Jim & Pam: Celebrating Our Favorite TV Couple

by Julian Spivey
Jim and Pam. Like a modern day Romeo and Juliet, but without the death. They don’t even need last names anymore and you can’t have one without the other. Quite possibly the greatest couple in television’s wonderful history they make us all jealous and long to be like them.  
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Some would argue that the heart of “The Office” lied within Steve Carell’s utterly awesome Michael Scott, the Scranton branch Regional Manager at the Dunder Mifflin, Inc. paper company, but the heart of “The Office” is Jim and Pam.

Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) quickly became the cutest and best relationship on television almost immediately as “The Office” hit the airwaves in the spring of 2005, even before they were technically in a relationship. The best relationships, and seemingly almost every television relationship, starts with that almost disgustingly cute will-they-or-won’t-they phase. Jim and Pam had the best will-they-or-won’t-they moments of any TV couple in memory with the across the office glances and the inside jokes, all true to real life relationships.

Jim and Pam were simply meant to be together from day one – Jim knew that too, as he sweetly put in the season six episode “Niagara” where the two are married: “I bought the boat tickets the day I saw that YouTube video. I knew we'd need a backup plan. The boat was actually plan C. The church was plan B. And plan A was marrying her a long, long time ago. Pretty much the day I met her.”

Jim and Pam are the ultimate Hollywood fairytale, which is why seemingly everybody who fell in love with this series fell in love with this couple. Everybody wants to live the fairytale. This aspect of the relationship between the two is why they’re probably the cutest TV couple of all time, but not the most realistic; for my money I’d give that honor to Eric and Tami Taylor (Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton) from the acclaimed NBC drama “Friday Night Lights” – but then again that was a drama and “The Office” is a comedy (hence keeping things light).

Despite the fairytale romance of the relationship the writers of “The Office” did decide to throw some real-life problems at the couple in this final season with Jim focusing more on a new job offer than his relationship with Pam – leading the couple to fights and hardships, which fans hadn’t been accustomed to seeing. This, honestly, kind of produced mixed reactions – it’s nice to see the relationship undergo and overcome troubles, but dammit this is Jim and Pam and this stuff isn’t supposed to happen to Jim and Pam. However, some of the down times the two faced this season led to one of their most memorable moments at the end of “Paper Airplane” when Jim is leaving for his new job in Philadelphia after a big fight (by their standards, at least) when Pam runs out to the taxi Jim is about to leave in and the two have their little romantic cliché (but absolutely lovable) moment of “I still love you and always will.”

One wonders how Jim and Pam will ride off into the sunset in tonight’s series finale, after Pam realized in the most recent episode just how much Jim’s new position meant to him I’m sure she’ll relent and the two will move to Philly, but one thing is certain their beautiful romance over nine years on television will live on forever.

Jim and Pam – a love story for the ages. Who knew a quirky sitcom about office workers selling paper could be so damn beautiful?      ​