryll probably would not trade that Jiffy Lube for all the money in the World, he corrects her that he would.

Can we just stop now and say “nigger”? I feel really uncomfortable not saying it. I feel like I’ve been saying “black” too much. It’s very anglocentric of me to use that term. I would much rather employ the term that is of Latin origin and that retains that hard “r” sound that Spanish is known for and that set the original blacks, the Irish, apart from those who spoke the Queen’s English. With all due respect.

And why does M.S. Word not recognize the term “Anglocentric”? That’s racist.

The truth is that there is no Politically Correct way of describing Daryll. He is an animal. He lives an animalistic existence. There’s no way around it. Joe Campbell said that the caveman became a human being when he first started hoarding precious stones. Am I the only one here who still understands the inalienable quality of a Family Hierloom? It’s only comparable to a Jiffy Lube when Erin is so generous as to portray it that way. And even that’s too much for Daryll. Which is not to say that he does not hoard things. He simply seems to have no sentimental attachments to them.

He is probably, on second thought, a sociopath. So when he tells Michael about all the gangs that he was in, including notoriously rival gangs, I am sort of inclined to believe him. He certainly seems like a Double Agent. And I am only using “nigger” because it is literally every other word in contemporary hip-hop. I do not pretend that anglicizing it further by dropping the “r” in the way that the British Royalty did to set themselves apart helps the matter.

Ain’t No Sunshine.

Andy sells the boat. But it is not before Erin cheers Andy up. During his lunch break, she enters his Office and persuades him to take the boat out for a spin of the wheel. It was in this same Office, of course, that Andy himself persuaded Michael Scott to take Erin out on that fateful Lunch Date. And plans go South just as swiftly.

Andy all ways lived in the shadow of his brother. Despite being portrayed by Josh Groban, Walter Jr. (no relation) is a pretty decent singer. Of course, he’s not as good as Andy, but that does not stop the parents from idealizing him at Andy’s expense. And in front of friends, coworkers, and superiors.

Andy was supposed to steer the boat as a rite of passage into Manhood. But atonement with the father does not come, for better or for worse. Still: it is worth a heroic effort. The boat is due to arrive in the Bahamas in three weeks, and Andy has all ready handed it over to the skipper. But Erin convinces Andy that Andy is himself the Captain of the boat. In one scene he does what even Michael Scott, his Father Figure, could not do in an entire episode: relieve the skipper of duty. It is at this moment that he discovers his brother, who had famously developed a drinking problem in the wake of their parents’ divorce, hiding out in the wine cellar.

The two brothers set sail for one last voyage, leaving the audience with Erin on the dock.

I won’t deny it: I was surprised that Erin left him behind. I thought that she might be a source of tremendous comfort for him. But I can only suppose that he gave that up for her own safety and for the integrity of the Quest. This was a thing that the Brothers had to do Together, and Alone. Erin is not yet Family, and how can Andy know that he is ready for such a commitment if he has not yet Become a Man?

When He’s Gone.

Erin regrets it. And we feel for her. But at what cost? Erin deserves the best. But Andy deserves a break. He knows this. Stripped of pretense, he does what he all ways needed to do: he TAKES TIME OFF. Chasing Erin down to Florida does not count. For perhaps the first time in his Entire Life, the Nard Dog walks the thorny path of the Lone Wolf.

In his absence, the company prospers. Dwight bypasses regulation and secures a sale with the hardest sell imaginable: Jan Levinson. He even achieves this by prostituting his protégé, a kid of college age who is known around the Office as Kid Dwight or something to that effect. Jan eats Kid Dwight up.

Meanwhile, Kid Jim begins a flirtation across the Receptionist’s Desk that is eerily and pathologically reminiscent of a young Jim hitting on Pam. We begin to wonder if Andy will ever turn into a Roy. As Roy finally gets married and reveals himself to be a talented musician, it’s hard to tell them apart. If Roy can be redeemed, can the Nard Dog be corrupted? Both are rock stars with bad tempers. Must Andy lose Erin permanently in order to become again Good? Or is Goodness more than simply a state of being Impressive?

Then one remembers all that Andy did for Erin. White Privilege only means a lucky belle where a true gentleman and scholar is concerned. Sure: the turtle doves might have been much. But who could forget the Drummer Boys?

