Yes, Ryan is the best character on the Office

Let’s be honest. Even if Jim is the centerpiece of the show, Ryan is the best character on the show.

He starts out as a truer version of Jim than Jim himself: A guy who resists the idea of Office as found family because he’s too cool for it. See, Jim is not fully aware that he’s a schlub who’s adulted into an unglamorous 9–5 job. Jim’s eventual courtship, romance, and marriage of Pam, parallels and, I’d argue is interchangeable with, Jim’s marriage to the 9–5 job and the traditional trappings of adulthood. Ironically, this plays with audience loyalties quite a bit because we are rooting for Jim and Pam, but I don’t think we’re rooting for a cool guy like Jim to find his tribe at a paper company with guys like Kevin, Stanley, and Phyllis (this evolves). With his eye rolls at the camera, his ironic friending of Steve Carell (which turns real), Jim acts like he’s too good for everyone and out of touch with what he is becoming.

In the early seasons, Ryan walks the walk of someone who really is too cool for Dunder-Mifflin. He cares as little as possible, even when he’s being sexually harassed by Steve. I know there are dislikeable aspects to the character like hints of misogyny (in one episode, he refers to Pam as a 6), detachment from reality (he makes up a trip to Thailand), being a trust fund baby (he lives with his parents into adulthood)…