Some fans have long grumbled that the air was let out of The Office when Jim and Pam got together at the end of season three. And while the show admittedly struggled through some growing pains in the writer's strike-shortened season four, the season five DVD set proves that there's still a lot of comedy to mine in the offices of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, and the show was always bigger than the will-they-or-won't-they tension between the sweet receptionist and the directionless salesman.

In fact, the writers of The Office cleverly took the focus off Jim and Pam this season by offering a new couple to root for: hapless boss Michael Scott (Steve Carell, who's really long overdue an Emmy for this role by now) and HR geek Holly Flax (Amy Ryan, the best guest star ever). After several seasons of watching Michael take abuse from his deranged ex-lover/former boss, Jan (Melora Hardin, who only makes one brief, typically insane appearance this season), we're as thrilled as he is to meet a woman who can't possibly be anything but his soulmate. She beatboxes to his impromptu raps, eagerly joins him in conference room skits, and sees the good heart in him that his staffers have always failed to notice behind his ignorance and obnoxiousness. We're just as heartbroken as Michael is when the suits at the corporate office interfere and banish her to an office in New Hampshire that, according to Pam, "is only accessible by cross-country skis."

On a lesser show, once the producers learned they couldn't afford to keep an Oscar-nominee like Amy Ryan around anymore, that would've been the last we'd heard of Michael's beloved Holly. But not The Office. This relationship, and its tragic ending, changes Michael Scott and fuels his actions for the rest of the season. Carell gives some of his best performances in the show's history as it finally sinks in on Michael just how much of his life he's given to Dunder Mifflin, and just how much they've taken from him. By the time corporate finally gets around to replacing Jan with the no-nonsense Charles Miner (Idris Elba), Michael's ready to snap. And when he does snap, the result is a storyline that forever changes the dynamic at Dunder Mifflin.

But just because Michael and Holly are the new Jim and Pam (John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer, who both also could use an Emmy for their efforts; at the very least, Krasinski deserves to have his name spelled correctly on the DVD packaging), it doesn't mean the old Jim and Pam are forgotten. Pam is off to art school in New York City in the season premiere, and poor Jim is so lost without her he hits the road to propose to her in a scene of breathtaking romance that will surely be watched over and over by the PB&J shippers. The couple make a sweet, subtle transition from making moon eyes at each other from across the reception desk to building a life together, and it results in some great, heart-tugging scenes throughout the season. And to prove love triangles aren't always the best reason to watch a show, the Dwight/Angela/Andy entanglement proves to be a weak spot of the season. Rainn Wilson's cartoonish performance as Dwight continues to disrupt the show's realism and makes it harder for the wonderful Angela Kinsey and Ed Helms (who gets his face on the front of the DVD cover, now that he's a movie star) to shine when playing off him. Although every member of the cast (excluding Fischer and Krasinski) has their weak moments of outlandishness, Wilson is the only player in the Office stable who has yet to bring any true touches of humanity to his character. The moral complexities of his affair with Angela would've been a good place to have tried.

DVD extras include a plethora of commentary tracks and deleted scenes, a gag real, an Academy of Arts and Sciences celebration of the show's 100th episode, and the webisodes NBC uses to keep fans interested over the summer. Five seasons later, we're left wondering why this documentary crew is still watching the happenings at the Scranton branch of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Co., but we're glad the show is still giving us new reasons to tune in.

The Office - Season Five is available now on DVD.

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