Darrell made the big time, like suit-and-limo big time. Nellie found her baby (albeit via illegal and immoral means, but sometimes you have to just go with it). The headline, of course, willĭwight and Angela got married. And, as the show that pioneered confessional comedy, milk your right to let the characters speak from their hearts, through the camera, and right into ours.

Give everyone what they want-the characters and us.

The task that fell to these writers was enormous: How do you send off such a large number of characters in a way that makes us believe they're all at peace? How do you make sure everyone gets to be perfectly themselves, one more time, with just an hour and 15 minutes to work with? How do you make people laugh, cry, and remember why this show was so special without getting bogged down in the maudlin stuff? Their overarching solution was: keep it simple. But even if you missed the cast's happy day of dancing and riding in parade convertibles (not to mention the blatant-tearjerker shots of fireworks reflected in Steve Carell's glasses), you probably caught up to us snifflers pretty quickly as the very last episode of The Office unfolded. If you watched the Office retrospective that led up to last night's finale, you didn't stand a chance at not crying-I think we all left our hearts in Scranton.

The office finale