Nellie knows that she’s been mean to Andy since before she met him. She knows she deserves the full force of his mocking, and that he deserves none of the blame. She remembers his act of mercy and chivalry to her at a moment when she was most unabashedly vulnerable. She knows that most men would turn a cold, corporate cheek in his place. And she knows what it is like to be the pariah. She knows how hard it is to be in charge. She knows what loss feels like.

As one of her few functions at work, Nellie forms a committee comprised of only Erin and Kid Jim. But when she catches wind of their flirtation, she takes steps to eradicate it. But you can’t expect the woman who got Daryll back together with his paramour (against his secret wishes) to turn all she touches into gold, exactly. And even when she does she’s just as tragic as King Midas.

Under the urging of Toby, who has finally lived up to what Michael all ways knew about him, and who is deluded by his own feelings for Nellie, (To the point that our beloved Human Resources Expert criticizes Andy in order to make himself look good by contrast) Nellie puts the committee back together, doing so in such a way that no one would blame Erin for her blaring disloyalty to Andy. The effect of this is that Erin only feels that much closer to Kid Jim. All most like it’s a Real Thing.

The Real Jim, meanwhile, strains his own marriage. Perhaps if Life is, as the Buddhists posited, a cyclical wheel of torture, then Kid Jim will marry Erin only to see her suffer when time comes for him to grow up and to take time apart. But I shudder at even the inkling of it.

Distance puts the two cutest couples on the Office to the test as an Absurd narrative unfolds. When one of the cameramen breaks character to defend Pam from a degenerate vandal from Daryll’s old workplace, he breaks the Fourth Wall in a manner reminiscent of Andy Bernard punching a hole in the wall. Twice.

The Prodigal Son Returns.

Andrew Bernard takes a lot of abuse. The contents of this essay only scratch the surface. The contents of the SERIES only scratch the surface. I’ve not even mentioned yet that he had his own buttocks tattooed because it was the only way that he could incentivize his employees to work twice as hard, so as to impress the C.E.O. who would eventually give his job away to Nellie. Andy is not an Individualist. He is a Team Player. He is so much so that he is made INTO an Individual. When he invites the latest generation of his college a’capella group to perform for the Office, and Erin persuades them to do a rendition of his classic solo “Faith” (As he is dressed as George Michael, whom none of the new guys recognize) his solo is stolen by Broccoli Rob, his fellow alumnus (Portrayed by some wretched comic) who is slowly taking over the identity and legacy of Boner Champ. Erin loses respect for Andy at this moment, citing sagely the Truth that we know we truly love someone when we lose respect for that person. What makes this loss of respect ironical is that it is at the moment that Andy appears petty to Erin that the audience notices this about him: he is a Team Player. His solo is his solo. But that is because that was the ROLE that he had ON THE TEAM. He did so much FOR the Team that he DESERVES the recognition. But as per usual, someone else takes all the credit FOR him, blatantly stealing his identity to his face. As the old Persona is detained, perhaps never to be retrieved, Andy’s Isolation grows, even from his prospective spouse.

And this is only a sample of what happens when he returns from his Spirit Quest in the Bahamas.

Nobody THANKS Andy for his absenteeism. David Wallace, who does not know about the vacation, rewards Andy with a raise for the success of the Branch during the Quarter. Yet when Andy collects his weekly paychecks from Angela, he notices that she holds onto one. Angela announces the raise, and he demands it with near silence. She acquiesces. But that does not stop his neighbours from eying him with disdain.

It’s true: they were most successful in his absence. They might EVEN have been most successful BECAUSE of it.

And that check belongs to him. And he knows it.

British-American Theologian and Comparative Mythologist Alan Watts said in a lecture on  Being Vague that the absence of the wandering monk, expressed in the Japanese word “sabi”, says more than his presence. He cites the Zen poem, which I shall recite here without reference to any external device:

I asked the boy beneath the pines.

He said: the Master’s Gone Alone,

Herb-gathering. Somewhere on

The Mountain.

Cloud-hidden,

Whereabouts unknown.

Alan Watts insisted that this was essential to the sanity of any person so as not to become a rubber stamp. A rubber stamp is a tool used to formalize documents. Just as Dwight pretends to sign off on several illegitimate sales, one may use a rubber stamper to grant something the formal appearance of approval, even if one is not formally AUTHORIZED to do so. It is less than signature in Individuality.

