TITLE: The Office: Character Tier List(F-B)
SUBTITLE: Wherein I rank the major and minor cast of my favorite show
AUTHOR: Peter Banks
DATE: 2025-05-28
URL: https://peterbanks.org/essays/the-office-character-tier-listf-b
SOURCE: https://peteribanks.substack.com/p/the-office-character-tier-listf-b

Before I jump into the tier list two things. First, this is the second part of an essay series on the show The Office, you can find the first part here. Second, I want to explain my rankings a little. Ratings go from S–F, with S being the highest—I have no idea what the etymology for this is, but it is standard practice. Here, F characters are people I wish the writers had just never included at all and whose presence I find actively frustrating. D are characters who leave no impression, positive or negative. C are characters that I conditionally like but who I have some major problems with. B are good characters that just lack some X factor or whose quality is too inconsistent to achieve the illustrious status of A and S. A characters are totally awesome, and S are the elite of the elite.

As you can probably tell, I love this show, so even the characters I’m not crazy about—Andy, for example—are still, at worst, “fine,” and their low status is more a reflection of how much I love people higher on the list than truly a distaste for them directly.

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F Tier

Andy

just look at that mug

Andrew Bernard (or Andy, as he’s called) joins the show at the start of Season 3 as a side character in Jim’s adventure to Stamford, Connecticut. He is the only character from that branch to survive the “transfer,” after Scranton absorbs Stamford. (Arguably, you could include Karen Filippelli, but she eventually “leaves” as well.) From the first moment you see him, he is a deeply annoying and distasteful person. In fact, he’s such a frustrating character to watch that I’m legitimately conflicted about where to place him in this ranking.

On one hand, it’s clear the writers intended him to be irritating, and Ed Helms does an incredible job playing the character as written—which, if anything, makes him even more painful to endure. But on the other, he is aggravating to the point that he actively detracts from the show, which is otherwise filled with flawed but endearing characters.

I would go so far as to argue that one of the major reasons The Office declined in later seasons—aside from increasingly becoming a parody of itself—is Andy’s growing prominence in the show. After Michael Scott leaves, Andy settles in as the manager and, in many ways, becomes the central “antagonist”—if you can call it that. The problem is that, unlike the other “annoying” characters in the show, Andy has virtually zero redeeming qualities. If Dwight is idiotic, he is also loyal. If Michael is uncouth, he has a kind heart. If Angela is a hardass, she is also competent. But Andy is just an—well, I think Robert California puts it best: “ineffectual, privileged, effete, soft-penis’d debutante.”

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Of the insults Robert uses, one stands out as the most important: the fact that Andy is “privileged.” Because if there’s one thing the show insists on drilling into you about Andy, it’s his privilege. Incessantly. The writers won’t shut up about it, and neither will the character himself.

There’s a slightly “woke” angle here—Andy is extremely WASP—but it’s best understood through the lens of plebeian morality. Across all times and societies, plebs have a natural distaste for lecturing aristocrats and a natural respect for hierarchies of virtue. Andy is an aristocrat of the lowest personal quality, created in a writers’ room to lecture me about American politics and history. In short, he is useless, and I despise him.

Nellie Bertram

British…

I feel in many ways that Nellie, along with Pete and Clark (up next), represents the decline of the show quite well. What I mean is that Nellie—who is properly introduced in Season 8—feels more like an appendage than a character with any real depth. Unlike the early seasons, where everyone seems like someone you could have easily met in the mid-2000s, Nellie has no parallel in the real world. Or at least, I’ve yet to meet anyone remotely like her.

As a result, every one of her plotlines—of which there are many—feels utterly absurd. Just to name two of the most ridiculous: she oversees the creation of a triangle-shaped iPhone clone (remember, they work for an office supply company), and she steals Andy’s job while he’s away by simply sitting in his office and refusing to leave. If she had been introduced earlier—so I had time to form some emotional connection with the character—perhaps these hijinks could be forgiven. But given that hijinks are all she offers, it’s hard to look past.

Beyond the writing, which is mediocre at best, Catherine Tate—at least by the standards of the show—is simply not very good. I don’t want to place all the blame on her; I’m sure she’s a lovely person. Still, there’s always something a little off about her performance, and she rarely lands a joke.

The only thing keeping her from the very bottom is that her reign as branch manager is limited to just a few episodes. After that, she more or less fades into the background. Like Andy, the show would have been far better off if the writers had left her character on the cutting-room floor.

D Tier

Pete Miller & Clark Green

I had a hard time finding a photo of them together…

I’m going to lump Clark and Pete together because they’re such similar characters. Both show up for the first time in the final season, and both are essentially hollow. I’m not sure what exactly the writers were thinking when they decided to add them—but whatever the intention, it never quite worked out.

