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Speaker 1: My name is Michael Shore. I was a writer for
Speaker 1: the first four point two seasons and a producer on
Speaker 1: The Office. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of
Speaker 1: The Office Deep Dive. I am your host Brian Baumgartner.
Speaker 1: Today I am thrilled to present to you or introduced
Speaker 1: to you, Mr Mike Sure. Mike was one of the
Speaker 1: original writers that was hired by Greg Daniels for the Office,
Speaker 1: and as some of you may know, Mike has had
Speaker 1: an incredible career since then. At the beginning of season five,
Speaker 1: Mike left to create Parks a Wreck with Greg, and
Speaker 1: then after that he went on to create and produce
Speaker 1: some of the greatest comedies of the last decade like Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: Master of None and The Good Place with one of
Speaker 1: my favorites, Ted Danson. And although that is very impressive,
Speaker 1: by far, his greatest singular ler professional achievement was his
Speaker 1: portrayal of Mose Shrewd. That's right, Mike played Mose. Now
Speaker 1: Mos did not, as we all know, have a lot
Speaker 1: to say. But Mike, Mike is one of the best
Speaker 1: talkers that I know. He is an amazing storyteller. It's
Speaker 1: like his entire brain, it just it just thinks in stories.
Speaker 1: I don't know how else to put it. He is
Speaker 1: a genius, and he is a genius. But truly, I
Speaker 1: could listen to Mike all day. I know that you're
Speaker 1: going to feel the same way. Plus, this episode is
Speaker 1: the beginning of another mini deep dive into the Writer's Room,
Speaker 1: which you will hear much more about next week when
Speaker 1: I talked to Greg Daniels. So pull up a chair,
Speaker 1: put up your feet unless you're driving, and enjoy my
Speaker 1: conversation with Mike Schure Bubble, I love it, Bubble and
Speaker 1: squeak on Bubble and Squeaker cookie every month left over
Speaker 1: from the night before. Um, are we just starting? Are
Speaker 1: they just chatting? Yeah? I mean everything's being recorded. Um uh,
Speaker 1: what were you doing before you join the writing staff?
Speaker 1: I was at SNL from oh four. My then girlfriend
Speaker 1: now wife had moved out here in two thousand two
Speaker 1: and we were dating long distance, and it was like,
Speaker 1: all right, well one of us has to move and
Speaker 1: it made more sense for me to leave SNL, where
Speaker 1: I had been for six years and come out to
Speaker 1: l A. So I told Lauren I was leaving sn
Speaker 1: L at the end of the year and had a
Speaker 1: year to kind of prepare rots wrote spec scripts and
Speaker 1: came out here and had meetings and everything and had
Speaker 1: I had a million meetings, and Gregg's was the most
Speaker 1: interesting by far, like for so many reasons. First of all,
Speaker 1: because Greg's an interesting person, and because I loved the
Speaker 1: British Office, and that that meeting was like two two
Speaker 1: or two and a half hours. Lee Eisenberg told me
Speaker 1: about he was going in to meet and his agents said,
Speaker 1: just so you know, Greg does really long meetings, and
Speaker 1: so Lee said he left and was like that was
Speaker 1: a really long meeting. It went well, it was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but he does really long meetings. I was talking to
Speaker 1: Aubrey Plaza the other day and she was reminding me
Speaker 1: of this thing I've forgotten, which was so after season four,
Speaker 1: Greg and I started developing Parks and Wreck together, and
Speaker 1: Alison Jones called me and said, I just met with
Speaker 1: the weirdest woman I've ever met with. She's like twenty
Speaker 1: three and she's here from uc B and I I
Speaker 1: don't know if there's a part for her, but you
Speaker 1: should meet her. And when Alison Jones tells you to
Speaker 1: meet someone, you you meet them immediately. And so I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, however, come over right now. So she
Speaker 1: came over and I went and told Greg who was
Speaker 1: We were at the office offices, and I said this,
Speaker 1: Allison sending this actress to meet us for the new show,
Speaker 1: and he's like, okay, great. So Aubrey came over and
Speaker 1: I said, Hi, nice to meet you. Greg. Daniel is
Speaker 1: going to join us in a second, and she was
Speaker 1: like okay, cool, and we talked for like fifteen or
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, and then Greg came in and then like
Speaker 1: ten minutes of the meeting, he just got up and
Speaker 1: left without saying a word, and Aubrey looked around, like
Speaker 1: what's happening? And I just I was used to it,
Speaker 1: so I just kept talking, and then like half an
Speaker 1: hour later, Greg came back and just sat down with
Speaker 1: no explanation of where he had gone, and then talked
Speaker 1: for another like fifteen minutes, and then just without a word,
Speaker 1: in the middle of a sentence, got up and left again.
Speaker 1: And I was like, this is what happens with Daniels
Speaker 1: is meetings are not normal meetings. Like one way or another,
Speaker 1: something weird is going to happen. Someone was telling us
Speaker 1: about Alison Jones about being in casting meeting at Ben
Speaker 1: Silverman's old bungalow. They're all sitting around owned a conference
Speaker 1: table and they're talking about casting for the pilot, and
Speaker 1: suddenly Greg gets up and jumps out the window and
Speaker 1: they all are like what. And apparently Nancy Perkins in
Speaker 1: her like Boston outfit was accent, was like, I've heard
Speaker 1: of producers wanting to jump out and thankfully was on
Speaker 1: the first floor. But he uh, you know, he had
Speaker 1: left a sweater in his car, right, and that was
Speaker 1: the most efficient way to get just like he liked
Speaker 1: his terminator brain like analyzed the layout of the building
Speaker 1: and was like, oh, the quickest route. Yeah, um, so
Speaker 1: that was your That was the first time you've met Greg. Yes,
Speaker 1: I I knew who he was obviously and h but
Speaker 1: I never met him before the meeting. And um, we
Speaker 1: had a shocking amount in common, like we both we
Speaker 1: were we both into Harvard Root for the Lampoon and
Speaker 1: both wrote a S n L. Met our girlfriends and
Speaker 1: then later wives there later when my son was born,
Speaker 1: he had red hair and Greg's on his red hair.
