The Office’s Creative Team Had An Episode Written Just For Emergencies

The successful sitcom of NBC “The Office” goes in many directions during its nine seasons race. Michael Scott finds himself in a Koi pond. Dwight shoots a gun at the office. Meredith is very realistic attacked by a bat. Despite the litany of comic gold, certain hilarious scenes of the show have never seen the light of day until they are included in deleted scenes and episodes of surface. At other times, writing ideas have been revealed from distribution and crew. For example, we learned The names of Michael Scott’s children When a ax scene was revealed on the “Office Ladies” podcast.

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And then there are really deep things – the things whose writers’ room dreamed of and never had the guts (or approval) to put on the screen. Most of this has been lost in television production ethers, that is to say until several of the writers offer juicy “beens” in the book “The Office: The Untold Story of the biggest sitcom of the 2000s”. In this volume Sacred Scranton, we obtain a ton of scenarios, some of which boggle the spirit. A whole that has been written and has never shot like a safeguard plan “Break Glass in an emergency”.

Here is what the writer Justin Spitzer had to say (via EW) on the monitoring payment that the writers had ready to leave in an emergency:

There was an entire episode in season one that Greg [Daniels] wrote that they never fired. We always talk about it like our “episode of Break The Glass” that we would do if we were completely in difficulty.

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Spitzer recalled some details on the theme of the episode and why he never saw the light of day:

It was called “Pet Day”, where everyone took their pets to the office. I don’t remember much, but it was funny. I think Michael had a parrot named Jim Carrey. There was a moment at a given time in the race where we realized: “Okay, the characters and their situations have changed so much now that we can never, never do” Pet Day “. The show has changed too much.

Despite the possible incapacity to use the “PET Day” script, the writers took comfort for a long time in the fact that they had an emergency episode in their sleeves if they needed it. Spitzer said so much, ending his summary saying:

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There were a few seasons where we said to ourselves: “There is always” Pet Day “!” Whenever we are in trouble.

Although the episode of “Pet Day” is a great idea that has never taken off, there were a lot of smaller (and often more wild) ideas that did not get a traction either. The writer Halsted Sullivan spoke of trying to join a high -end “rebel” stationery company in the five families of the Scranyon business park. Aaron Shure shared several times on a scene several times where Michael is caught in his opening garage door and ended up appearing crucified (with a backhole like a crown of thorns).

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The writer and brother of the actor of Toby Flenderson Paul Lieberstein, Warren Lieberstein, also shared an undeveloped idea for an episode entitled “Premonition” where someone has a dream that someone in the office died on the way back – and then nobody wants to leave work that day. Other ideas extend over the whole range, from Phyllis passing through menopause (and freezing the office in the process) to Michael going down with a bad case of branch and even a revelation that Andy was involuntarily part of a silence pact compared to a deceased member of her a cappella troop “has just trembled”.

Although each idea has its merits and would have been fun to see, there is no doubt that the editorial team has done its job well. The final cup of most episodes (Even the least popular entrances, like “Get the Girl” of season 8, “) Clearly contains the strongest concepts, edited to the waist and presented in a format of Pundi-Tire and speaking head model which kept this repeated emblematic program for a generation of television and counting.

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