Reception
"The Client" originally aired on NBC in the United States on November 8, 2005. The episode was viewed by 7.5 million viewers and received a 3.8 rating/9% share among adults between the ages of 18 and 49. This means that it was seen by 3.8% of all 18- to 49-year-olds, and 9% of all 18- to 49-year-olds watching television at the time of the broadcast. The episode retained 73 percent of its lead-in "My Name is Earl" audience, the best the show had done up until that point. An encore presentation of the episode, on April 25, 2006, received 2.4 rating/7% share was viewed by over 4.8 million viewers.
The episode received mostly positive reviews from television critics. TV Squad's Michael Sciannamea gave the episode a largely positive review wrote that Michael is "totally taken with himself", but still "has shown us his vulnerabilities". Sciannamea noted that, by showing the audience Michael's humanity, the writers were making "this sitcom so compelling". Sciannamea, however, did point out that this is the second week in a row that "Pam is offended by something Jim has said or done", which in his mind "will get tiresome quickly if it continues". "Miss Alli" of Television Without Pity graded the episode with a "B+". Rolling Stone named the scene wherein the employees read Threat Level: Midnight as the tenth funniest in The Office's first three seasons.
Read more about this topic: The Client (The Office)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)