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Look, I’ll be watch­ing every new episode of The Office this sea­son. I’ll prob­a­bly act kind of reluc­tant and sur­prised, after­wards, when I invari­ably say, “Yeah, it was pretty good!” That opin­ion will be slightly more pre­dictable and slightly less reli­able than Thefoodreviewer’s take on “Pizza Rolls.” I’ll end up buy­ing the sea­son on DVD. I’ll stay faith­ful in the same way my dad is faith­ful to the Barney-less episodes of The Andy Grif­fith Show and even May­berry, R.F.D. Those rem­nants give him a sense of the orig­i­nal mas­ter­piece, loy­alty lost on me until now. Mr. Lieber­stein knows about peo­ple like me, as well as obses­sive “Jam” “ship­pers,” Tal­ly­heads, and, I don’t know, other weirdos who, for one rea­son or another, will never be able to just walk away from it. Mr. Lieber­stein takes us for granted.

So, he went ahead and hired James Spader to play a man called Robert Cal­i­for­nia. And he decided that Robert Cal­i­for­nia, in spite of his revolt­ing inter­view, is the kind of per­son Jim Halpert, et al., would hire, and fur­ther­more, the kind of per­son who could talk his way from Regional Man­ager to C.E.O. in a few days. Mr. Lieber­stein is brash enough to tell us over the sum­mer, as if to taunt us, like, “What are you gonna do about it, cry like a lit­tle baby?”

Mr. Lieber­stein got such a thrill, he had to keep it going. So he went to iTunes, checked out the “Top Charts” for the genre “N/A,” and con­tacted the top artist. Unfor­tu­nately, talks with Michael Bublé stalled. Mr. Lieber­stein didn’t want to play games, so he got Josh Groban instead. You know Josh Groban, right? He sings that song your grand­mother thinks is “just so pretty.” Tell granny there’s more good news! That nice man from The 7th Heaven was also cast to be on The Office! He’ll play A Con­ti­nu­ity Error Of Andy’s Father.

In its salad days, The Office existed in this world, where Carol Bur­nett was Carol Bur­nett (she semi-famously requested to play Michael Scott’s mother, but Greg Daniels semi-famously passed) and Kathy Bates was Kathy Bates. That this-worldliness of it was spe­cial. It wasn’t just unique and fun, it reflected the cul­tural fas­ci­na­tion with this-world. We obsess over real­ity TV, con­sume user-generated con­tent, and demand all access all the time. The Office under­stood that fas­ci­na­tion bet­ter than any­one. When Jim kissed Pam at the end of “Casino Night,” it wasn’t just excit­ing the way other TV kisses can be. It was thrilling, because they didn’t know that the cam­eras were rolling and we were watch­ing. The impli­ca­tion is that they had the poten­tial to know that. That’s a pow­er­ful impli­ca­tion. It was a pow­er­ful TV moment.

The Office is weaker now, because it’s other-worldly, TV-worldly. It will always be funny, at least to those of us who’ve lived with it for so many sea­sons, but we know the magic is gone. Maybe James Spader will prove to be a good addi­tion. I’ve got my doubts, but The Office has been over­com­ing my doubts since I first scoffed at the idea of an Amer­i­can remake of the BBC orig­i­nal. Still, I know he can’t restore the magic. The spell is bro­ken, and he helped break it. The Office will always be a funny TV show. It seems like it used to be more than that.