Unlike Andy or Nellie, whose presence actively makes the show worse, Clark and Pete just sort of “exist.” If I were trying to pry into the eldritch madness that is a Hollywood writer’s mind, I’d guess they were meant as a kind of replacement for Jim and Dwight. But unlike that duo, Pete and Clark have no real conflict with each other or with anyone else in the ensemble.

Pete ends up dating Erin, which provides a nice conclusion to her story. Clark gets a bizarre plotline with Dwight and Jan, where it’s heavily implied he prostituted himself to close a sale. Beyond those two arcs, they mostly function as props—either supporting someone else’s storyline or filling space in the background.

Frankly, if they’d shown up in a stronger season, they might have integrated well into the show. But they don’t arrive until its worst, and judged solely on what we actually see, they’re a D.

C Tier

Erin Hanon

Erin is the lowest of the C tier—just barely out of D. In Season 5, Michael, Pam, and Ryan start their own paper company—long story—and Erin is brought in to replace Pam as the office receptionist. Unlike Nellie or Andy, who are actively annoying, or Pete and Clark, who are basically pointless, Erin gets a solid amount of screentime and is personally tolerable.

Additionally, Ellie Kemper is a good actress. I remember enjoying her in the first season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, where she plays a very similar character.

What brings Erin down—aside from the illustrious qualities of her peers—is that she’s consistently thrown into the weirdest dating dynamics imaginable. Most notably, she has an on-again, off-again relationship with Andy, though her eventual breakup with him is immensely satisfying to watch.

To summarize: Erin is fine.

Gabe Lewis

I’m not sure what it is about his face…

If you’ve seen the show Silicon Valley, you’ll recognize Gabe. Jared Dunn, also played by Zach Woods, is almost identical in every way. Gabe is introduced later in The Office—toward the end of Season 6—so his actual connection to the real world (i.e., what his job is) feels a little tenuous. (Not nearly to the degree of Nellie’s “special project manager” role, though.) His job title, if I remember correctly, is Coordinator of Emerging Regions, and his duties seem just as confused and meaningless as the title implies. In practice, he serves as the errand boy for Jo Bennett and later Robert California in their roles as CEO of Sabre.

Gabe is a very annoying character, but I think—on balance—he improves the show. Why? Because he’s weird in a sort of mesmerizing way. Every time Gabe is on screen, something bizarre is guaranteed to happen, and because his presence is minimal enough, it rarely becomes overbearing.

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That said, Gabe is never more than a set-piece character—and that’s exactly where he belongs: at the bottom of C tier.

Jo Bennet

those damn dogs

Jo Bennett is the CEO of Sabre, the company that acquires Dunder Mifflin. She oversees the transition from selling only paper to offering a full suite of office-related products—most notably printers and other supplies. In many ways, Jo acts as a gravitational well of sanity, pulling the show back toward normalcy. It’s really after she leaves that everything spirals into absurdity.

Her character also seems like an attempt to reflect the Great Recession. She cleans out inefficiencies—both in the business and in the show’s storytelling—like the bizarre co-manager plotline. The issue, and the reason she doesn’t rank higher, is that her chemistry with Michael and the rest of the ensemble is strictly mid at best. Unlike earlier leadership characters—David Wallace, Ryan Howard, Jan Levinson—Jo doesn’t mesh well with the cast, and too many of her jokes just fall flat.

I’m placing her where she is because I genuinely think the show improves with her presence. Even if she doesn’t reach the heights the showrunners may have hoped for—or those reached by the other executive characters—she still brings a much-needed stabilizing force.

Deangelo Vickers

It’s very hard to rate Deangelo. First off, he’s fucking hilarious—truly one of the funniest characters in the show. But second, he’s only around for a handful of episodes and mostly serves as a bridge between Michael and Andy. Will Ferrell is as funny as ever, and I think his slapstick style fits surprisingly well into the show.

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There’s a timeline where Deangelo gets a full season, and I, for one, am disappointed it’s not the one we live in. His quality, combined with his brevity, lands him a comfortable spot in C tier.

Meredith Palmer

Garfield energy

Look, I can kinda see what the writers were trying to do with Meredith, but it never quite lands right. She’s meant to represent the overburdened single mother, riddled with working-class problems—and she does that well enough. But rather than coming across as even remotely sympathetic, she quickly becomes a caricature, with the line “Meredith, too far” (or something like it) used regularly to keep her in check.

Kate Flannery does a great job playing the role, and the show wouldn’t feel quite the same without her. But she also lacks any coherent story arc—at least none that I can recall—and is almost always relegated to the role of side character in someone else’s plotline.

Something—anything—to give her character a direction other than decline would’ve been welcome. Unfortunately, she never rises above her role as an admittedly funny punching bag.