When Andy left, he was a rubber stamper. When he returns, he is a bloody John Hancock.

Andy does not take crud from anyone. Bearded and sunburnt, he looks like Watts himself. Before long, he cleans up, just as his associates are gossiping about how his hippie countenance will hurt his reputation even if they do not rat him out. Upon return, he calls everyone a loafer for showing up late. He criticizes Jim and Pam for taking an extended lunch. Oscar tries to passive aggressively attract attention to the fact that Andy’s last lunch break took a quarter of a year. It is as though Oscar were in any position to point the finger, especially that finger that means to appoint someone to hypocrisy. (Next to the finger that turns Christians into homophobes.) Andy does not make any mention or take any apparent notice of the Irony. This is wise; there are layers of which Oscar himself in his infinite wisdom is unaware. At that very moment Jim and Pam discover that the cameraman that saved Pam had feelings for her. Oscar defends Jim in order to berate Andy, but not without defending a man whose absenteeism has all so produced some degree of suffering.

Yet is it not a reflection upon our Culture, Oscar, that a Man can’t go out and find himself? To improve his station? To seek, as Andy professed when you grilled him for the plight of a previous century, a better life for his Family? Perhaps ANY Life, considering that he works in a Failing Industry?

It seems the first to turn on Andy is Dwight. When Andy learns that Dwight went behind Andy’s back to secure a deal with Jan, Andy does the only responsible thing that a boss can do: he troubleshoots. The rules are the rules; were they merely guidelines, we would not follow them. Captain Jack Sparrow (no relation.) learned that in the Caribbean. And so did Captain Andrew Bernard, that scurvy dog.

Andy loses Dwight’s client within a minute on the line with her. He shrugs it off; Policy is Policy. When rules can be supplanted by preferences, they BECOME preferences, and as such they are a gateway for abuse. When everyone around you is breaking the rules and you blow the whistle, you are the furthest from blame. It is the crowd that is selfish, and they are capable of greater evil as a mob than you will ever be capable of as an Individual.

Andy knows this. Because he is nearing Enlightenment. And the uninitiated can only misconstrue this as Entitlement.

No one acknowledges this fact: that if any causality exists in this world, Andy set everyone up to succeed upon his departure. He only needed to be far enough away to keep an eye on them occasionally. All of them kept their jobs. Even Nellie did. Without him and his initiative with Wallace, at the moment when their earlier leaders had turned on him, they might not even HAVE jobs; surely the Swindler whom they were working for would not have been so altruistic or accountable. When he was in charge, they put up with condescension and corporate narcissism just so long as he flattered them. Daryll was not the only Socialist among them.

It was at this moment that I felt most strongly for the Nard Dog.

I had served on the Debate Team of Palomar College. When I first joined the team there would be horror stories about a girl named Sarah Nemuri. When finally I met her, I could not believe that this was the same person that Awilda Parada was talking about. Don’t worry, Awilda: I did not use your current name.

Sarah was a Christian. She was innocent. And she was suicidally depressed. She did not drink. She did not copulate. And she followed every team rule. When her team-mates abused the rules, she told the professors. She did everything right. And Awilda hated her for expressing that which Intellectual Debate is intended to uncover as its solitary purpose: THE TRUTH. Awilda had no right to hate her. Awilda had been in the wrong. They All Were. But there is a certain variation of hominid, in semblance human but lacking conscience, that cannot understand the distinction between selfishness and integrity. It understands that an individual might be wrong to compromise a group of people who are in the right. But it FAILS to comprehend a situation wherein everyone ELSE is wrong. Selfishness is not up to the GROUP to decide. Conscience is an Individual Quest. Andy knows this. And so did Sarah.

Whatever Sarah’s motives, she could never be Selfish. If she was defending herself, she was all so defending the very VALUES that had come to DEFINE herself and to give her life MEANING. These were the values to which all of the members of the Team pledged themselves. These Values are higher than any one Human Life. And by acting in accordance with them she preserved the right to her OWN Life. Awilda cannot take that from her. She would do so only out of envy, for she has lost the right towards her own.

