Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Welcome to Night Vale is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Make another smart choice with AutoQuote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. Hello there. This is the second of three episodes of my new podcast, The Best Worst.
that I will be putting on this feed so you can listen to them and see if you like it. This is a show I am making with Meg Bashmaner, who is the voice of Deb, the sentient Patrick Hayes, and the voice of the credits. And in it, we consider classic TV shows by watching first the worst TV
and then the best IMDb user-rated episodes. So it's a fun way to see at how these shows varied over the years and what sort of wild episodes they made once they got really deep in the show and were running out of things to do. Please enjoy! ♪
Hello and welcome to The Best Worst, a celebration of the best and the worst of the television we love. Hello, I am Joseph Fink, the Pam of this podcast. And I am Meg Bashwiner, the Jim of this podcast. And we love TV. So we created the show to explore what we love about popular TV shows by watching both the best rated and worst viewer rated episodes of a quintessential series.
Because people are yearning these days for the way television used to be before, you know, streamers destroyed it. And so we wanted to look at why that kind of television worked.
We follow a set of rules for the show. So each show must have at least 100 episodes. And we are excluding series premieres and series finales because those tend to have inflated ratings. And we're looking to watch the television show at its absolute best, not at its most important or cliffhanger. Let's get to today's show. What is today's show? Today's show is The Office. The Office. The Office, which ran from like peak season.
dorm room TV watching time for us uh 2005 to 2013 IMDB says it has 188 episodes and Wikipedia says it has 201 episodes so it's a mystery we'll never know I'm gonna believe Wikipedia
I think it is a difference in how IMDb counts two part episodes as a single episode. And I think Wikipedia does not. And I believe that is the difference. I'm going to account it like Wikipedia does. Let's talk about I feel like this is one that obviously we're both going to have some background with everyone our age and everyone of most ages watch the show is incredibly popular. So what's your background with this show?
I watched it when it was on. I remember watching the, it was a 2006 episode. It's the George Foreman grill episode where Michael burns his foot in the George Foreman grill and Dwight tries to go pick him up and gets into a car accident and gets a concussion. And it's just like a brilliant episode. It is not one we were going to discuss today, but I remember in college, my roommate loving it so much that after he watched it, he came and got me out of my room and dragged me into his room and we watched it. He watched it again and I watched it for the first time. And it was the
probably at that point, the single funniest episode of television I had ever seen. I was a huge fan of the British one. I like got the British one on DVD because I'd heard it was great. And I watched it in my dorm room at UC Santa Barbara. And I thought the British one was like,
the funniest television I had ever seen. And so I think I went into the American one a little grumpy at first. I had that, well, I've seen the original, how could this be good? And the first season was not good. I think even people that like The Office agree that the first season was pretty rough. They were trying to figure it out. But then with the second season, pretty much right off the bat, they came back and they fixed everything that was wrong with it, and they really found their own voice.
instead of the first season was just trying to do what the British one was doing, but not as well. Yeah, and I think that's the thing with an adaptation is that there is a fine line to walk and mercifully NBC gave them the room to do it wrong and then figure out how to do it right. So I think they saw that there definitely was something there and encouraged them to keep going. Which really gets me to...
I think one of the key lessons from this show that we're already learning, which is one of the reasons people miss this kind of television, is that shows were given room to figure things out.
Now, if a show isn't a hit from episode one, if it isn't fantastic from episode one, it never gets a season two. It is so hard to get a season two these days. And, you know, the idea of getting a season five is just a distant dream. Whereas here, like, as I've said, I think usually the best episode is often going to be in the middle third of a show's run because it just takes a while for people to really hit the peak. So many of these shows that we think of as classics were not very good off the bat.
Most of them had rough first seasons, but they were just given the room to figure things out, which shows aren't anymore. I stopped watching The Office kind of around when, spoilers for the three of you that haven't watched The Office, when Jim and Pam get married, because it felt, their wedding episode felt like a really wonderful series finale.