Now, all that said, Meredith is also part of the “core” group of characters who’ve been around since the first episode, and for that reason alone, I’ll always have a soft spot for her.

Phyllis Vance

Phyllis Vance, who I only just learned is played by a woman named Phyllis Smith, plays the role of the maternally old woman. She knits and gossips and wears weird perfumes. In general she is solidly fine. I have no complaints about her and she does her job well. Her plotline with Bob Vance, of Vance Refrigeration, is good and unlike a character like say Merideth who seems to only tread water Phyllis has a forward, if uneven, momentum.

Phylias who has few, if any, surprises, effectively playing elderly White women in the early 2000s - although supposedly she is the same age as Micheal. In brief she is good.

Stanley Hudson

I had been tempted, in the name of parsimony (who am I kidding), to lump Stanley and Phyllis together—but Stanley is a strictly better character. Unlike Phyllis, Stanley is full of little surprises. He’s a grump, constantly having a string of affairs, and the brief glimpse of “Florida Stanley” we get in Season 8 is a lot of fun.

Not to mention the series of iconic moments the man delivers.

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Stanley is, genuinely, a really fun character.

Kevin Malone

Okay. It feels criminal to put Kevin in C tier—but it’s how I feel. Yes, he has a litany of amazing scenes, including perhaps the greatest single moment in the entire show.

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But he’s just too fucking stupid to be any higher. Kevin is—at least based on how he behaves—genuinely mentally retarded (an impression I share with Holly). It’s revealed at one point that Kevin originally applied for a job in the warehouse, but Michael hired him for accounting instead.

Given that part of what I like about The Office—as silly as it sounds—is its realism, Kevin does real damage to that, even if the damage is hilarious. He’s legitimately great comedically—Brian Baumgartner, who plays him, does an incredible job—and you can tell the showrunners just kept carrying him along because it “worked,” without really noticing how absurd it all looked.

From a pure character perspective, Kevin probably deserves a spot in the high B’s, maybe even the low A’s. But for what he brings to the show collectively, he just can’t go above C tier for me.

One last thing: Brian Baumgartner has a great interview about the show that I really enjoyed, and I recommend you watch it.

Toby Flenderson

Toby plays a beaten-down, divorced father. It’s funny because the archetype he represents isn’t something that really exists anymore—at least not in the places I’ve worked. But clearly, it must have been a thing around the turn of the 21st century, because he reminds me of a less dark Milton Waddams.

As the office’s HR manager, it’s his job to bring a sense of reality to the show’s chaos and generally constrain everyone else’s behavior. That makes him a little boring—and sometimes even annoying—but it also makes him an important lynchpin in what makes the show function.

Paul Lieberstein walks a tough line here, and he handles it well. It’s easy for the “sanity” characters—think Skyler in Breaking Bad—to come off as unbearably annoying, but he manages to seem just pathetic enough that it’s funny rather than overbearing.

That’s not to say he’s all drab and drag; he gets a few solid plotlines, including one involving jury duty and another about his vacation to Costa Rica, which he spends almost entirely in the hospital.

Toby does his job well and earns a comfortable C.

Kelly Kapoor

Kelly, played by Mindy Kaling, is the bubbly customer service representative of the office—and she is, frankly, great. I haven’t enjoyed much of what Mindy’s done since The Office—I know it’s gauche to say “the woke mind virus got her,” but I’m not sure how else to put it. That said, in this show, she’s perfect. Perpetually caught in an on-again, off-again relationship with Ryan, she brings a ton of charm to every scene she’s in.

What holds her back is the extremely limited character development—and the fact that, if I knew her in real life, I’d probably find her unbearable.

Focusing on the lack of development: unlike others higher on this list, Kelly is basically just Kelly the entire time. Even at the end, she ditches her hot Indian doctor boyfriend to get back together with Ryan. There’s some real wasted potential there. But like I’ve said before, I like the character—so unlike someone like Meredith, where development felt necessary, Kelly still works.

She lands near the top of C tier but doesn’t quite break into B.

B Tier

Angela Martin & Oscar Martinez

the happy couple

I’ve opted to lump Angela and Oscar together on this list because—despite one of them being a gay Hispanic man (I’ll let you guess who)—they actually play very similar roles: controlling, judgmental, self-righteous accountants. Perhaps that’s why the Senator ends up marrying one and having a gay affair with the other (again, you can guess who’s who).

Originally, I had the pair slotted at the top of C, but on reflection, I think they deserve a spot at the bottom of B. While I find both of them pretty personally distasteful, they’re still strong characters—part of the original cast and closely followed throughout the entire series.

