With announcements like the one on this cryptic website, NBC has confirmed that The Office is going to have a spin-off next season.

But isn’t the show already it’s own spin-off? Aren’t there two versions of the show happening in every episode?

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Impossible! The time-space continuum won’t support two shows in one! It barely supports whatever-the-hell genre The Hills is supposed to be!”

But hear me out…

On the one hand, you’ve got The Office: You know, the show that deals with the peccadilloes of white-collar life.

But on the other, you’ve got The Office: Relationship City. That’s the show about the love affairs of increasingly quirky people.

These shows started out the same, but this season, they’re heading toward an inevitable split. The reason for that split? Believability.

Because let’s face it: The Office is no longer believable. For the first 2 1/2 seasons, we could squirm with recognition while Michael Scott did insane things to his co-workers. Sure, his actions were over-the-top, but they were recognizable as things an actual clueless bozo would do. Perfect example: That episode where Michael tries to show how cool he is with Oscar’s gayness. Most of us have tried to be “sensitive” like that, thinking we’re totally down with the behaviors of another culture, age group, or group of kids from the cool lunch table.

Now, however, Michael has become a surreal freak show. That episode where he threatens to jump from the roof of a building onto an inflatable castle, just to impress Darryl? No one–no matter how stupid–would ever think he could survive a fall like that.

Or how about the episode where Michael destroys Jan’s sexual harassment suit against Dundler-Mifflin by revealing his own inappropriate behavior with her? No one could emerge from that debacle without getting fired.

And that’s the trap: Michael can’t get fired. He’s the lead character. Yet he has to do stupid things every week. And he can’t just make the same realistic blunders over and over again. If he does, we’ll get bored.

So to avoid getting stale, the writers must create zanier and zanier scenarios.

The same is true of the other “indispensable” characters. There are only so many times that Dwight can talk about his beet farm. Then he has to start running a bed and breakfast. Or believe he’s getting faxes from another dimension.

This is basically what happened to The Simpsons. For the first seven seasons, the episodes were rooted in realistic human conflict. But Homer can’t disappoint Lisa every week, so out came the episodes about Homer becoming a spy who shoots Marge in the neck with a blowgun.

Since The Simpsons is a cartoon, those adjustments were easier to embrace. (That one where they go to Japan and end up on a game show? Crazy, but awesome.) On The Office, though, it’s tougher to accept that the characters are more like comic archetypes than human beings.

That’s partly because the show has done a good job of blending antics with lovable traits. Michael may be a nutjob, but he’s also a wounded puppy who needs a friend, you know?

So as the office jokes have been forced to get stranger, the show has pushed its human observations out of the workplace and into relationships. More and more, episodes are equally split between Dunder-Mifflin and Hearts-Afire. And really, the broken hearts club is getting more play these days.

That gives us episodes like “Dinner Party,” which was the first post-strike segment this season. I thought that episode was really good, particularly because it balanced crazy jokes with devastating, George-and-Martha-style arguments. It was like watching a psychodrama in 22 minutes.

But come on, people! That was not The Office. I mean, the thing was almost entirely set in Michael and Jan’s apartment. That’s a good symbol for how far removed the relationships are from the show’s initial premise.

This transition worries me. Many shows have fallen apart once they replaced their original conceit with bedroom shenanigans. (I’d say that happened to Friends.) And I feel like The Office has been hit-or-miss since the end of season three. At this rate, I’m afraid we’re going to end season four with the surprising announcement that someone is pregnant. And as we all know, the addition of the baby is usually the jumping of the shark.

For now, though, I’m willing to go with it. I’m okay with shows that evolve. I just hope they figure out this tonal thing very soon. A wacked-out comedy about ridiculously crazy co-workers is an awkward companion for a tender look at the ways of love.

Maybe the spin-off will resolve that. Maybe it really will be called The Office: Relationship City, and Jan & Michael, Pam & Jim, and Angela & Andy will move to Detroit, where they’ll work out their tensions in a never-ending series of dinner parties and karaoke nights. And then back in Scranton, Dwight, Creed, and Meredith will ascend to power, filling every episode with unsettling bathroom behavior and paper made entirely of beets.

I would totally watch those shows.