And I was like, you know what? I could be done. I think this is a nice series finale. And I think I'm stepping off the train. We watched it together. Did we watch? We watched it together. And I remember watching it with you when we had first started dating, I guess. Or well, it was. Yeah. When did Jim and Pam get married? Probably like 2010. Yeah, because it was it was towards the end. But there was definitely like at least three seasons after they got married. Yeah, I remember watching it with you. And I'm thinking it was a really great episode.
It was. It was really beautifully done. And I just felt like, I'm like, this feels like a high note to go out on with the show. Because I think you could feel that the show was starting to slide downhill. And so it just felt like a nice place to step off. Yeah. I mean, and then, I mean, the Jim and Pam storyline, their relationship is...
a really great thing within this show, because this show is there is a lot of farce, there's a lot of camp and heightening, but that's sort of at the center of it is this real relationship, that relationship that feels real and feels lovely. That was the heart of the British one. And I feel like the American one found a way to continue to dive into that without it feeling drawn out. That was the worry, I guess, is the British one does that kind of
Office crush turned into a romance very quickly It's it does it at the length of a movie basically and this one had to draw it out over years But I feel like they found a way to keep that interesting for the most part I definitely feel like there was a few turns where there was like the whole maybe Jim has a crush on Karen Plot that felt a little like they were just trying to draw it out all of this to say I think we both were pretty excited and
to revisit The Office to see how it held up, to see how we feel about it. Yeah, it is a millennial touchstone. I saw there was this TikTok meme a while back where it was like, what is the song that you've been railed to the most? And it was just The Office theme song. So I do think that, yeah, it is a sort of pivotal text for a pivotal TV show for the millennial generation.
Okay, so let's get to The Office at its worst. Okay, so this is episode... What number is it? Right in front of you. Right there, right in front of my face. This episode is season 8, episode 19, Get the Girl.
which this is still fitting my pattern that we've talked about. I think the worst is going to be always either the first season or the last third of a show's run, because I think that's when things are starting to feel tired. And it's also usually going to be after a cast change. And the big one here, obviously, which we can talk about in a little bit, a little more detail, is that this is after Steve Carell left, after Michael Scott was no longer the central character of
Let's get into a brief summary of this episode. There's two plots. I guess I'll take one of them, which is that Aaron is in Florida for reasons that we don't understand because I think it involved plot before this. And as we talked about, we didn't watch the season. But Andy has driven down from Pennsylvania to try to convince Aaron to come back with him. And that is about it. It's a very slight plot. It's just kind of him...
Hanging out at her house trying to convince her. And then finally, she realizes that she loves him too, and wants to come back to be on The Office as a cast member again. And then in our other plot, we are at The Office. What's happened is because Andy is not there, the character Nellie Bertram apparently just shows up.
Played by Catherine Tate of Doctor Who. Catherine Tate of Doctor Who. And James Spader just sort of lets her have a job there. And then apparently also just we all just let her have Andy's job, which is the boss, because she sort of does this, I guess, quiet takeover where she keeps calling people into her office and gives them raises and just tries to give them what they need and just win them over that way.
So that's what's happening there. And Jim is taking umbrage with this. Jim is like, you can't just do this. And everyone else is like, sort of feels that way, but also feels like, yeah, they'll happily take the money or a nap or just something that they're, they need that they're not getting. James Spader is on the show now for some reason. He's there. It's not clear to me from this episode what he's doing there. Like he's clearly meant to be higher up than the manager role, but in the original version,
formation of the office. There was no higher ups than Michael just hanging around. So James Spader really feels like what he is, which is after Steve Carell left, they just brought in famous people to try to fill in that gap. And I guess James Spader was one of them.
I mean, I think it's obvious, but why do we think this is the worst rated according to IMDB users? What you said where it does feel sort of stale at this point, and it really is missing that Steve Carell, Michael Scott magic. It's missing the chemistry. It feels like it's kind of two B plots and that there really is no A plot with the way that we're cutting back between points. It's sort of equally split, but neither of them are really similar.
there's not really enough of each scene to grab onto something. So it, yeah, it feels, it feels stagnant. It feels a bit sparse.
