The Worst Thing Angela Ever Did On The Office

"The Office" has its fair share of characters who walk the line between hero and villain, flip-flopping between antagonist and protagonist depending on the story that's being told. One of the most infamous of these is Angela Martin (Angela Kinsey). From the jump, she comes across as an uptight, judgmental individual. She has no problem laying down the law for those around her. She also doesn't mind breaking her own strict standards in private, over and over and over again.

Case in point, she's willing to call Pam (Jenna Fischer) "the office mattress" for dating multiple people from Dunder Mifflin, but she also cheats on Andy (Ed Helms) with Dwight (Rainn Wilson) for months on end. Then, when the whole relationship melts down, she doesn't even return Andy's engagement ring, using it to buy a cat instead. It also comes out shortly afterward that Andy and Dwight were not the first pair of lovers to openly duel over her — a fact that clearly strokes her attention-loving ego.

And then there are her platonic relationships. She's abusive to Phyllis (Phyllis Smith) during her tenure as the head of the Party Planning Committee. She always treats Pam as an inferior as well, and she cranks the aggressive competitiveness and snobby remarks up to 11 when the two of them become pregnant at the same time.

What's worse is that most of this behavior doesn't go away over the course of her character arc. Sure, by the finale, she has become at least tolerably sympathetic, but when you break it down, some of her worst deeds take place in the run-up to that event. In fact, there's one thing that Angela does right before the end of the show that has particularly irked fans of the franchise, and it has to do with her future husband, Dwight Schrute.

When it comes to Angela's offenses, there are a lot of things to choose from. However, in a Reddit post, u/Grizznups cuts right to the chase by identifying one scene as "the worst offense," and it has to do with Angela's deception regarding the baby that she has with Dwight.

Though detailing other reasons for disliking her character, the post clearly identifies one of her decisions as especially contemptible: "Angela is perfectly happy to rob a man of his chance to be a father. She knows that Dwight is the father of her baby but lies to him because she wants to be the center of attention by being married to a 'senator.'" 

The post wraps up by pointing out that Dwight wasn't just deceived. He also misses the birth of his own son and is absent for a good chunk of Phillip's early childhood — in spite of his own hunch that it is, indeed, a Schrute baby of his own making. The poster attributes this despicable behavior to the simple fact that Angela craves attention, no matter what the cost may be. Other fans agreed, u/Gucci_Koala even responding: "In real life almost the whole office would be despicable people to have to work with but in their own environment Angela is horrible."

And the truth is, this lie really is one of Angela's lowest moments. Even as she's launching into a career as a senator's wife, she still keeps her fling with Dwight going on the side — to the point where she gets pregnant with his baby — and then lies to his face when he asks if it's his offspring. It's a wonderful thing that the two characters reconcile, but when Angela tells Dwight that Phillip actually is his son during the penultimate episode of the show, she's lucky he chooses to be overjoyed. He could have stormed off in anger and been completely justified.