Michael Scott Meets Mr. Darcy; a Jane Austen / The Office Mashup

Are the shades of Dunder Mifflin to be thus polluted?

*Original email version of this piece called it a Pride and Prejudice mashup, not Jane Austen, but in fact the scope is not limited to P&P and I'm not sure why I wrote that! Darcy on the brain, perhaps.

Long long ago in the land before time, I used to post Jane-Austen-related content with some regularity on Twitter dot com. Twitter, of course, has now sunk into a Musky swamp and I’m trying to dial back my use of social media in general, but boy do I miss those Austen mashups. I did at least a dozen of them, pairing characters from the six major novels (and sometimes Lady Susan) with quotes from contemporary TV shows. It was so much fun, and yet since I deleted my Twitter account, all of that time-wasting eccentricity has been lost to the great abyss into which all data centers will inevitably perish, and I am not great at using the Wayback Machine.

So I am bringing my Austen mashups back, except I’m doing it here, on the website that I own, which no man can take from me.

The original The Office mashup wasn’t exactly the same as this; sadly, I can’t remember exactly which quotes I paired with each character, but the general gist of it is the same, and dare I say New and Improved.

Let us proceed.

(Images precede quotes.)

(Images have also made this post too long for email so you will need to open it in your browser to read the whole thing.)

Elinor Dashwood: “Before I do anything I ask myself, ‘Would an idiot do that?’ And if the answer is yes, I do not do that thing.”

Lydia Bennet: “I don’t talk trash, I talk smack. They’re totally different. Trash talk is hypothetical, like: ‘Your mom is so fat she can eat the internet.’ But smack talk is happening like right now. Like: ‘You’re ugly and I know it for a fact ’cause I got the evidence right there.’”

Marianne Dashwood: “When you’re a kid, you assume your parents are soulmates. My kids are going to be right about that.”

Mr. Rushworth: “You cheated on me? When I specifically asked you not to?”

Mr. Elton: “This one has sort of an oaky afterbirth.”

George Wickham: “I was never in this for the money, but it turns out the money was an absolute necessity for me.”

Mrs. Jennings: “Sometimes I’ll start a sentence and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way.”

Henry Crawford: “People underestimate the power of nostalgia. Nostalgia is truly one of the greatest human weaknesses, second only to the neck.”

Miss Bates: “I love inside jokes. Love to be a part of one someday.”

Mr. Palmer: “There’s too many people on this earth. We need a new plague.”

Robert Martin: “Those who can’t farm, farm celery.”

John Thorpe: “I am fast. To give you a reference point, I’m somewhere between a snake and a mongoose. And a panther.”

Emma Woodhouse: “Do I need to be liked? Absolutely not. I like to be liked. I enjoy being liked. I have to be liked, but it’s not like this compulsive need to be liked, like my need to be praised.”

Caroline Bingley: I would not miss it for the world. But if something else came up, I would definitely not go.”

Louisa Musgrove: “Parkour!”

Mr. Gardiner: “Oh you’re paying too much for worms. Who’s your worm guy?”

Mary Musgrove: “Ultimatums are key. Basically, nobody does anything for me anymore unless I threaten to kill myself.”

Mr. Woodhouse on the dangers of sea-bathing: “He was decapitated! Do you know what that means?! His CAPPA was DETATED from his head!”

Jane Bennet: “I hate the idea that someone out there hates me. I even hate thinking that al-Qaeda hates me. I think if they got to know me, they wouldn’t hate me.”

Mr. Elliot: “We’re third cousins, which is great for bloodlines and isn’t technically incest.”

Mary Bennet after being told she has delighted the company long enough: “You all took a life today. The life of the party.”

Mr. Knightley watching Mrs. Elton boss around the strawberry-picking: “This is the smallest amount of power I’ve ever seen go to someone’s head.”

Isabella Thorpe: “I am one of the few people who looks hot eating a cupcake.”

Mr. Darcy, watching Jane and Bingley: “Put your heart out there like that, it’s liable to just turn into this blackened carbon brick where it has barbecue sauce of shame and rage and two hot people with a perfect relationship would not understand that!”

Frank Churchill: “Women cannot resist a man singing show tunes. It’s so powerful, even a lot of men can’t resist a man singing show tunes.”

Anne Elliot coordinating an emergency response: “I knew exactly what to do, but in a much more real sense I had no idea what to do.”

Colonel Brandon: “If you break that girl’s heart, I will kill you. That’s just a figure of speech. But seriously, if you break that girl’s heart, I will literally kill you and your entire family.”

Mr. Collins: “I would say I kind of have an unfair advantage because I watch reality dating shows like a hawk, and I learn. I absorb information from the strategies of the winners and the losers. Actually, I probably learn more from the losers.”

Mrs. Norris: “Fanny, you ignorant slut.”

Fordyce, of the Sermons: “Don’t ever, for any reason, do anything to anyone for any reason ever, no matter what, no matter where, or who, or who you are with, or where you are going, or where you’ve been... ever, for any reason whatsoever...”

Catherine Morland: “I’m not superstitious, but I am a little stitious.”

Mrs. Bennet: “I feel like all my kids grew up and then they married each other. It’s every parent’s dream.”

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What Dunder Mifflin quote would you pair with an Austen character?