Entertainment Weekly The Ultimate Guide to The Office

By Meredith Corporation

Fifteen years after Michael Scott first appeared on television, The Office is reaching a bigger audience than ever thanks to streaming services and syndication. With rumors of revivals and reunions constantly swirling, it's the perfect time to take a moment to dive back into the cutthroat corporate world. Entertainment Weekly has gathered the cast and creators to discuss the show's most beloved moments, as well as inside nods to the Dunder Mifflin world. Inside, you'll find: *Oral histories recounting Jim and Pam's wedding, Michael Scott's wedding, and the show's teary finale*How to make Kevin's chili, a crossword dedicated to Stanley, and a field guide to Angela's cats*Plus: a discussion of the most cringeworthy Michael Scott moments, and much more!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Meredith Corporation
• Release date: Feb 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781547851430

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Foreword

WHY WE LOVE THE OFFICE

All in a Day’s Work

You don’t need an interoffice memo to explain the enduring appeal of THE OFFICE: At the end of the 9 to 5, it was all about the people—and the bonds they forged. BY NOEL MURRAY

Michael Scott (Steve Carell)

WHO WOULD’VE EVER GUESSED that a paper-company branch office in a Scranton, Pa., industrial park could be so exciting?

When The Office debuted on NBC in 2005, the sitcom joined the long television tradition of workplace comedies, in which a handful of kooky characters toil away side by side, week after week, spending their hours either supporting one another or driving one another crazy. Series like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi practically perfected this formula: with a little bit of wackiness, a little bit of wisecracking and a whole lot of healthy camaraderie.

But while many of those other sitcoms invited us into places we couldn’t ordinarily go, The Office was set in a common cubicle farm—the kind many Americans see every day. For nine seasons and 201 episodes, the show found humor in the mundane confines of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, a place populated by an all-too-familiar assortment of middle managers and customer service reps. In nearly every episode the Dunder Mifflin staff would do what most of us do from 9 to 5: play dumb pranks and games, watch the clock and daydream about something better.

The Office was originally the brainchild of British writers and comedians Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, who created a BBC series inspired by their memories both of bad bosses and of their most hilariously awkward incidents at work. For the American version, the former Simpsons and King of the Hill writer-producer Greg Daniels kept Gervais and Merchant’s basic concept, squeezing sidesplitting comedy from those everyday moments when a coworker does something embarrassing.

Daniels’s spin on The Office, though, also softened some of the original’s edges, making it more the kind of show that viewers would return to because they genuinely cared about the characters, even at their worst.

Much of the credit for that belongs to the American version’s star Steve Carell. As the bumbling boss Michael Scott, Carell created a character as well-meaning as he was dopey. Michael showed up at Dunder Mifflin every day intending to give his employees a special experience, whether they wanted one or not. Equal parts enthusiastic and clueless, Michael was like an overgrown kid, perpetually trying to host the most awesome sleepover ever.

Viewers loved the childlike Michael. But they were just as drawn to the two Office characters best described as the adults in the room: the smart yet under-ambitious salesman Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and the kindly, artsy receptionist Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer). Jim and Pam would spend several seasons idly flirting and pining after each other—keeping fans on the edge of their seats.

Like its British counterpart, The Office took the form of a mockumentary, with frequent cutaways to interviews, to give the audience quick glimpses of the characters’ interior lives. Jim and Pam benefitted the most from this gimmick. As Dunder Mifflin’s most normal employees, they often served as the viewers’ surrogates, looking into the camera as if asking the people watching at home whether they could believe what these crazy coworkers were up to.

And The Office certainly didn’t lack for crazy. The excessively officious Dwight (Rainn Wilson), the priggish Angela (Angela Kinsey), the creepy Creed (Creed Bratton), the oafish Kevin (Brian Baumgartner), the libertine Meredith (Kate Flannery), the perpetually exhausted Stanley (Leslie David Baker) . . . these characters all added jolts of absurdity to a show that could at times be brutally realistic about office life.

From the start, The Office employed actors who’d worked in improv and sketch-comedy troupes and who could adjust to the series’ more muted, natural rhythms. Several of the cast members were also key parts of Daniels’s writing staff. With their sharp scripts and well-defined characters, Mindy Kaling, B.J. Novak and Paul Lieberstein helped fill out the world of Dunder Mifflin, with its mix of youngsters just starting their careers and its lifers counting the days until retirement.

Over the course of nine years, the show’s personnel shifted, both in front of and behind the camera. New writers and actors joined the team, and both Daniels and Carell eventually stepped aside so these new voices could tell their own stories. A lot happened at this little paper company—much of it involving the characters’ tumultuous romances. Jim and Pam. Dwight and Angela. Kelly and Ryan. Michael and Holly. Viewers tuned in regularly to see if these couples could survive the stress of working and living together while juggling different goals and expectations.

People also tuned in because any given week, The Office might serve up another winner, like The Dundies, Diversity Day or Dinner Party. The show’s success in reruns has had a lot to do with how easy its episodes are to rewatch. The best of them are impeccably crafted, self-contained 22-minute comedy classics. They’ve been a hit in syndication, on subscription streaming services, in DVD box sets and as some of the first TV episodes available for download.

Of course, the reason so many of the show’s quotable and meme-able moments still connect isn’t just that they’re funny but that they ring true. The Office spanned an era of American life when middle-class wages stagnated, the economy slowed and multiple corporations were accused of gross malfeasance.

This low-key NBC sitcom didn’t shy away from any of that. The characters worried about job security; and in his attempt to be the fun boss, Michael Scott often tried to keep his employees from finding out what was happening back at the home office in New York City. One of the series’ recurring themes was that big-box chain stores were slowly killing Dunder Mifflin. Today, to some extent, The Office reflects a vanishing world.

And yet within that world, people still made plans. They still fell in love. They still forged a life. That’s what keeps resonating with audiences, even more than all the comic catastrophes. We felt a sense of relief and triumph when Jim finally asked Pam out. We watched them get married, have kids and make sacrifices for each other. We watched Michael grow up—a bit—and move on from Dunder Mifflin. And then at the end of the series, we cheered his return for Dwight and Angela’s wedding. These folks may have been thrown together by the happenstance of the job market, but they got to know and ultimately care about one another.

So sure, like the British Office, the American version is rooted in cringe comedy, generating jokes from inappropriate behavior and humiliation. And yes, we laugh at these characters’ awful messes, because we’re only human. But we also identify with their hopes and dreams and relationships . . . because they’re only human too.

Dwight (Rainn Wilson), pranked

Receptionist Pam (Jenna Fischer) and flame Jim (John Krasinski).

Just another bird funeral at the office.