8 Excellent TV Series & Characters That Ceased To Exist In 2013

7. The Office (American Version)

A long way both geographically and emotionally from the scabrously black tone and sensibility of the British original, the American version of Ricky Gervais's legendary comedy/pseudo-documentary series The Office still managed to carve out a distinct place for itself. The ninth and final season of the NBC sitcom mostly managed to right the ship from the disastrous 8th season, and by the season's end was firing on all cylinders again. Lessons learned: stunt casting (Will Ferrell, James Spader, Catherine Tate) doesn't work, but focusing on story and character development does. The finale episode resolved all the character's story lines in satisfying fashion, with the grossly incompetent employees moving on to better things, like Kevin buying a bar, Nellie becoming a mother to Ryan and Kelly's abandoned love child, and longtime slacker Stanley enjoying his long-awaited retirement in Florida. The long-rumored and denied appearance of former Dunder-Mifflin boss (Scranton Branch) Michael Scott actually happened, showing up at Dwight's wedding to office shrew Angela Martin unexpectedly. His appearance was short but certainly sweet, with Pam's remark that he bought multiple phones to carry all the pictures of his kid being both completely in character and genuinely touching. It's not entirely untrue that the natural conclusion of this version of the show was when Steve Carell left, but at the end The Office had turned into a completely different program all together, focusing on the low-key day to day lives of office sweethearts Jim and Pam Halpert and their baby Cece,, rather than the chaos induced by Michael Scott. And that program was certainly a fine one, no matter how far it had strayed from the original template.