10 Surprising Twist Endings (In TV Shows You Wouldn’t Expect)
6. The Office - Ryan Got The Job!
The Office (US) was a mockumentary about the Pennsylvania-based branch of the Dunder Mifflin paper company led by the jovial but haphazard manager Michael Scott (Steve Carrell). Scott's employees included the uptight Dwight (Rainn Wilson), the office hunk and prankster Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam (Jenna Fischer), the receptionist with the Rolodex to Jim's heart.
In The Job, the final episode of season three: Michael, Jim, and others are all vying for a plum job that has opened up at the corporate office. Viewers spend the entire two-part episode eagerly wondering who the lucky person will be, knowing that it would shake-up the show no matter which of them is promoted.
In the final scene, the bombshell is dropped: Ryan (B.J. Novak) got the job. Ryan, the timid junior employee and former temp who wasn’t even in contention (for all we knew).
Why it's surprising: The Office was a show all about the predictable banalities of the workplace. Rarely would it throw a curveball and when it did, it very much threw the audience.
Not to mention the fact that The Office was a show built upon schadenfreude: Viewers enjoyed seeing Dwight get brutally pranked, Michael ruining the days of his beleaguered workers and ruining the futures of high school students he'd promised to send to college. For once we see something highly fortunate happen to a low-level employee of all people! Surprise.