Speaker 1: There was it was like, it's a very weird series
Speaker 1: of things. But um, yeah, I've never met him before. Um,
Speaker 1: there was a moment um we were in the old
Speaker 1: and those days, the offices were in down in Culver City,
Speaker 1: and there was a there was a moment where we
Speaker 1: were deep in the weeds on the episode that I
Speaker 1: think became Hot Girl, the Amy Adams episode, and we
Speaker 1: were pitching and pitching and pitching different ideas and whatever,
Speaker 1: and I was I had a notebook and I was
Speaker 1: like jotting things down and uh suddenly he said, Greg said, okay,
Speaker 1: well let's hang on for a second. Like what makes
Speaker 1: a good story, right, Um, here's what you need for
Speaker 1: a good story. And he started talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: basic building blocks of storytelling, motivation, steaks, twists and turns,
Speaker 1: escalation stuff like that, and he was sort of like
Speaker 1: almost just thinking out loud, right like this is so
Speaker 1: we can't break this story? Why is that? But he
Speaker 1: was doing it in such a sort of professorial and
Speaker 1: thorough way that I realized like, oh, this is just
Speaker 1: a class. I'm in a class now. And I remember
Speaker 1: turning the page in my notebook and starting to take
Speaker 1: notes like I was in college, just writing as fast
Speaker 1: as I could, like writing as if he were a
Speaker 1: professor in a biochemistry class. This was having subconsciously you
Speaker 1: were no, no, no no, I knew. I saw what was happening.
Speaker 1: This is this is the theory of this world. And
Speaker 1: I just took notes for like forty five minutes like
Speaker 1: I was in college, And this is not a joke.
Speaker 1: There are I still have them, and I still go
Speaker 1: back and look at them, like to this day. That's now,
Speaker 1: that was two thousand four, that was probably August of
Speaker 1: two thousand four, and I still there are still moments
Speaker 1: where I'm like, why doesn't this make sense? And I'll
Speaker 1: go back and look at what he wrote, what he
Speaker 1: said that day off the top of his head, and oh,
Speaker 1: you're right, you're right, that's what's missing. Um, like maybe
Speaker 1: a day later. No, I'm sorry much earlier. And it's
Speaker 1: like the first day of work, and you know, I
Speaker 1: went pitching, pitching, pitching, and I said like, oh, I
Speaker 1: had an episode idea where there's like a stray dog
Speaker 1: in the parking lot and that the office kind of
Speaker 1: like adopts the dog as like an office pet. And
Speaker 1: Greg got really excited and he was like, oh, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: I hadn't I had a similar idea, had a similar idea.
Speaker 1: That's a good sign. And he brought out a spiral
Speaker 1: notebook and he flipped through it, flip flip, flip, page
Speaker 1: after page of like serial killer level writing, like margin
Speaker 1: to margin, you know, things underlined and whatever, and he
Speaker 1: goes a flip fiflip. Okay, yeah here, just okay. So
Speaker 1: here was my idea. So there's a three dog in
Speaker 1: the office park and they adopted and then they all
Speaker 1: they're all caring for it. And I thought that Dwight
Speaker 1: could have this relationship to the dog, and Michael would
Speaker 1: be really sad because the dog didn't seem to like him,
Speaker 1: and then Jim and Pam would kind of take over
Speaker 1: care of the dog and they would feed the dog
Speaker 1: and then at night. There was a question of who
Speaker 1: would take the dog home, and Pam would take it
Speaker 1: home one night, and Jim would take it home another night,
Speaker 1: and the dog would sort of become almost like a
Speaker 1: surrogate domestic animal for Jim and Pam, and then Roy
Speaker 1: would come in, and Roy would bond with the dog,
Speaker 1: and then the dog would going. And he laid out
Speaker 1: like an entire story from beginning to end, where this
Speaker 1: plot device of a dog just related to every single
Speaker 1: character in the office. And he got to the end
Speaker 1: of his like eight minute long pitch and there was
Speaker 1: a beat, and I remember going, well, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like we should do your version. That's it
Speaker 1: seems like you maybe thought this out. But the amazing
Speaker 1: thing to me about stories like that, of which there
Speaker 1: are many, is we never did that episode like that,
Speaker 1: Like he had episode after episode broken out and thought
Speaker 1: through just as background, just as like Grist for the
Speaker 1: mill of like how he could understand breakdown at a
Speaker 1: molecular level and understand the characters and their relationships. We
Speaker 1: never did that. We never even pitched that out. Like
Speaker 1: he had so many ideas like that that never got used.
Speaker 1: And when you sort of go back and analyze what
Speaker 1: made the show work. To me, I always go back
Speaker 1: to that because it's like he knew everything about every
Speaker 1: character before we started doing anything, and so as a result,
Speaker 1: there was this incredible lived in field to that office,
Speaker 1: this richness, and this like this kind of layered feeling
Speaker 1: of like these people have always been here and they've
Speaker 1: had three dimensional lives before the cameras ever started rolling,
Speaker 1: and that that's just such a rare thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: usually you're scrambling like crazy right early going of a
Speaker 1: show to try to figure out who everybody Isn't Greg
Speaker 1: already knew yes? And it ties into why Kappus was
Speaker 1: such a great choice for that too. So you have
Speaker 1: that lived in quality and Quapus with this genius idea
Speaker 1: of having us do the thirty minutes of busy work.
Speaker 1: We were all there, ready to go seven am, and
Speaker 1: he's like, you guys, just start working, make phone calls,
Speaker 1: pretend to hand each other documents, and I'm on the
Speaker 1: adding machine and you know, just little moments, he essentially
Speaker 1: eliminated the artificial membrane between this is reality and this
Speaker 1: is fixed and he made it a fluid thing. And
Speaker 1: to your credit and the other actors in the show.
Speaker 1: We did a thing on that show for years where
Speaker 1: it was like, even if you're in the deep background,
Speaker 1: you've got to beat your desk and it's a pain, right.
