The Office is one of the most popular sitcoms of all-time and is beloved by fans all over the world. Two of the most popular characters on the show were Jim and Pam. These characters started out as good friends and as the seasons progressed, they fell in love and got married. If you’ve seen the show, then you know the ninth and final season was pretty turbulent for these characters. Jim accepted a job in Philadelphia which left him apart from Pam. While their relationship was strained, they eventually pulled through and stayed together.

In a new book by Andy Greene called The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s, the show’s writers and actors talk about how they actually wanted to have Jim and Pam split up while eventually getting back together in the final episode. As Jim actor John Krasinski noted, it could have made for an interesting dynamic.

“My whole pitch to Greg [Daniels] was that we’ve done so much with Jim and Pam, and now, after marriage and kids, there was a bit of a lull there,” Krasinki said to Greene. “For me it was, ‘Can you have this perfect relationship go through a split and keep it the same?’ which of course you can’t. And I said to Greg, ‘It would be really interesting to see how that split will affect two people that you know so well.’”

Had this storyline taken place, numerous fans would have been in shambles. Luckily for the hearts of many, the show finished on a happy note for all of the characters, specifically Jim and Pam.

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James Blake has some words for anyone who wants to come for his girlfriend, Jameela Jamil, after she was widely accused of faking various health problems for attention. James took to social media to address the situation and validate Jameela's medical issues, and to tell everyone to back off his lady.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

Courtney Kemp and 50 Cent turned Starz into a contending cable channel with Power. The nation became obsessed with Ghost, and his struggle to attain power at any cost. For the last two months, fans of Power have been piecing together clues to try and discover the final betrayal. Who shot Ghost? The answer to that question was finally revealed this weekend. The signs have always been there, and we've suggested multiple times that Tariq would be the killer. Courtney Kemp has admitted that Shakespearian themes influence her writing, and there is nothing more Shakespearian than a son murdering his father. Patricide is as classic as poetry itself. 

David Schwimmer, who played Ross on the 90s sitcom, Friends, proposed a new idea recently that has since earned him some serious backlash. David addressed the show's controversial nature and the criticism it has received since it originally aired, which has included the fact that the six main characters and most of the secondary characters were all played by white actors. While David feels that the show was definitely groundbreaking in many ways, such as how it handled "casual sex, protected sex, gay marriage and relationships," he does acknowledge that it was behind on plenty of other social issues.

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“Maybe there should be an all-black Friends or an all-Asian Friends,” David proposed. “But I was well aware of the lack of diversity and I campaigned for years to have Ross date women of colour. One of the first girlfriends I had on the show was an Asian-American woman, and later I dated an African-American woman. That was a very conscious push on my part.” While he likely thought his suggestion to reboot the show with a cast made up entirely of people of colour sounded like a good idea, many folks have pointed out that a "black Friends" already basically exists: it's called Living Single, and it aired over a year before Friends did. Living Single followed six twenty-something male and female characters played by Queen Latifah, Kim Coles, Erika Alexander, Kim Fields, T.C. Carson, and John Henton, as they navigated the single life in 1990s NYC. Sound familiar?

The Wendy Williams Show has been on the air for nearly twelve whole years so for the host to say that she’s never accidentally passed gas while filming is pretty unrealistic. She’s bound to have conveniently forgotten about a time or two when she let one rip on her famous purple chair, hoping that nobody caught on. The star’s fans were all over her last week when she seemingly allowed an audible squeak to exit her body, lifting up one leg casually and pausing her speech to complete the gas-passing. In her own accord though, Wendy says that things have been taken out of proportion and the sound was actually coming from backstage. Riiiiiight…

“Let me tell you something right now, okay?” started Wendy Williams as she explained “fartgate” on a recent episode of her show according to DailyMail. “I don’t lean over like this to release a fart, I lean over like this because it’s comfortable. If I sit [straight up] all the time, it’s heavy on my spine. I like to release my hips and lean. I’ve been doing this for 11 years on this show. I have never farted once on this show. As a matter of fact, I barely fart, you know why? Gas gets released several different ways and mine is belching because all I do is talk.”

A producer on the program appeared on stage to back up his boss, explaining that they were conducting a science experiment backstage but, because they didn’t have the proper equipment to fill up a fish tank, a noise was being exhibited from behind the stage and it sounded as though Wendy was letting one rip. Uh-huh. Sure.