There is an other anecdote that crossed my mind upon watching the Mob deride Andy, with conformist perversion, for his absentee success, presuming upon Presence as being somehow superior to Absence like so many macho phallogocentric rapists:

When I lost a woman whom I loved to a traitor, I coped by starting a sub-team. I spent hours upon days over the following months training Daniel Mendez in the Art of Kritik Debating. We were going to be partners. But the bureaucratic process was a tightrope walk. And I had to get my G.P.A. up. I had cleared my absence from the team with the coaches. Dewi Hokett did not complain that I was off their radar; Brandan Whearty told me that it’s “perfectly understandable” that I would focus on my schoolwork. As he all ways reminded us: School. Comes. First. Even Hosfield told us not to fall into the addiction that he himself had fallen into. Spoken like a true Scorpio.

But there was ONE Scorpio on the team who did not understand that. Rafael Romasanta joined forces with Daniel. I did not mind. I coached them. He would drive me to tournaments. I would help them prepare. I did not like to be around debaters, out of uniform. But it was worth it for the cause. For MY Cause. And by calling it mine I praise the Cause as much as I praise myself.

Rafael wanted to join forces. At a Team Meeting I proposed that the three of us should be put in a three-person team. Rafael did not object. But later he found the audacity to deride me for speaking up in front of the entire team, without his permission.

I have some news for you. I do not need your permission. It would have been shameful had I lied to you, even by omission. The exact opposite was achieved by assertion publically of the TRUTH. There is never a basis for an individual who upholds this Moral Universal to even have his motives called into Question. Virtue is its own reward. And it is not a choice.

But this sticks out the most: that when he criticized me for having been in absentia throughout most of the semester, I told him that I put school first. I even pointed out that our coaches KNEW that. And to that he replied in a manner I can scarcely stomach: “When you say that you’re putting school first, it means you are putting school first.” He did what Kresten, who’d betrayed me for Alanna, used to do: to repeat something in an inflection as though that changed a god damned thing. “The trouble with anecdotal evidence is that it’s anecdotal.”

SO WHAT? WHAT IS YOUR POINT?

Pardon me, reader: certain crimes against Human Reason are triggering. Such is verbal abuse.

Of COURSE I had been in absentia. I was SUPPOSED TO BE.

It’s like Chris Rock says when he criticizes the African American community. His fellows brag about all the bad things they DON’T do. And Chris yells: YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO.

Andy Bernard did every thing right. And yet like Michael before him he has everybody turn on him. Dwight lies to him about a Warehouse Fire. When David tells Andy that there was no fire, Andy covers with candor and creativity. But that does not entirely save him. And Dwight SHAMELESSLY grins at Andy for the LIE.

It’s not as though Andy lied to David. He simply omitted the Truth. And given that his absence had benefited the Branch, it was hardly lying by omission, because it was not NECESSARY that David learn about Andy’s new methods. There was no one to be punished. Well, all most no one.

Narcissists and sociopaths are known for being demeaning. It is embarrassing to imagine that they believe that they can get away with blaming their own victims. If we could not stand up for ourselves without becoming oppressors, all distinction of right and wrong would vanish, because it is the prevention and treatment of victimhood that is the basis for ethical conduct and virtue. This dissolution of boundaries would not be a good trip. It would be Hell. If enforcers could not defend themselves in their own victimhood, but they had all to be martyrs, and any attempt at self-assertion was an abuse of power, then villains would simply kill off all the enforcers. Anecdotal evidence is the only kind of evidence. There is no “biased” reading of Andy’s story; there are only moral, immoral, and amoral readings. All conviction implies ego; one rejoices when one’s sense of justice is appeased. If one can extend a hand in defending an other, one MUST contract the same hand to defend one’s self, lest one become a hypocrite who allows injustice to happen before his very eyes. All wants are needs, and all needs aim at participation in a common harmony. If I cannot relate Art to my own Life, then I will have no respect for the sufferings of the characters. If my own experience did not matter, how could I empathize with the underdog? If my life had no meaning, how could I assert Individuality in ANY form? If I had no Inalienable Human Rights, how could I ever BE right without feeling alienated? How could I be HUMAN? The only selfless man is the amoral man. He has no manhood. He has no humanity. Conscience is a faculty of ego. It can be studied. It can even be manipulated. But it must never be compromised. It is a Will of God. When I broke up my old band with Kresten and began a new project with Daniel, I was acting out of Conscience. And it was just as conscientiously that I persuaded Alanna, for some short time, to distance herself from the vermin that had betrayed us both. Nothing can justify that sort of Evil. Certainly once a man has done that he ceases to be a man, and then any selfishness that he projects upon the victim is a testament to his own lack of moral discernment. And I am obligated to assert my rights, for to have rights is to DO what is right, and it is right to love, even if there is no guarantee of reciprocity. And I know that it was right for Alanna to love me, though I could never enforce this, and as a lover I forgave her time and time again. Such is to be Human. And I’ve drained enough of my humanity in martyrdom to see through anyone who pretends to it or who pretends to the Universality of its opposite: Narcissism. Not all people are intrinsically narcissistic. And it should be easy to weed out the evil from the Good. But we live in dark times.