Speaker 1: It's like actors, you guys could have all been in
Speaker 1: your trailers, like playing video games or calling your children
Speaker 1: or whatever. But like the value of it feeling real
Speaker 1: like that, I mean, these things are so delicate, right,
Speaker 1: because like it's it's asking a tremendous amount of the
Speaker 1: actors to sit at your desk for as long as
Speaker 1: you did, and all of these things that you would
Speaker 1: think of as sort of like a little theatery and
Speaker 1: a little actor e and a little kind of like
Speaker 1: we're gonna be in character and we're going to kind
Speaker 1: of like, you know, it's a little embarrassing. It's a
Speaker 1: little like, come on, what are we doing it? You
Speaker 1: know what I mean, It's a little like but if
Speaker 1: there's a theory behind it, if it's not just like
Speaker 1: let's explore the nature of drama or whatever, you see
Speaker 1: the benefit of it. And the benefit of it was
Speaker 1: from the minute they shot the first frame, it felt
Speaker 1: like everyone was really working in that place. Nothing about
Speaker 1: it felt fake. I mean down to the fact that,
Speaker 1: like the set design was almost exactly the actual offices
Speaker 1: that the writers worked in in Culver City, Like they
Speaker 1: just recreated that. And so when we were writing in
Speaker 1: that first season, Greg would say, like, go, everyone, spend
Speaker 1: like half an hour and just like mill around the set.
Speaker 1: We later recreated it, but like that was the set
Speaker 1: where we were working, and so we would sit at
Speaker 1: different desks and you would sort of go like, oh,
Speaker 1: like from Pam's desk, she can't quite see Angela. That's interesting,
Speaker 1: like and then you would say, like, here's Creed and
Speaker 1: Creates got his back to the door, so like he
Speaker 1: never knows who's coming into He's always going to be
Speaker 1: surprised anytime anyone goes whatever. These tiny observations that you
Speaker 1: think of as like is this really anything, but then
Speaker 1: it is because because the whole show was about these
Speaker 1: tiny little observations and tiny moments, and when you've actually
Speaker 1: lived inside them as an actor or writer, they become
Speaker 1: more meaningful and you understand them at a deeper level.
Speaker 1: You know, when we went to Scranton for the Office
Speaker 1: Festival that year, whatever year that was, even then, it
Speaker 1: was what was the season was that for I think
Speaker 1: that was for the convention. Yeah, it was like season four.
Speaker 1: But even then Greg was like everyone go out fan
Speaker 1: out due research and Lee and Gene and I drove
Speaker 1: around with Jason Kessler, are writer's assistant, and like took
Speaker 1: pictures and like broke down the names of restaurants. And
Speaker 1: there was a condo development and I took a bunch
Speaker 1: of pictures and I was like, I think this is
Speaker 1: Michael's condo. Was hadn't been in season two, but I
Speaker 1: was like, this is the condo development, and like so
Speaker 1: I took different angles of like what it looked like
Speaker 1: down the road and stuff, and we handed them to
Speaker 1: Gallenberg and Michael Gallenberg as the production designer, and like
Speaker 1: we were still that intent at that point and in
Speaker 1: like making sure we got it right, even if it
Speaker 1: even if no one never if the ideal is even
Speaker 1: if you've never been to Scranton and you never go
Speaker 1: to Scranton, you should still feel like you've been to Scranton.
Speaker 1: Like that's how that's how intense it was. It's a
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Speaker 1: good at it, then monetize it, then quit your boring job,
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Speaker 1: we controlled absolutely everything. He bribed judges and even helped
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Speaker 1: started talking with the FBI and promised that he could
Speaker 1: take the mob down. I've spent the past year trying
Speaker 1: to figure out why he flipped and what he was
Speaker 1: really after. From my perspective, Bob was too good to
Speaker 1: be true. There's got to be something wrong with this.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't trust the guy. He looks like a little
Speaker 1: scum big lawyer, still bidging. He looked like what he
Speaker 1: was or at. I can say with all certainty I
Speaker 1: think he's a hero because he didn't have to do
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Speaker 1: life was over. If it ever got out, they would
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Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. So the first season we make the
Speaker 1: first season, and other than the pilot, none of the
Speaker 1: stories are related to the to the British show, right,
Speaker 1: but people still are like, boo, we know we were right.
Speaker 1: This was bad, bad idea, and they into this day
Speaker 1: you'll find people who say like they stuck to the
Speaker 1: British scripts for the first season, which we didn't, but
Speaker 1: no one remembers that because I remember the pilot was
Speaker 1: roughly the British pilot. Yeah, I know, it's uh. I
Speaker 1: felt from the moment of Diversity Day that what we
Speaker 1: were attempting to do was something really special. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I was like, man, if people give this a chance, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. It's so funny, right because like the history
Speaker 1: of television has the same story repeated over and over
Speaker 1: and over again, and that story is the pilot air
Speaker 1: and it was the lowest rated pilot in the history
Speaker 1: of Wahawa. It's true of Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld has a
Speaker 1: letter has like the ratings for the testing. I think
Speaker 1: Cheers was the lowest rated pilot that NBC had ever
Speaker 1: aired to that point. The office was like a disaster
Speaker 1: in the early going. Another thing, by the way, another
Speaker 1: thing Greg did that it's amazing that I don't know
Speaker 1: if he has ever talked about. He told NBC when
Speaker 1: they tested the show. He was like, this is going
Speaker 1: to test terribly and you have to ignore it. He
Speaker 1: was like that it's it's a mockumentary that people aren't
Speaker 1: used to it. It's washed out color and fluorescent lighting,
Speaker 1: the boss is unlikable. It's going to test terribly and
Speaker 1: you have to ignore it. And then it tested terribly
Speaker 1: and they didn't quite ignore it, but he had primed
Speaker 1: them to look at the results in a different way, right,
Speaker 1: And it's very gutty thing to do to pre tell
Speaker 1: the network that the thing they've spent millions of dollars
Speaker 1: on is going to bomb. Well, Kevin Riley told the
Speaker 1: story that there are rooms. There are different rooms as
Speaker 1: they're being tested, and they go in and they examine
Speaker 1: and it's like bad, we think it's bad. We think
Speaker 1: bad bad. And he got to the last room, which
Speaker 1: he said, we're all the interns and assistance and they
Speaker 1: were like this is awesome. And he was like okay, okay,
Speaker 1: like now we've got something here, and he basically took
Speaker 1: the people who didn't really count, but he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is going to catch on. And I don't know Kevin,
Speaker 1: if Kevin ever had this thought, but my thought was
Speaker 1: always that we were not fairly being represented because as
Speaker 1: my Space was happening, social media was beginning to have
Speaker 1: and you were hearing about these fanatical fans some of
Speaker 1: the online forums, and you realized how many college kids
Speaker 1: were watching. Well, college kids don't have Nielsen Box, right,
Speaker 1: They're not weighing in on the fact that they're watching
Speaker 1: in their dorms or and so for me it was
Speaker 1: always like, yeah, but they got to know that more
Speaker 1: people are consumed. I'm not sure they did well, you know,
Speaker 1: That's the thing is like, of course, like that the
Speaker 1: rating systems are so much better now, but they're still
Speaker 1: even now, they're crude and like in two thousand four,
Speaker 1: forget it like that, you know, there was no way
Speaker 1: for anyone to to know or to judge how many
Speaker 1: people are actually watching anything. It was a really rough measurement.
