The Office (UK) · Season 3 · Episode 2 · 27 December 2003
S3E2 The Office Special - Part 2
THE MOMENT The note in the taxi. The moment the series had been patiently building toward for two years and two specials - and Gervais and Merchant knew exactly when to let it arrive.
The second Christmas Special delivers the moments the entire series withheld. Brent faces the camera one final time as a man who has learned something - modest, painful, human. The Tim and Dawn resolution lands because the preceding fourteen episodes refused to give it away cheaply.
Full episode analysis below. Spoiler-light verdict above.
Updated
The Office (UK) Christmas Special Part 2 aired December 27, 2003 on BBC One. Metacritic holds the Specials at 98 from 19 critics. The show won the Golden Globe for Best Comedy Series in January 2004, the first British comedy to do so in 25 years. The Special concludes the entire series with two arrivals: Brent finding a version of grace in front of the camera that has documented his humiliation across three years, and Tim and Dawn's resolution delivered via a note read in a taxi rather than a declaration in a podium speech. Gervais and Merchant understood what the series had withheld and the precise moment to release it. The Christmas party sequence is the rare comedy scene that earns its warmth entirely through the refusal to deliver it cheaply in the preceding fourteen episodes.