When Erin tells Andy that she does not love him any more, Andy persuades her to think otherwise. He does not do this pretentiously. Inferior virtue, as the Taoists say, knows that it is Virtue. Admittedly, all Taoists, myself included, have some conception of Virtue. But what sets the conception apart from the perversion that the conception points to is this: Natural Intuition. And that you can only get once you have been truly Alone.

Andy does not sugar-coat. He simply expounds. He tells Erin that they’ll be okay. He wants her to pretend to love him. That way: he’ll be happy. And in time his happiness will make her, perhaps, fall in love with him again. His parents lasted this long. And they have a lot of time ahead to fall out of love. He invites her to look past his sunburnt skin. Sure: he will age like a prune. But what of it? At least she won’t feel embarrassed to age as well. Or so I’m guessing is the point. It’s true, at any rate. And it is REAL. It lays all her pretensions to shame.

At the start of the episode we want Erin to break up with him. He’s been gone long enough for us to figure that he’s found paradise without her. Good for him. Now let her take a step in her own direction. Let her for ONCE do something Mean.

But of course: we should know better. We know that Erin has been mean before. She broke up with Gabe. And she certainly botched that. Most temperamentally nice people do. Guilty. One can’t live with a saint.

Erin succeeds in so far as she does not go through with it, initially. But when she tells her new beau Kid Jim in the parking lot about what happened, he lays all of Andy’s poetry to rest with one simple phrase:

I just want you to be happy.

The amoral assertion, neither good nor bad, triggers something irrational in Erin. In a fit of sudden reactionary narcissism that made me throw my Wii remote at the floor, exclaiming “bitch!!”, and I assure you that the narcissism was not my own, as should be obvious, Erin pounces on Kid Jim’s face with a kiss. The late adolescent, who had moments ago told her that he was ambivalent to their relationship, smiles as though he had secretly believed himself to be the Entitled One all along. And this no man or woman can pardon: that someone who is TOTALLY AMBIVALENT to his crush’s choice could somehow act totally pleased at her verdict. That a BOY, devoid of Manhood, who cannot even produce anything more than an arbitrary and emotive assertion, would smile at the loss of a Man that surpasses him in every Virtue and in Pain and Need.

I know about this line. Because it’s what Alanna all ways bitched about. Kresten made her so HAPPY. Not when they were having sex, of course. But when they were doing drugs, surely. When he fed her cocaine addiction. It was weird when he ignored her. But she did not care. And when I told him on my authority, as someone who DID care, to stay the fuck away from her, for she had broken her promise to stay away from him, he had the nerve to BRAG TO ME about his own antipathy. I have produced entire PLAYS singing my own praises and bewailing my own woe. All just to prove myself worthy. There was no shortage of arguments in my defense. There was no stone unturned and no stop unpulled. I could not afford a dozen drummer boys. But I could do every god damned thing in my Human Power to protect my beloved from Death, even if it meant I had to tell her she was WRONG. I’d promised her the Truth, and I expected her to value that more than Happiness or Self-Respect. And the Truth was that she had to be with me. There was no way around it. I loved her, as Andy loved Erin.

Happiness was what killed her. Alanna was suicidal when I met her. And she was when she died. Cocaine addiction coupled with narcissistic abuse syndrome, brought on by neglect and loneliness, had robbed her of any will or purpose to live.

I have to ask this:

Since when did HAPPINESS become a Value?

Was this why I was hospitalized against my Will?

Because I was not HAPPY enough? And I had to be Happy for my own Good?

What does HAPPINESS have to do with BEING RIGHT?!

Pardon my emotion. She all ways taught me to be expressive and direct in sentiment, even if she could not handle it. It was not her fault.

Brandan Whearty once told us that Happiness is mutually exclusive. But I only thought that Righteousness and Meaning would be enough. What more could one desire??