Speaker 1: And and just like it's some so retroactively grateful that
Speaker 1: they didn't cancel the show because it's clear. I mean,
Speaker 1: look now, just now it's it's like the most popular
Speaker 1: show on Netflix today. Um Lee told me about there
Speaker 1: were a couple of exercises that I would do in
Speaker 1: the writer's room, and he mentioned to me about the
Speaker 1: He called it unlikely duos, basically taking he would he
Speaker 1: wrote everyone's name down on cards and then he grabbed
Speaker 1: two at random and would send us off and go
Speaker 1: go break some you know, uh Stanley Creed stories, you know,
Speaker 1: go break some whatever. And yeah, and we did that
Speaker 1: very frequently. He did that once a week. I always
Speaker 1: thought there was a little bit it would. It seemed
Speaker 1: to be something he did when he was getting annoyed
Speaker 1: by us and our general and confidence. But also it
Speaker 1: didn't feel like busy work. It felt like, oh, it's interesting,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, right, what happens if Creed and stay on
Speaker 1: they or in the story or whatever? Um Creed, who
Speaker 1: was one inch away from just being written off the show?
Speaker 1: I know, how did you decide who was gonna be gone?
Speaker 1: Devon or Creed? So um my, this is my memory
Speaker 1: of this, and Greg would remember maybe more accurately. But
Speaker 1: we broke the episode where it was Halloween, someone was
Speaker 1: getting fired, right, and it's all right, it's either Devon
Speaker 1: or Creed because those are the two people that hadn't
Speaker 1: talked yet, and the original idea was it was Creed.
Speaker 1: Then we broke the episode, and the Greg sort of
Speaker 1: brilliant investigation of Michael Scott's psychology was, instead of ripping
Speaker 1: the bandit off and doing a responsible management thing, he
Speaker 1: tries to fire someone and then gets talked out of
Speaker 1: it and then fires the other person. And it was
Speaker 1: a coin flip. It was honestly like Creed or or Devon,
Speaker 1: who knows? And then he was like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: even know if there was a reason, but he switched
Speaker 1: it so that he fires Creed and then Creed talks
Speaker 1: him out of it. And I was on set with
Speaker 1: Fig shooting the episode where Michael buys a condo, and
Speaker 1: Fig was going to direct that Halloween episode. So the
Speaker 1: episode that Greg wrote, which is wonderful, hasn't it? Probably
Speaker 1: a six page scene more. Michael's like, I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: have to let you go, and Creed talks him out
Speaker 1: of it. And we read it on that We were
Speaker 1: at the location for Michael's condo and we read the
Speaker 1: script and I was like, oh my god, this is
Speaker 1: so funny. And I went to feed it. I was like,
Speaker 1: did you read this? It's so funny. He goes that, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is really funny. Can Creed act? It's like, I
Speaker 1: have no idea. I don't think i've ever heard him talk,
Speaker 1: but like, let's roll the dice and then you know,
Speaker 1: he's amazing. So it was, but it was literally in
Speaker 1: my memory at one point it was Heat fires Creed
Speaker 1: and another point it was he fire Steven and it
Speaker 1: just ended up the way it ended up. But I
Speaker 1: don't think there was any reason for it. I think
Speaker 1: it was. I think it was a crazy I think
Speaker 1: maybe Greg liked the real story, which we all knew
Speaker 1: by then. The Creed was the actual Creed Bratton. It
Speaker 1: would have been in the grassroots and anything, so maybe
Speaker 1: that had some effect or something. But yeah, it was
Speaker 1: random chance. That's so crazy. Um going back to the
Speaker 1: unlikely duos thing. So for a second, I was talking
Speaker 1: to Kate Flannery about Christmas party and Meredith flashing Michael,
Speaker 1: but then also having this tender moment with him after
Speaker 1: he runs over her with his car. I don't think
Speaker 1: those came from unlikely duos. Although Michael hits someone with
Speaker 1: his car was an early pitch. I don't remember you
Speaker 1: bished it, but that that card was up on the
Speaker 1: on the board for a while before we did it.
Speaker 1: But the thing where Meredith flashes him was nothing more
Speaker 1: than like the premise of that episode, which I wrote
Speaker 1: was Michael has an image in his head of what
Speaker 1: a good party is, and a good party is like
Speaker 1: the Playboy Mansion, and he says that in the episode.
Speaker 1: He's like, it's Playboy Mansion, it's people with headsha lamb
Speaker 1: shades on their heads. He's a very very old timey
Speaker 1: like like late seventies early eighties kind of idea of
Speaker 1: what like a crazy party. Yeah, it's just it's it's
Speaker 1: people being drunk and and lambshades on heads and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. And so he does a bad job for
Speaker 1: a while of being a good boss and throwing a
Speaker 1: good party because he throws a hissy fit when people
Speaker 1: don't like his gift enough, and then it gets stolen
Speaker 1: in the you know whatever, and he gets an oven
Speaker 1: mit from Phillis, which he doesn't like. Uh, But and
Speaker 1: he becomes a good boss because he goes out and
Speaker 1: he buys a ton of vodka and he comes back
Speaker 1: and he's like, you know what, everybody cut loose and
Speaker 1: it's kind of a good, kind of a good move.
Speaker 1: It's not it's a little bit of a blunt instrument,
Speaker 1: but it kind of works and the party ends up fun.