Do you think this is a convenient excuse or is Wendy actually telling the truth?

It has been four years since Lil Dicky delivered his debut album Professional Rapper, which featured appearances from Snoop Dogg, Fetty Wap, Rich Homie Quan, T-Pain, Jace, and more. Toeing the line between comedic and serious, Dicky’s unique penmanship and confident flow added credibility to a project that might have stumbled in lesser hands. And yet, upon its release, LD seemed to shift gears altogether. Now, with an original television series called Dave set to premiere in March, Dicky has come through to bless his fans with a lengthy update on his sophomore release. 

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“I just wanted every Dickhead to know that even though I’m putting out a real doozy of a TV show in March, I’ve never stopped rapping. And Lil Dicky the musical artist is far from done,” he begins. “I know that it’s been about four and a half years since I’ve put an album out, and that’s much longer than either you or I would’ve hoped for. It must be annoying, I get it. If drake took that long, I’d be so sad! And I’m sorry for that. I don’t like letting you down. But as it turns out, it takes me a long ass time to make the ideal body of work.”

He continues, explaining that his perfectionist nature has prevented him from delivering a rushed product and vowing that the ends will more than justify the means. “You will hear it and love it and be proud of me, and less annoyed with me,” vows Dicky. “But I gotta finish it and then roll it out right. You only get so many cracks at doing what I’m about to do…I can’t wait till it’s out so I can get back to the music that made you care about me in the first place. I’m an elite, world class rapper, and I look forward to proving that to the world, and validating all of you who believed that I had it in me in the first place.”

A bold claim, and one that surely bodes well for fans of L.D’s approach to bars. While we don’t exactly know when he plans on wrapping the untitled album, it’s good to know he’s getting back to business. But first, there’s Dave. Are you excited in catching the fruits of Lil Dicky’s labor, be it on TV or your favorite streaming service?

Earlier this week, Michelle Obama revealed that she will be releasing her first TV series on Instagram later this year, as reported by Complex.

The series will focus on the journey of four college students making their way through their freshman year. She will be making the show through her initiative Reach Higher, which helps students “get to and through college.”

She explains the premise in an announcement post on Instagram: “The first year of college is exciting, but also a little nerve-racking. As a first-generation college student myself, I know how intimidating it can be to try to navigate through a new place and make new friends, all while trying to figure out who you are and who you want to be. That’s why I’m so excited that @reachhigher is teaming up with @attndotcom to share the stories of four first-year college students: Robert, Linette, Regan, and Haseeb. Can’t wait for you all to meet them and learn more about what taking that leap really feels like, day in and day out. Stay tuned!”

Michelle and her husband Barack will also be producing an upcoming documentary for Netflix titled Crip Camp, which is set to release this year as well.

The reddit board for The Sopranos is still going strong. If you didn’t know any better, you might assume that the show is still on air for all of the activity and debate. Certain debates never die— like the one about the final scene. Other debates fixate on the likability of characters or the ‘deservingness’ of certain deaths. These fictional characters are dissected as if they are historical figures and the effort that Sopranos scholars put into proving their correctness is often doctoral worthy.

A great number of the posts are simply admiration and appreciation. Watching the show to examine its craft is a very different exercise than watching it for enjoyment, but it’s an exercise that is duly rewarded. It was just a few weeks ago that someone pointed out how talented Michael Imperioli is for being able to do such a convincing job ‘acting badly’ as Christopher. I returned to the “Acting for Playwrights” scene and, sure enough, I was impressed anew at the incredible quality of the show. If you watch closely, you’ll always be rewarded.

Michael Imperioli and Drea De Matteo pose in ‘The Sopranos’ press image – Hulton Archive/Getty Images

It’s remarkable that twelve years after the finale aired audiences are still discussing the ins and outs of the series. This type of staying power in a world where shows come and go, hardly making a ripple, speaks to scale of the series’ achievement. The Sopranos wasn’t just a landmark in quality—it changed television’s stature in the media landscape. The way television pervades culture today is in large part due to what The Sopranos proved a TV series was capable of doing.

