Chosen One of the Day: Three Jokers on The Office

Nearly 12 years ago, on Season 5, Episode 6 of the hit NBC show The Office, they told a painfully prescient joke. 

Although, it was also current. Prescient and current. 

In the cold open, it’s halloween at Dunder Mifflin and everyone’s dressed up: a Raggedy Anne here, a Carrie Bradshaw there, an Uncle Sam weirdly enough… then the door swings open and Creed walks in dressed in a terrifyingly accurate version of Heath Ledger’s Joker. 

Let’s put a sssssmile on that face, he says inches from Oscar’s, uh, face. Oscar looks like every human-person I know when confronted with the reality that is the angry disaffected white man™ in a face full of haphazard clown makeup. Then Kevin busts up and guess what, he’s also the joker. Obviously not as well done. But he’d been up since 4, damn it. 

The real kicker is seeing that of course Dwight has also dressed as the Joker. The perfection of having those three characters — Creed (creepy weirdo), Kevin (sexist weirdo), and Dwight (... I mean you know) — dress as the Dark Knight’s nemesis? My biggest complaint is: too real. I went to Comic-Con that year, I remember. I’ll always remember. 

It was a good joke in 2008, and I think the only difference of this episode airing in 2020 is that maybe Toby would also dress up as Joaquin Phoenix’s sad sack Joker and they could get a real street fight going about who deserved to wear the suit.