Speaker 1: And so Greg was like, well, he should get a
Speaker 1: little reward, not in the sense of like a sexual reward,
Speaker 1: but in the sense of like he should get what
Speaker 1: he wants, which is a crazy party. And the first
Speaker 1: thing that the genius of the breaking of that story,
Speaker 1: which I don't take credit for it, was they were
Speaker 1: all group efforts as a general rule, but he first
Speaker 1: tries to manufacture his own reward, which is he puts
Speaker 1: a lampshade on his own head and runs out. It's like, look,
Speaker 1: it happened, right, And then Packer shows up and that's
Speaker 1: like kind of a reward. But then like the end
Speaker 1: of it of Meredith flashing him is like he actually
Speaker 1: got his dream. He got his dream of like a
Speaker 1: crazy office party, and like, even though it's not appropriate
Speaker 1: for the office and it's not you know, he doesn't
Speaker 1: actually feel good about that. You can see it in
Speaker 1: his face. He's like, oh, this shouldn't be happening, but
Speaker 1: he can't resist taking a picture of it because it's
Speaker 1: like this is evidence that I did my job and
Speaker 1: through a great party. It is strangely one of my
Speaker 1: all time favorite singular moments, Meredith flashing yes, because I
Speaker 1: feel like it is so perfect. And that episode that
Speaker 1: was just such a huge episode for the ensemble. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody, everybody really meant something to do, and
Speaker 1: the show sort of was beginning to take off at
Speaker 1: that time. We were McDougald, which was pleasurable yet interesting
Speaker 1: experience and uh and yeah, I don't know, there was
Speaker 1: just something about the way that played, that told everything
Speaker 1: about Michael and yeah, and but you're right though, the
Speaker 1: key to that was the secret Santa White Elephant, dirty Christmas,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. And the thing meant
Speaker 1: everyone when I when we were when I was a
Speaker 1: sign that episode, the first thing I did is I
Speaker 1: went home and made a list of who got who.
Speaker 1: I did a real draw. We knew certain things. We
Speaker 1: knew that Jim had to have Pam, and we knew
Speaker 1: that Michael had to have Ryan. But then I put
Speaker 1: everyone else's name in and I just did a random
Speaker 1: draw and Kevin got Kevin. And that's where that came from. Yes,
Speaker 1: and when I and when that happened, I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that's perfect, Like he just buys himself
Speaker 1: a gift, doesn't tell anyone, advised himself a footpath. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I did. I So I did a real draw and
Speaker 1: I had it mapped out, and I when I was
Speaker 1: writing the script, I printed it out and hung it
Speaker 1: next to my computer because I got so confusing of like, wait,
Speaker 1: who has whom? And there's a bunch of stuff in
Speaker 1: the deleted scenes where you see the other gifts that
Speaker 1: people like you know, like in the episode, Oscar got
Speaker 1: Creed and get some like a crummy key chain, and
Speaker 1: Creed got Jim and gave him some old shirts that
Speaker 1: were lying around. But then like every everybody had it,
Speaker 1: like there's a George Saunders book. Toby bought someone a
Speaker 1: book of George Saunder short stories because that book could
Speaker 1: come out. Civil War Land and Bad Decline one of
Speaker 1: my favorite books had come out, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna get this in the show because I
Speaker 1: want to so like you can actually map out who
Speaker 1: everyone who everyone had, and who what they got for
Speaker 1: each other person. That's awesome. Yeah, I never knew that
Speaker 1: Kevin Kevin. It was your random drawing. Kevin got Kevin
Speaker 1: got Kevin. Ye. Hello, and welcome to our show. I'm
Speaker 1: Zoe de Chanelle and I'm so excited to be joined
Speaker 1: by my friends and cast mates Hannah Simone and Lamar
Speaker 1: and Morris to recap our hit television series New Girl.
Speaker 1: Join us every Monday on the Welcome to Our Show podcast,
Speaker 1: where we'll share behind the scenes stories of your favorite
Speaker 1: New Girl episodes, revealed the truth behind the legendary game
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Speaker 1: So Lee talked about this. I was talking to him
Speaker 1: about if there were specific strengths because the episodes were different,
Speaker 1: and what were there ways that either interested people or
Speaker 1: they were better at. And what he said was that
Speaker 1: he felt like he and Jean were much more in
Speaker 1: the sort of cringe comedy, which you know, if you
Speaker 1: look at Dinner Party, that certainly fits that bill. And
Speaker 1: what they said about you was that you were much
Speaker 1: more optimistic. Do you feel like that's true? Yeah? I do. Um.
Speaker 1: I feel like my sweet spot on the show was, well,
Speaker 1: Christmas Party is pretty optimistic episode. But like the episode
Speaker 1: branch closing that I wrote, I love that story because
Speaker 1: Jan walks in on the first page of the episode
Speaker 1: and says, we're shutting your branch down and it Michael
Speaker 1: has a complete collapse and then he says, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not letting this happen. I'm gonna do something about this,
Speaker 1: and he and Dwight head off and they go to
Speaker 1: David Wallace's house in Connecticut and just like, I'm going
Speaker 1: to confront him and I'm gonna make him see that
Speaker 1: this is not the right decision. It is utterly ineffectual.
Speaker 1: Wallace Netverik shows up. They just end up sitting there
Speaker 1: and are miserable and completely unbeknownst to them, through a
Speaker 1: variety of other machinesians, the branch ends up getting saved.
Speaker 1: But there's a scene in the end where Michael and
Speaker 1: Dwight are sitting in the car and that all hope
Speaker 1: is lost, and Michael says, okay, top three favorite moments
Speaker 1: ever at the office and Dwight says, like, you know,
Speaker 1: my first day when you sprayed me with the fire
Speaker 1: extinguisher and when yeah, I got sick and you came
Speaker 1: into the m R. I you know, I got a
Speaker 1: concussion or whatever, And then Dwight says, what about you?
Speaker 1: What are your favorite moments, and Michael says all of them,
Speaker 1: every single one, and then Dwight says, well, what about
Speaker 1: when Jan showed up and said the branch was closing
Speaker 1: and he's like, come on, man, But that I remember
Speaker 1: just thinking like this, and that scene wasn't in the outline,
Speaker 1: and I remember writing that scene and thinking like that
Speaker 1: that this is like I locked into that idea. And
Speaker 1: I think it's just because it was like a moment
Speaker 1: of humanity between the two of them, where like the
Speaker 1: office is very meaningful, it's all Michael has, and him
Speaker 1: being able to just sort of express in a sincere
Speaker 1: and human way what he loved about the place, like
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. I really felt like that that
Speaker 1: was my jam um. But yeah, I mean those guys,
Speaker 1: like Greg's theory was that writing staff should be like
Speaker 1: The X Men, where he's like, if you have all
Speaker 1: people who are the same and have the same like
Speaker 1: comedic power, you're gonna have one awesome thing about the show.
