The Office: 10 Best Characters Who Appeared After Season One

This character shouldn’t have worked at all. Creating a female equivalent to Michael Scott was fraught with danger, and then embarking on a seasons-long love story between the two soul mates could have been the kind of saccharine indulgence that kills many a sitcom.

Instead, the Holly and Michael arc became one of the latter years’ great delights, through a combination of patience, the performers’ immense chemistry, and the details and effort put into the character. Holly has some Michael Scott qualities, but there’s far more to her than that, an empathy and a kindness that rubs off on Michael.

Holly, as brilliantly portrayed by Amy Ryan, wasn’t devised as a long-time character and ultimately Michael’s wife, but from a few episodes in it’s apparent there’s much more to her than a simple foil, and it’s so easy to root for the pair ending up together. Indeed even as the show starts to decline, the final episodes surrounding their love story produce some highlight reel material.

Holly’s allowed to be funny as well as real, always hitting that sweet spot of believability that makes most of the best Office characters sing.