NameMichael Scott
CompanyDunder Mifflin Paper Company
CategoryThe Merlin Award
Executive SummaryIt's tricky to parse out the precise moment that liking The Office went from totally normal to the definitive feature of people's entire personalities, but it's no question that meteoric rise can be attributed to the one and only Michael Scott, the US's bubbly answer to The Office UK's insufferably dickish David Brent. Nobody could have delivered the same doltish childlike buffoonery of being an indisputably terrible manager, prone to calling unnecessary conference room meetings and being casually racist, while, ultimately, being a decent enough boss who genuinely cares about his employees like Steve Carrell did, cementing not only his comedic legacy as one of the most memed and beloved small-screen characters around, but the entire show's fairytale white-collar office dynamic of a dysfunctionally obsolete paper company. In a way, Michael Scott is both one of the best TV characters of this century and also its most irritating: It was instantly apparent that the show wouldn't work without him around after Carrell left in the seventh season, but he left behind troves of material that all those Office megafans won't soon let you forget.
DescriptionMichael Gary Scott (born April 4th, 1965) is a fictional character in NBC's The Office, portrayed by Steve Carell. Michael is the main protagonist of the series, serving as the Regional Manager of the Scranton branch of a paper distribution company, known as Dunder Mifflin Inc. from seasons 1 through 7. However, he temporarily leaves Dunder Mifflin to form the Michael Scott Paper Company with Pam Beesly and Ryan Howard toward the end of the 5th season and shares a co-managerial position with Jim Halpert during a 6th season arc from "The Meeting" to "The Manager and the Salesman". Towards the end of the 7th season, he proposes to HR representative Holly Flax and moves to Colorado to take care of her aging parents, leaving the manager position to Deangelo Vickers in "Goodbye, Michael", to Andy Bernard in season 8, after Vickers becomes brain dead, and ultimately to Dwight Schrute in season 9. For his performance, Carell received significant critical acclaim and was nominated six consecutive times for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series as well as winning a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series (Musical or Comedy) in 2006.