Speaker 1: But if you have if everybody has his or her
Speaker 1: own comedic power, then you get everything. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I think Lee and Jeanne were really into the like
Speaker 1: super I mean, those guys are so funny like Scott's
Speaker 1: Todds was an episode they pitched very early on that
Speaker 1: Greg was like, we're never doing this, and then long
Speaker 1: after I left, I was watching him like, oh, I
Speaker 1: guess Greg gave in. But yeah, they love that. Jen
Speaker 1: Silata was Her superpower is just this incredible connection to
Speaker 1: Pam Um. She's also hilarious, but like she was like
Speaker 1: the beating heart of the show. I would say, not
Speaker 1: just through Pam, through all the characters, but like the
Speaker 1: episode where the bird dies and Michael has the funeral
Speaker 1: for the bird, that was Jen from beginning to end,
Speaker 1: and we kept like tinkering and tinkering and tinkering, and
Speaker 1: she eventually was like, I think I just understand this
Speaker 1: and I just want to at it, and we were
Speaker 1: like great, and then it's amazing. And the part of
Speaker 1: it that she really locked into was Pam. Pam understanding
Speaker 1: what Michael was going through and giving the eulogy and
Speaker 1: trying to make Michael feel better by talking about this
Speaker 1: dead bird. It's a really complicated emotional moment, but Jen
Speaker 1: just like understood it at some fundamental level. And you know,
Speaker 1: Paul was really into Michael's when Michael was at his
Speaker 1: absolute worst. Like Paul was super into the the Michael's
Speaker 1: worst instincts, Mindy was. Mindy's superpower was always, um, the
Speaker 1: super absurdist stuff, the really like crazy flights of fancy.
Speaker 1: You know, famously in the episode where Michael burns his
Speaker 1: foot on the George Foreman grow when Michael burns his foot.
Speaker 1: I mean again, every episode that everybody wrote was always
Speaker 1: rewritten a tremendous amount. But I will say that that
Speaker 1: first monologue Michael has where he's explained to the camera
Speaker 1: how he burned his foot, I don't think we changed
Speaker 1: a word of it. Like Mindy turned in her script
Speaker 1: and that speech was in there, and it was really long,
Speaker 1: and it's really complicated and it has it's a crazy
Speaker 1: roller coaster, and I don't think we change a single
Speaker 1: word because she just like she would lock into just
Speaker 1: the the super absurdist stuff presented very straightforwardly, like Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean everyone everybody had something they were good at.
Speaker 1: That stuff was incredible. Yeah, Um, you talked about yourself
Speaker 1: and Michael and his love of the office. Was there
Speaker 1: an early idea that he would eventually find love and
Speaker 1: that would take him away. Yeah, I mean that's always
Speaker 1: an idea in every TV show, right, if anyone is
Speaker 1: single in a TV show, there's a lingering question of
Speaker 1: like does that person find a life partner? But it
Speaker 1: was also very important for the show that that doesn't
Speaker 1: happen for a long time. And then after and as
Speaker 1: I was leaving to go develop Parksner Breck with Greg,
Speaker 1: we met with Amy Ryan and that so was beginning
Speaker 1: of season five, and that was like, that was the
Speaker 1: first time it was like, Okay, we're shifting into a
Speaker 1: different gear with this guy. Like who knows how long
Speaker 1: the show will last, but we're it feels like we're
Speaker 1: at some kind of midpoint here and we've done it.
Speaker 1: At that point, we've done almost a hundred episodes, and
Speaker 1: it was like, okay, it's time, Like it's time to
Speaker 1: create a character for Michael Scott who's like a viable
Speaker 1: love interest. And Jen was a big part of that
Speaker 1: because she was like, oh, she should be as big
Speaker 1: a dork as he is, Like that's the way to
Speaker 1: do this right. It's not aspirational in the sense of
Speaker 1: like she's a really put together, like you know, sophisticate
Speaker 1: who's gonna who Michael has to change for the thing
Speaker 1: that links them is like she's a dork and she
Speaker 1: does dorky voices, and she does lame videos and like
Speaker 1: dances and she's a female version of Michael Scott, which
Speaker 1: is perfect. And all of that stuff then came after
Speaker 1: I was gone, But Jen and Paul and I at
Speaker 1: least and I think maybe um Greg met her later,
Speaker 1: But Jen and Paul and I think we're in the
Speaker 1: initial meeting we had with her where we basically dead
Speaker 1: about the wire for like an hour. Um. But she's
Speaker 1: a lovely person and Ed it was like, oh, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: this is gonna work. This is Michael's girlfriend, right, you
Speaker 1: said earlier, Um in you know, in a slightly dismissive way,
Speaker 1: like every television show you have a single guy and
Speaker 1: then eventually they're but you know, what's so crazy? And
Speaker 1: maybe I'm alone here? But I don't think I am.
Speaker 1: I never thought about that. For Michael. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: it was the fact that he wanted it. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it was not. It was never a high stakes thing.
Speaker 1: I think there was Jim and Pam, you know, there
Speaker 1: was some other stuff going on, and that the assumption
Speaker 1: watching was whatever whoever he gets is going to be
Speaker 1: a disaster, right, Like, it's just not it doesn't it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter, and I don't I'm not invested in that,
Speaker 1: and I think it's not until very very later when
Speaker 1: he calls her it's actually she's not even there on
Speaker 1: the phone. It's when he has herpes yes and yes
Speaker 1: and says you're wrong. Um. So Greg again had a
Speaker 1: lot of theories and um they were all correct. And
Speaker 1: one of the things he said, he pinpointed for us
Speaker 1: very early on, what makes this what makes the British
Speaker 1: show so good? Right? And part of it is a
Speaker 1: once in a generation performance from Ricky Gervais, and some
Speaker 1: of it is um other incredible actors and and just wonderful,
Speaker 1: like a wonderful premise in the sense of like a
Speaker 1: mockumentary comedy show was a great idea, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: But he broke it down even further and he said,
Speaker 1: almost every show in history has had a formula, and
Speaker 1: the formula is the center of the show is a
Speaker 1: will they won't they? Sam and Diane romance, and often
Speaker 1: the corner is a wacky boss. And occasionally the wacky
Speaker 1: boss comes in, does something wacky and funny and gets
Speaker 1: big Lass and then leaves, and very simply, the British
Speaker 1: Office inverted it. The Whack Boss is the main part
Speaker 1: of the show and shoved into the corner is this
Speaker 1: will they won't they? Romance? And what that does two things.
