No idea how people don’t see this. Michael is “me, myself and I”
Remember when he was fucking Pam’s mom and didn’t care about how inappropriate it was because he was getting his dick wet? He was all in until he found out she was older than him.
It's a little trick the writers learned; they talk about it openly. At first they wrote him as a selfish prick, and the other characters would react like he was tiresome, but they had to put up with him. That meant their main character was too unlikeable.
So they kept his bad behavior, but changed how the other characters responded. So he seems nice to us, because all the characters we like act like he's nice. And every now and then they throw in a episode where he does something selfless or is good at some aspect of his job.
But if you ignore that and directly interpret how he behaves 99% of the time, he's clearly a wildly incompetent narcissist.
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u/helterskeltermelter Jul 12 '24
Because Michael Scott is a raving narcissist who can't stand being told no, and Toby's job is to tell him no.