One of the most graspable changes in television culture is the vast amount of journalism produced on the subject. The Sopranos’ nationwide fandom proved that there existed the kind of interest and enthusiasm in a television series that could support what would eventually evolve into an entire industry of television journalists. The amount of TV coverage we’ve come to expect is a direct consequence of the Beatlemania-evel of obsession with The Sopranos: there is recap, opinion pieces, analysis, and even theory. The level of investment that audiences poured into a work of fiction was unprecedented and their consumption of journalistic coverage was greedy.

James Gandolfini shooting ‘The Sopranos’ on location, 2007 – Bobby Bank/WireImage/Getty Images

The same way that sports journalists specialize by following certain teams in-depth, culture journalists now watch television shows as part of their jobs. I was faced with an embarrassment of riches when I wanted to understand why Westworld was such a big deal (without watching it). There existed episode recap guides from virtually every entertainment hub. I had the luxury of picking the guide by the writer whose voice I liked most and then I got to enjoy the show in prose form until it bored me and I had the intrusive thought, “Not as good as The Sopranos.”

The Sopranos is an unfair bar, though. It struck a balance between commercial and high-brow that made it irresistible. On the commercial end there’s a steady diet of mob fare: murder, blackmail, violence, toxic masculinity. On the high-brow end, there’s the degradation of Tony’s integrity from questionable to unforgivable and complex moral questions every single character must grapple with. But under David Chase, even the commercial is not really commercial. After reading a number of Chase’s interviews, I don’t think it was out of a generosity of spirit or faith in audiences that guided him to create something heartier than your average mob story. He simply didn’t care if audiences didn’t get it or if execs thought it was too intellectualized.

HBO execs tried to talk David Chase out of having Tony murder someone in the season 1 episode “College.” Chase held his ground despite the huge fear that the episode would make Tony too ‘unlikeable’ and doom the series. “College” went on to become one of the most lauded episodes in the entire show. By not pandering to the audience, by not hewing blindly to tried and true formulas, the writers demonstrated that good storytelling trumps all else.   

It’s not just that The Sopranos has “something for everyone,” but that it converts you on the topics you may have believed you didn’t care about. Maybe you went into the series thinking that violence repelled you or that domestic squabbles were uninteresting. The series made you just as invested in Tony and Carmela’s marriage as in who’s talking to the FBI. You were invested in the status of Meadow’s soul. In Chrissy’s fate. It’s difficult to be indifferent to any of the characters because all of their problems are presented as equally important and rarely does anyone’s conflict feel like “B” story.

Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Edie Falco attend the ‘The Sopranos’ 20th Anniversary Panel Discussion – Mike Coppola/WireImage/Getty Images

The Sopranos has ushered in an era where television is such a force that is constitutes a pastime. Not only is it extremely normal to ask what shows someone watches, but is it a common practice to list shows amongst Interests in dating profiles. Think about how strange that is for a moment. Television shows have become part of our identities to such a degree that we include them in mini-biographies of ourselves. Alongside “fitness”, “trying new restaurants”, and “music”, you could easily find The Sopranos.

It’s a testament to the greatness of the show that people claim it as their favorite in an effort to showcase their tastes. Taste is something to be shown off and by declaring partiality to The Sopranos, it says something about one’s artistic inclinations. It speaks specifically to an affinity for a certain brand of dark humor and an appreciation of sophisticated storytelling. Shows with equal thoughtfulness are often considered alienating or “slow.” People criticize The Wire for being too indifferent to the natural attention span and effort that audiences are willing to put in to a new show.   

The Sopranos is definitely rewarding more quickly, but I believe the heart of its success can be summed up by something that a professor once explained to me. He said the difference between a commercial book and a literary book is that the commercial one gives the reader what she wants, whereas the literary one provides something that the reader did not realize she wanted. The Sopranos avoided falling into mob clichés and predictable plotlines by ignoring what focus groups might conclude and what audiences would claim to want. By disregarding whether or not a plot would ‘perform well’ in a viewership sense, writers could prioritize craft. What they created was something that surprised and captured an enormous audience and television writers have been striving to recreate the magic of The Sopranos ever since.  

Post-Goodfellas and The Godfather, the golden era of mafia stories seemed to be over. But The Sopranos reinvented the genre by modernizing and dimensionalizing it. The Sopranos fueled imaginations and demonstrated what television has the potential to be. It was challenging, provocative, moving, and unflaggingly entertaining.

Steven Van Zandt, James Gandolfini and Tony Sirico in ‘The Sopranos’ (Year 3 Still) – Hulton Archive/Getty Images