I think also just neither plot feels like it has the stakes of an A plot. They both feel like silly little B plots. And I feel like they're the kind of plots that would have been B plots at the height of The Office's powers. We watched the worst one first, and then we were watching the best one. And you said out loud, why did they think they could do this show without Steve Carell? Yeah, it really does feel like there's a big missing piece.
they definitely couldn't do this episode without steve carl um successfully the plot of andy going to rescue erin should feel big and huge it should feel like he's going to get the girl he's confessing his love to her like she's they're hashing out their relationship it should feel big and it it feels flat i think it's because it's filmed off location it's not in the office they're
They're supposed to be, I think, in Tallahassee, Florida. They're not entrenched with the rest of the ensemble. That makes the show really work is its use of ensemble. So it's these two characters alone with two other characters. One of them is the brilliant Georgia Engel,
who is from the Mary Tyler Moore show and many other TV shows. She's the plays, the old lady that Aaron is in charge of taking care of. And while she's great. And the other actor is also funny. Who's there with her. It does not have the home feeling of the ensemble. So these characters, Andy and Aaron are having this big sticks moment, but they're not surrounded at all by the ensemble that can sort of feed the energy to that. And yeah,
make the stakes of that relationship feel worth it. This episode is directed by Rainn Wilson, and I will never utter a bad word about Rainn Wilson. So I will leave it at that. I think his politics turned out to be weird. So there's that. I don't really remember that. So don't quote me if Rainn Wilson, it turns out, has perfect politics. Getting into the positives, since we watched this first, I mean, obviously, this is a show we already know the positives of.
can we see what people loved about the show even at its worst? And yes, there is some really... There was a few moments where I laughed out loud, similar to Cheers. Even at its worst, it had jokes that made me laugh out loud, which is hard to do with a sitcom. It's hard to get people to laugh out loud from a television because it's just a little more of a passive thing. Even funny stuff, you can just kind of feel that inside and maybe not laugh out loud. And this one had me do that. And I think even...
Even here, it was playing with the thing that The Office always played with, which was kind of the dark heart of, like, you spend so much of your life in this place that you hate doing the same things over and over again, that kind of tedium that really crushes people. I think it still had a little bit of that in there, just not enough.
I think the scene that worked the most for me was the Nellie Pam scene where Nellie gets Pam in her office and is offering her where she's you know bribing everyone and she offers Pam a raise and Pam is kind of like okay but then she offers Pam a nap and it just sort of hit the the Pam's face where she's holding the moment with Nellie where she's realizing how tired she is and how how
how difficult things are being a parent and being the default parent. And she talks about, you know, staying up late at night nursing. I feel like the scene really works because there's this great tension there where Pam is getting something that she needs, but she really doesn't want to take it, but she has to take it. So I think that that scene was played really well and it's actually written really well.
I don't want to fault the writer too much. So the writer of this episode was Charlie Gramdy, who went on to write on a bunch of Mindy Kaling stuff, most notably for us, I think, The Sex Lives of College Girls, which is a very funny show. And so clearly he has the ability to write something funny, but...
I just don't think that any writer was really set up for success in this situation. A thing that we can put in the plus category, but also in the minus category, is that The Office at this point has set up so many well-worn tropes and moves and characters that they can...
sort of rest on that. So there's, yeah, there's a number of times where they do the classic Jim looks at the camera move when someone is being ridiculous and the gym makes eye contact with the camera, which is great. This is probably the 150th time it's been done, but it still works. It's an old groove that they're falling into, but hey, they created the groove. So let's, let's all hang out there. I wonder how hard it was for the actors to get over
their training to not look directly at a camera and then how many times on other projects they accidentally looked at the camera because they were so used to that being part of their tool set on this show.
