david brent the office season 1 episode 1

The man Jennifer is referring to is emphatically not the one we’re presented with.

task or extolling the virtues of ‘team individuality’ (his unorthodox management style).

It’s a jarring exchange, because the Brent we know is fluent in business-ese – whether it’s plotting a graph of people vs. When Brent starts to talk about streamlining, his boss Jennifer Taylor-Clark says: “I’m sorry David that sounds like management speak to me, and I know you hate that.” Brent agrees. If Brent was always so bad, so terribly inept, how did he maintain his for so long within such a demanding company?Įxhibit B: He Actually Hates Management SpeakĮpisode 1.2, Work Experience: 14 minutes, 53 seconds. Brent himself is let go after a single verbal warning. Over the course of two series, Wernham Hogg shows itself to be pretty ruthless employer it isn’t shy about making cutbacks and redundancies. Once.īut what I think is more telling is how he’s retained his position for those eight years. But in the first episode we learn that Brent has been in the paper business for 12 years, and eight of those have been at Wernham Hogg as General Manager.Īfter only four years in the industry, he netted an executive position at one of the largest paper merchants in Berkshire. So what? Plenty of inept people rise to lofty positions, especially in small companies. So here’s the evidence, carefully assembled upon repeated viewing, that David Brent wasn’t always a total plonker.Įpisode 1.1, Downsize: 1 minute, 52 seconds.ĭavid Brent is the General Manager of Wernham Hogg. I watch The Office regularly, and I’ve begun to notice moments, snippets of dialogue, and incongruous details which allude to a different David – the man who existed before the cameras began to roll and the boss who was once competent, professional, even liked. We want to give them the biggest plonker of the year.” Yes, there happened to be footage of him accidentally headbutting a woman, but Brent sees himself more as a victim – “We want a scapegoat. He’s positive that he was misrepresented by the final edit: “They filmed hours of material, and most of it is a good bloke doing a good job at work”. That’s how David Brent regards the BBC’s documentary series The Office, which brought him mild fame and professional ruin.īrent’s accusation comes at the beginning of the Christmas Special.

David brent the office season 1 episode 1