David is one of the greatest TV characters ever, but the fact is, Michael can't be that bad, simply because this show is intended to run for several years, not 12 episodes, and it would be impossible to imagine Michael keeping his job if he was that terrible at it. The amazing Steve Carell's Michael Scott turns out to not be quite as incompetent as his British counterpart, Ricky Gervais's David Brent. Instead "wimping out" or playing it safe, this decision helped the show quite a bit to become its own entity.
The UK Office was a bleak and often depressing show, and there was clearly a mandate to lighten things up a bit in the second season of the US version, rather than follow the path the original took. Fully emerging from its predecessors' shadow, Executive Producer Greg Daniels and his incredible team of writers and actors delivered episode after episode of great material. Could this new version of The Office truly stand on its own, as it dwindled away the ability to rely on the original for inspiration? As it turned out, Season Two's response was quite a loud, "Hell yeah." The Office quickly turned from a very funny show into a truly brilliant show. So Season Two was going to be the real test not only would the US version have to produce more episodes than its UK predecessor, but distinguish those installments as something more than just a pale imitation. That said, the short first season of the American edition didn't make a particularly strong impression: the pilot episode took a lot of flak for using the script to the British pilot, while other early episodes took some story elements from the UK version, albeit not as directly. However, the US version quickly proved to be far from the disaster some feared, introducing clever new versions of the UK characters that were played by a likable and talented cast.
The British series it's based on is one of the best television comedies ever, and it was so easy to imagine how any attempt to adapt it could go so very wrong. Like so many others, I was quite skeptical about the US version of The Office.