An Open Letter to Jim Halpert
Hi, Jim. I don’t know if you know me, but I’ve been watching you for a while now. You seem like an okay dude, but you also seem like you could use a wake-up call. Consider this to be that.
I’ve been waiting. I’ve been waiting for you to realize that pulling pranks on Dwight and your other co-workers was fun and cute six years ago, but now you’re a fucking adult with a wife and a kid and another kid on the way, and I mean is anyone really falling for the “this is how I stay youthful” crap?
I’ve been waiting for you to realize that pulling pranks doesn’t keep you youthful, it keeps you an asshole. And you like to pretend like you’re a nerdy/geeky guy, even though you spend an hour every morning in front of the mirror trying to make your hair look like you just rolled out of bed, but you know what, Jim? The people who pulled pranks in high school weren’t the nerdy/geeky guys, they were the jocks, either pulling pranks on the nerds because they were bullies or pulling pranks on their pre-frat friends because they couldn’t handle their obviously homoerotic feelings for each other. So either you’re a jock in disguise, or you were so damaged by the jocks in high school that now you’re a thirty-something geek who is fixated on pulling pranks everyday, because that’s the only way you think someone can be cool.
I mean, what if you just stopped, Jim? I mean what if you just started doing your job and raising your kids and loving your wife and put away these idiotic pranks? Are you afraid that you’d see how empty your life is? How unfulfilling your career and your marriage is? Are you afraid you’d see that you are a just a cog in a machine, and not even a cog in a worthwhile machine, but a cog in a paper distribution machine? You’re in a dying industry, Jim, and goddamn I hope it can hold its death rattle long enough for you to raise your kids and retire unfulfilled.
Maybe you’re afraid your wife won’t love you anymore if you start being honest with yourself. Did she only fall for you because of your pranks? Maybe she did, and if you stop then she’ll stop, and then you’ll be alone again. God, Jim, your marriage is such a sham. Two people don’t have to be that cute all the time. It’s so fucking forced. If you really loved each other, every once and a while you could just chill out and fucking be with each other. Enjoy each other’s company. If you can’t let your charm guard down in front of your wife, then what’s the fucking reason for the partnership? The point you stop insisting your relationship have all the tropes of a Seinfeld episode is the point where you can honestly start loving each other. Only what if you realize then that you never really did love each other? Ah, there’s the rub.
Because you had such a healthier relationship with that Parks and Rec girl. You did. It wasn’t some cutesy co-dependent bullshit, it was a fucking relationship, Jim. And that scared the shit out of you, and you retreated to the safety of your “youth” and your pranks and your flirty office romance that represents all of the regrets in your life. At least Dwight knows what he wants, at least Dwight is honest with himself and the world. You hide behind engineered hairdos and pranks and self-aware goofy stares at cameras.
Do you think that makes you better than everyone else? That you can look at a camera and with one expression you can judge everyone else? If you’re always looking at the cameras and you’re never looking at yourself, then you’re never gonna be more than what you are now, Jim.
At least Michael Scott got out. You always looked at him as a fool, you constantly judged him for stumbling through life, but you know what you call stumbling? The rest of us call living. By making those mistakes week-in and week-out, Michael Scott might have become the butt of your jokes, but he also became a better man. He found love, and he got real meaning from his job and his friends and his life, and then he knew when to move on to the next thing. Jim, you’re not going to know when to move on. You’re still acting like you’re twelve, and not in a pranky-fun way, but in a way that is just going to get sadder and sadder. You’re going to start taking it out on your wife, because she is the closest person in your life—which is doubly sad because you never even really let her in, did you? And then you’re going to start taking it out on your kids, insisting they play the sports you never did, they pull the pranks you never did, they live the life you never lived.
But in the end Jim, when you’re too old to play pranks, and everyone else has moved on, you’re gonna give one last sarcastic look at that camera, and maybe you’ll feel like you had the last laugh. But in reality? You died alone.
—Adam Dorsey
P.S.: I liked you better when your name was Tim and you were British.