The fact that Angela and Dwight—who have a show-long love affair—end up getting married at the end has, I think unfairly, redeemed Angela in a lot of people's eyes. But let’s be honest: she’s just a bad person. Constantly cheating on her partners (including Andy, to whom she’s briefly engaged), judging everyone incessantly, and generally acting like a shrew.

Oscar, similarly, is a deeply immoral man—though, unlike Stanley, who never judges others for their impropriety, Oscar is clearly enamored with the smell of his own shit.

If this sounds harsh, it’s only because they are, on average, good characters—widely beloved by audiences—and I feel the need to justify their “low” ranking. The show wouldn’t feel real without characters like them, and I’m glad they’re part of the ensemble.

Ryan Howard

Ryan—played by B.J. Novak—is meant to represent the quintessential millennial guy, or at least the version of millennial men the media was constantly mocking during the time the show aired. He’s basically useless but manages to coast by on smooth-talking charm and Michael’s obsessive adoration. He even spends a brief stint as an executive in NYC before crashing back down to earth.

If Ryan does a great job playing the scumbag, it also makes him hard to watch at times. His relationship with Kelly, for example, is so blatantly manipulative and toxic that everyone around them is constantly trying—and failing—to keep them apart.

Personally, I think Ryan was at his best early in the show, back when he was just a temp working on his MBA at night. Later, once any hopes of real success have faded and he resigns himself to parody—WUPHF.com, anyone?—his character becomes a bit tiresome. That said, the season where he’s Michael’s boss is incredible, and their chemistry is off the charts. During that arc, he tries to modernize Dunder Mifflin by launching an online store and generally dragging the company into the digital era.

Once he’s disgraced—for committing financial fraud to inflate the illusion of success—there’s really no one else in the show who stands in for the broader cultural pressure to digitize everything, which was sweeping America at the time.

Overall, he’s fun and solid, but probably the lowest of the show’s “major” characters.

David Wallace

David Wallace is the CFO of Dunder Mifflin until the company is sold in Season 6—though he later returns and ends up purchasing it outright. Similar to a Toby-type character, Wallace feels like someone from “real life” who somehow found himself in the upside-down world of the show. But unlike Toby, Wallace is genuinely endearing to me.

Maybe it’s that I always saw a little bit of myself in the man and his mannerisms—perhaps falsely—but I can’t help rooting for him. He’s one of my favorite side characters and has great chemistry with the entire main cast.

Also, unlike someone like Meredith or Kevin, who mostly remain static, Wallace gets a full character arc. He spirals into despair after being let go, only to rebound when his industrial vacuum toy cleaner—Suck It—is purchased by the U.S. military.

He deserves a solid slot in B.

Robert California

I’ve spent this entire essay talking about how what I love most about the show is its realism. And yet… Robert California is one of my favorite characters.

Obviously, the writers realized Jo wasn’t a good fit—especially after Michael’s departure—so they decided to shake up the “executive” role again and brought in Bob Kazamakis. He pairs perfectly with Andy, and he’s easily my favorite part of nearly every episode he’s in.

Of course, he’s absurd and over the top—but unlike Kevin, where that absurdity breaks the tone, with Robert it just works. There’s something about an esoteric, decadent superior that oddly complements the middle-class normalcy of the rest of the show.

There’s not much more to say about him than that.

Roy Anderson

Pam’s working-class fiancé, who starts the show as an enormous cock and mostly just the obstacle to Jim’s love, Roy truly grows as the show progresses. By the end, he’s a wealthy gravel millionaire—which is cool and all—but what really stands out is that David Denman, who plays him, brings so much charm to the role that you can’t help but root for the guy a little bit.

I have mixed feelings about Pam—controversial, I know—which I’ll get into in the next essay. But a big part of it stems from how she treats Roy.

Roy is a bro. High B.

Darryl Philbin

Darryl is a better version of Roy, and along with Jim, he forms a sort of “normal” heterosexual trio that, in my view, massively improves the show. Unlike Roy—who, due to his relationship with Pam, could never fully be Jim’s main “bro” character—Darryl is able to fill that role perfectly.

What keeps him just out of A tier, though, is that his character arc doesn’t feel particularly satisfying. He would’ve made a solid replacement for Michael after he leaves, but the fact that he’s passed over for Andy puts him in an awkward position within the show’s structure. Eventually, he joins a startup with Jim—Athlead—which is honestly one of my least favorite plotlines. Not just because Pam and Jim’s dynamic becomes hard to watch, but because it violates the show's central idea that a “regular” life is enough, instead pushing some characters into implausible success.

Darryl is great and lands right at the top of B.

That brings me to the end of the first part of my character rankings. A and S tier will be dropping Sunday, so keep your eyes peeled. And if you have the means to sign up for a paid subscription, it would truly mean the world to me. For just $5 a month or $30 a year, you’ll get access to my full catalog of paid articles and help support my writing.