Again: Pardon my sentiment. It’s just that next to Season Two, Episode Twelve of Breaking Bad, this has to be the second-most-traumatizing television episode I’ve ever seen. It triggers me. And had I not lived it, it would have terrified me. It is like the song “Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac. It gains dimension as it attains personal, anecdotal relevance. It transcends Reason. And it enflames Passion. It has to be written. And it can barely tolerate its own fulfillment.

Erin storms back into the Office. She tells Andy that she’s breaking up with him. She complains that he was gone for all of three months, as though that were any substantial portion of time, and that she was afraid he’d died. There seem at this point to be only two people who don’t get what the big deal is: Andy and me. Three months is less than a blink in the eye of Shiva. And besides: I’m binge-watching. They were in love for THREE YEARS. Small help is it to him that she was so afraid he’d died that she would punish him for it. She storms out. And it turns out that David Wallace, who was on speakerphone when she ran back in, still dressed in her sultry brown skirt and blouse, a typically mean break-up outfit, heard the entire tirade.

Erin had of course not planned it to go this way. She was not expecting Andy back a day early. But then: it WAS Valentine’s Day. And he had brought her many exotic gifts. And she would not even hug him. At some point I suppose in human history it became permissible to make decisions in your partner’s absence and to hold the very conditions for your betrayal against him. At some point, Erin fell from Grace.

Had I not provided for Alanna and Kresten, I would not have had to watch her die over the course of two and a half years. Had Andy not provided for the entire Office, they would not have had a rope with which to hang him. In effect they hung themselves and blamed the easy target. And as is the case for the Hanged Man, he pretends that the rope he tied for himself is a terrible burden and not a position of power. Andy did not hang himself. He simply supplied the rope with which they hung him. And they treated it as a burden.

Apotheosis: Anger and Innocence.

Now: don’t get me wrong. I am not blaming Erin. Nor am I blaming Andy. I’m not even blaming DWIGHT. I never blamed Alanna. Kresten was a sociopath, so no one really NEEDS to blame him, if you catch my drift.

Most of the problems both inside and outside of the Office can be ascribed to what Alasdair MacIntyre called Emotivism: the tendency for people in a society to make decisions not based on virtue but on feeling. The effect of this is that society itself is reduced to a projection. We do not HAVE a society. We have instead what an other Capricorn named Alan Watts called a Mob.

Yet feelings are facts, even if they do not of themselves dictate ethics. Emotions are powerful, and they are ends in and of themselves. The goal is not to eliminate or to deny them. But they must be expressed in the context of a moral framework which is Universal rather than Relative. And we must be careful not to abuse the LANGUAGE of Morality, as Oscar does, in its actual absence. This might all so require us to regress and to withdraw into Nature, where the conscious thought of virtue disappears and only the felt presence of morality endures. Andrew Bernard grows up. He sheds his pretense, and he becomes a Man of Tao.  His fellows remain entrenched in merely the symbolic expression of desires. Even at his most poetic and quixotic one cannot help but to FEEL that He Means It. It’s not easy to speak the Truth. It IS easy to flatter.

What will redeem him is what first condemned him: his Anger. If the story is a tale of samsara then Andy Bernard will be redeemed by its cyclical narrative as surely as the water cycle purifies our water. Sure: he may remain acidic. But we might yet play in the rain. When it starts raining dogs again.

Andy’s anger is his repressed Virtue. When he first punches a hole in the Office wall, it is because he stands up for himself against Jim and Pam, as well as the entire crowd of naysayers whom he has fair reason to suspect. When he punches the same wall towards the end of Season Eight, he stands up to the corrupt leadership that he does his best not to become whilst still attempting to emulate its example. It is only in the wake of that rage that he manages to surmount his infertility and to satisfy his girlfriend Erin. If that is not sufficient to illustrate the Virtue of Masculinity, what is?

Erin’s virtue is her Innocence. It works against her when she lives in blissful ignorance of Human Nature in the status quo. It threatens her most intimate relationships when she receives too much information and stops short of hearing the entire story. Erin lives then in an existential haze. She is a moral middle man. She is at that point too disillusioned to return to her previous incarnation. Yet she is too wary and weary to follow the discomforting facts down to their final destination: the redemption of those whom we ought to love but whom we love to hate.

Dm.A.A.