Speaker 1: Number one, it makes the Wacky Boss into a viable
Speaker 1: character worthy of introspection and layering and dimension in a
Speaker 1: way that the Wacky Boss is not. Traditionally, no one
Speaker 1: usually cares about what's going on in the Wacky bosses
Speaker 1: emotional life. And it also means that when you shove
Speaker 1: the romance into the corners and it becomes this very delicate,
Speaker 1: gossamer spider web of glances and and tiny little moments
Speaker 1: in the getting someone a candy bar from the vending
Speaker 1: machine becomes an enormous emotional moment. Right then you have changed.
Speaker 1: You fundamentally changed the way audiences relate to romance, which
Speaker 1: is they're like, they're like on the edge of their seat,
Speaker 1: Like I only got eight seconds of the romance this week.
Speaker 1: I want more. So I want to ask you about
Speaker 1: another big episode you wrote, the Job where Jim finally
Speaker 1: asks Pam out to dinner. Was there a fight about that?
Speaker 1: Finally there was a big fight about the end of
Speaker 1: season two kiss that was not there was no fight
Speaker 1: there that was like it was that was like a
Speaker 1: crazy intense time. The ends of seasons were always like
Speaker 1: we were so behind, and but Greg and Paul and
Speaker 1: I broke that episode together and we're going to write
Speaker 1: it together. Greg was going to write the first half
Speaker 1: and Paul and I were going to split the second half.
Speaker 1: And then Greg was like, I don't have time, you
Speaker 1: guys write it. And also then Paul was like acting
Speaker 1: a lot, and it was like, all right, I guess,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll do it. But Paul and I ended
Speaker 1: up writing it. But Greg really was was like, here's
Speaker 1: what this story is, and it was like it was
Speaker 1: very complicated. There going for a job and Karen was
Speaker 1: going for the job and Jim had to leave Karen
Speaker 1: and and go back and whatever. And so Paul and
Speaker 1: I wrote it and on the script on the read
Speaker 1: it said written by Greg Daniels and Paul labrisin I'm
Speaker 1: make sure. And after the read through, which went really well,
Speaker 1: Greg was like, I shouldn't be credited on this. I
Speaker 1: didn't write this, and I was like, yes, you did,
Speaker 1: Like you broke this story. Like we were sitting in
Speaker 1: that room with you, and you laid out the beats
Speaker 1: of the story. Also, you you could take writing credit
Speaker 1: on every one of these episodes if you legally, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to. But he was like, no, I don't.
Speaker 1: I you guys wrote this and I should step back,
Speaker 1: which was an insane thing to do because we knew
Speaker 1: it was going to be a huge deal. Paul and
Speaker 1: I ended up winning a Writer's Guild Award for it,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking like, this should just be Greg,
Speaker 1: Like I like, he was such a model of show
Speaker 1: runnerdom to me, just in the in the thoughtfulness with
Speaker 1: which he did everything. Um, it's crazy that he's not
Speaker 1: credited on that episode. Anyway, there was no fight over that.
Speaker 1: That story was really clean. We changed very little of it.
Speaker 1: Everything sort of unfolded very naturally. And then that take
Speaker 1: that Jenna did. In my memory, I could be wrong.
Speaker 1: I think that's the first take we did. No, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: it was a second take we did because there was
Speaker 1: an amazing camera thing. It's really subtle. This is why
Speaker 1: like Randall was so great. Um, she's doing talking Head
Speaker 1: and then Jim Knock just knocks and and walks right
Speaker 1: in right and the camera swings over to him and
Speaker 1: he says, are you free for dinner? And and she
Speaker 1: says yes, and he goes great. Then it said date
Speaker 1: and he walks out and then the camera swings back
Speaker 1: to her and she says, I'm sorry. She's smiling and
Speaker 1: about to cry and says, I'm sorry, what was the question?
Speaker 1: And so the first take wat it was wonderful and
Speaker 1: I was like, well, that's perfect, that's great. And then
Speaker 1: the second take camera swings over to Jim. He says great,
Speaker 1: said date, And when the camera swings back, it pushed
Speaker 1: in and it's just it mimics the exact thing that
Speaker 1: the audience did, which is it leaned forward. It just
Speaker 1: the camera just leaned forward because it was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god. Like And the thing that's been talked about
Speaker 1: a lot when people talk about the show is how
Speaker 1: the cameras are characters. But a key moments like that,
Speaker 1: the operators and the directors were so good at being like,
Speaker 1: the camera should lean forward the way the audience is
Speaker 1: leaning forward at that moment, and that take is just
Speaker 1: I it's my favorite bit of acting Jena ever did
Speaker 1: on the show. I think it's absolutely perfect. Randall talked
Speaker 1: about in terms of the documentary style. He said, everything
Speaker 1: that makes it harder makes it better. And what he
Speaker 1: was talking about was that he was insistent upon having
Speaker 1: to work to get the shot. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: also um um, that's also set design. That's everything like that.
Speaker 1: And we would often move stuff into the frame right,
Speaker 1: like we would drag plants the plant plants. But I
Speaker 1: remember some episode I was on the set for somebody
Speaker 1: wanted to do something where there was a conversation at
Speaker 1: the desk and then the person walked off and then
Speaker 1: it sort of jumped to the other side of the
Speaker 1: room near the hallway leading to the into the kitchen,
Speaker 1: and they're like, all right, we wanted cameras are here
Speaker 1: and here, and then we jumped to this shot over here,
Speaker 1: and Randall was like, I don't think it's possible. The
Speaker 1: camera operator would have to get all the way into
Speaker 1: the annex where Toby sits in order for that to happen,
Speaker 1: and we were like, hone. He was like, well, let
Speaker 1: me try it, and so we took a ke, loaded
Speaker 1: a camera onto his back, onto his shoulder, and they
Speaker 1: rehearsed the scene and then Randall ran down the stairs,
Speaker 1: ran through the parking lot and ran up the stairs
Speaker 1: with a gigantic camera on his shoulder to see if
Speaker 1: he could get set up in the annex to shoot
Speaker 1: into the kitchen from the other side in time. And
Speaker 1: he was like a second late, but he was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm gonna say that that's possible. And it
Speaker 1: was like again, it's going back to this thing I
Speaker 1: was saying earlier. We're like all of this stuff that
Speaker 1: like is it real? Could it really happen? Like does
Speaker 1: everyone have to be in character at their seats for
Speaker 1: half an hour before we roll? Like it's a little
Speaker 1: bit actory and a little bit like, well we're like
Speaker 1: this enter this fictional realm, and like it's a little embarrassing.
