While many diehard television viewers were excited about ABC's Thursday night debut of "Grey's Anatomy," which truly is as brilliant a show as I have ever, ever seen, the rest of us were talking about Jim and Pam.

Last season's finale of "The Office" left most of its fans stunned. Jim actually got the cahones to make his move, and Pam seemed receptive. This was both great and terrible.

Great because it made for possibly the most memorable sitcom finale I can ever remember. Do you ever recall chatting about how a sitcom's season ended before, wondering how writers would resolve it? And, in Season 2, nonetheless?

Terrible because, historically, resolving flirtatious character romances into something more serious spells a shark-jump in primetime. Daphne and Niles should never have gotten together on "Frasier," and as far as I was concerned, it practically rendered the series unwatchable.

While there are other examples, certainly, fans of "The Office," which won the Emmy for Best Comedy -- and deservedly so, although "My Name Is Earl" is equally deserving -- were concerned that the show would already be plowing downhill in Season 3.

Never to fear.

If anything, its writers made the show even more cringe-worthy.

They moved Jim to another office, introducing a whole other group of eccentric office workers. They halted the wedding between Pam and Roy, leaving open the possibility that our empathy could even go to the rugged warehouse worker instead of our boy Jim.

And, they brushed off Jim's Season 2 approach with those words every guy has heard at one time or another.

"I think we're just drunk," Pam told him.

Damn, if I had a nickel for everytime a woman told me that.

The show's writers then put together an episode that rates as one of their finest to-date.

They outed Oscar as being gay. As you might have expected, Michael Scott was the reason behind the unintentional outing, and he handled it with the clumsy, ignorant style we've come to love.

It will be interesting to see how the show's writers evolve this season because there are now two romantic subplots, and even in the most liberal of workplaces, Michael Scott would be just one misdeed from getting the ax.

To me, the most interesting, clever thing the writers could do would be to actually develop Roy's character, to make us damn near have to choose between Jim and him for our rooting interests. Usually, the choice in such situations is clear.

If they could develop their competing love interests into something a bit more evenhanded while keeping the show as tense as it has been in its first two years, NBC's "Office" writers would be even more genius than I'd submit they already are.