Speaker 1: It's a little method, right, and and that stuff is
Speaker 1: a little bit like you roll your eyes a little bit,
Speaker 1: but look at the result and it isn't that unless
Speaker 1: you have people like Randall and Matt who were like, well,
Speaker 1: wait a second, what's the reality of this, Like if
Speaker 1: there's two cameras, which we pretty much established that this
Speaker 1: documentary cruit has two cameras, I mean I remember Jeff
Speaker 1: Blitz coming who was a documentary filmmaker and him directing
Speaker 1: I was talking to him about the theory of the
Speaker 1: show and this kind of standard pattern that we would
Speaker 1: go through directors, and I was saying, like, you have
Speaker 1: to set up your shots as if they could really
Speaker 1: be captured. And he was like, well, based on the show,
Speaker 1: these are the most talented documentary camera operators of all time,
Speaker 1: because I seemed to get everything. And I was like,
Speaker 1: yes they are. They're very talented cameary filmmakers. But you
Speaker 1: have to make sure you get everything or that everything
Speaker 1: you get is gettable by real people. Now. The rules
Speaker 1: were very, very very strict for like three or four years.
Speaker 1: As they went on, they got a little less strict,
Speaker 1: And I remember having conversations in season four about oh no,
Speaker 1: it was in season three. It was it was the
Speaker 1: Traveling Salesman episode. Lee Gene and I wrote it, and
Speaker 1: basically like you went off with Dwight and Jim, you
Speaker 1: went off with Phillis and Carroll, you went off with
Speaker 1: Daily and Ryan, and there were cameras back in the office,
Speaker 1: and we were like, well, what do we do now, right?
Speaker 1: And Greg was like, you know, the documentary company is
Speaker 1: doing another documentary somewhere else, And it just got into
Speaker 1: a bunch of festivals and it got bought for a
Speaker 1: lot of money and they're flushed with cash and they
Speaker 1: hired other operators. Okay, let's go, and it was just like, okay,
Speaker 1: so we're relaxing their rules a little bit because there
Speaker 1: were suddenly five or six games um, but for a
Speaker 1: long time, like, you don't get the purity of what
Speaker 1: the show was unless you create those rules and stick
Speaker 1: to them. And I'd say like, sorry, you gotta, we gotta,
Speaker 1: and we would cheat sometimes we would have security cam
Speaker 1: footage rarely, like in the episode where there was a
Speaker 1: the Ryan burned the toast, I think there's a security
Speaker 1: cam shot because we really wanted the shot of Michael
Speaker 1: shoving people out of the way and running out the door,
Speaker 1: and there's no way to get that with the cameras
Speaker 1: that we needed still in that thing. Whatever, So we
Speaker 1: would cheat sometimes. But it was funny because when Greg
Speaker 1: and I started Parks and Wreck, which is also a mockumentary,
Speaker 1: we were like, okay, the the the deal is the
Speaker 1: Office was such a success that now the document terrans
Speaker 1: have a lot more tools, Like we were like, now
Speaker 1: the rules are even looser, and we would set up
Speaker 1: shot and so like if you track through the entire
Speaker 1: history of both of those shows. By the end the
Speaker 1: documentary crews were like there were fifteen cameras and thirty
Speaker 1: eight sound guys and whatever. Um. I think that's the
Speaker 1: thing that they did keep through the end though they
Speaker 1: wouldn't use a shot where a camera guy whatever. Never
Speaker 1: did that. That was the one hard and fast rule.
Speaker 1: Like if if Michael was addressing a group of people
Speaker 1: and you were right over his shoulder onto the group
Speaker 1: of people, you could not then cut over the through
Speaker 1: the crowd back flat on Michael where you saw space
Speaker 1: on both sides of him where one of the that
Speaker 1: camera would be there. I don't think they ever broke
Speaker 1: that rule. If they did, it was very late in
Speaker 1: the game. There were times when we kind of needed
Speaker 1: to do something like that and Randall or Matt would
Speaker 1: walk around and go like, well, what if the camera's
Speaker 1: hiding behind something next to him or whatever. We would
Speaker 1: stage him near a pillar and the idea it was
Speaker 1: the camera was over there and then like got out
Speaker 1: of the way. Like because in real life Matt and
Speaker 1: Randall would communicate with each other were using hand signals.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm demonstrating this as if this isn't a podcast.
Speaker 1: But they would communicate. They would wave like I'm going
Speaker 1: this way or back up or whatever, like in the
Speaker 1: middle of a take, and so we began to feel like, okay,
Speaker 1: well that's what they would do in real life. They were.
Speaker 1: So there were times when there was a camera in
Speaker 1: a certain place and then when you cut to the
Speaker 1: other side, like it was a real close call whether
Speaker 1: you would have seen that camera. But as long as
Speaker 1: Randall and ma could work it out where Randall would
Speaker 1: like duck out of the way in time, they'll be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well that's possible. So if they're again very talented, they're
Speaker 1: very good, really well, but I really do it bears repeating, like,
Speaker 1: I don't think this show is what it is without
Speaker 1: the adherence to that kind of reality and those rules
Speaker 1: that Greg and Can and everybody else set up. You know.
Speaker 1: All right, folks, I'm gonna stop Mike there for now,
Speaker 1: but he will be back. So if you're wondering why
Speaker 1: didn't we talk about most, don't worry. We will get
Speaker 1: to that. MOS will be discussed, as well as lots
Speaker 1: of other juicy tidbits. Thank you all for joining me.
Speaker 1: I hope you have the best week ever and we
Speaker 1: will be back next time for more of the Office
Speaker 1: Deep Dive. The Office Deep Dive is hosted and executive
Speaker 1: produced by me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer, Lang Lee.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Tessa Kramer. Our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Emily Carr, and our assistant editor is Diego Tapia. My
Speaker 1: main man in the booth is Alec Moore. Our theme
Speaker 1: song Bubble and Squeak, performed by my great friend Creed Breton,
Speaker 1: and the episode was mixed by Seth Olansky. Hi guys,
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