I only have like two other main things from my notes that I took during this episode. One is that it's just a little information for us all to know is that Catherine Tate, the kind of featured guest star, I don't know if she became a cast member here. They just seem to be bringing people in and out during this period. Catherine Tate has a child with a man named Twig. So that's just a thing that we all can know. The more pertinent to this episode thing is that
James Spader is a really particular kind of actor, and it often works really well. There's a reason he's pretty high in high demand. He's doing his James Spader thing here, and it does not work at all for me in the context of The Office. He's really going for something, and it just, every time he does it, it feels like it's falling flat. Yeah, the scene with him and Jim, it was rough. It was just like there was no real chemistry there, which is hard because you come from the Steve Carell, Michael Scott perspective.
character where he has chemistry with literally every single person in that ensemble. There is a defined relationship and it is immediate from any interaction that they have together. It's there, it's assumed, you understand it. Whereas the James Spader and Jim scene, there's no real chemistry and it just feels awkward. Speaking of awkward, there's a really bad green screen on
Oh, I forgot about this. Really bad green screen moment. So they're doing an exterior shot of Erin outside the house in Florida and it's green screened. I think maybe they couldn't get the location again. The thing that makes it so noticeable is that literally the shot before that, she is actually on location in that front yard and then they cut to a different angle and suddenly she's on a green screen. And so that cut from physical location to green screen is so noticeable.
Yeah, it's rough. I will never say a bad thing about Rainn Wilson, but it's rough. Which it could not have been the fault of the director, but it's possible that they added that scene later and they just didn't want to pay to get the location again or they couldn't get the location again. And they were like, okay, I guess the only way around it is to do a horrible green screen and then without putting anything in between it so it cuts from...
A regular shot at the green screen. Not seamlessly. It's very confusing why they could, because they clearly had like the house set, the interior set for that house, because that's where most of the episode takes place. Why they couldn't just stick around the house set for that one. It was, it's just like one of the standard interview sets.
shots where the character comments on the situation i have no idea why they couldn't just stick her in the house set for that that feels like that does feel not to speak any ill of rain wilson but that does feel like a very poor choice on someone's part i don't know who's and an unnecessary choice
Any other thoughts before we get to our intermission question? It was not a great episode of a great show. Yeah, I still laughed, I think at least twice, maybe three times. I don't know. There was still a couple very good jokes buried in the stuff that didn't work. Let us get to the most important question of our show, though. How is that theme song? It's iconic. It is. It is. It's iconic. You hear the first few notes of it and you know what it is. I mean, this is, again, speaking from someone who is
who this show was targeted directly at. But yeah, very recognizable, very much a banger. You can bop to it. You can boopity bop. So I have a similar relationship to this theme song that I do to the show as a whole, which is, again, I was coming from the British one. I was a big fan of the British one. And the British one has a different theme song and a very similar vibe
credits but just a different theme song and when i first heard that theme song i was very grumpy about it because i'm like i have emotional attachment to the original theme song what is this garbage but now that it has been years and i have nostalgia for the american version hearing it it's very nice it's very like oh i know this song so it just took me a while to get there
Moving into the best. Let's go to the best. Season five, episode 13 and 14. If you're IMDb, Stress Relief. Watch both of these episodes entitled Stress Relief. Wikipedia and Peacock consider this two episodes, Stress Relief part one and part two. IMDb considers it just one 40 minute episode. It's a double episode. It was the one after the Super Bowl that year, and it was the most watched episode of The Office ever, which might also be why it was so high rated.
What's one of the reasons we think that it is the best rated is because it did have such a wide audience and it really hit. They took their post Super Bowl time very seriously and they put together a really great 40 minutes of television. Very, very funny in 40 minutes of television. They use their time. Well, they use their time well and they used their cold open so well because they knew that they were going to have to. I mean, I'm assuming they knew when this episode was going to air and they knew that they had to catch the audience and they had just one of the best cold opens in television history.
It definitely makes sense now that I know it was their post-Super Bowl because it's such an elaborate, big, cold open. Do you want to talk us through it? Let's talk through the episode. So the episode structure is that Dwight is the safety officer for the office and he had to give a lecture on fire safety and he felt like no one paid attention. So...
he decides that in order to get people to pay attention, he's going to start an actual fire at the office and lock the doors and heat up the door handles and like really create a very intense fire, such a real life fire situation in the office. As a result of this Stanley, the stress of this moment, Stanley has a heart attack.
So this makes corporate obviously take a big look at the Scranton office and take a look at the hijinks that are ensuing there. And they bring, they pulled Dwight and Michael into corporate and they say like, things have to change here. So that is happening there with that part of the plot. And most notably, then they decide that it needs to be a less stressful office for, as the title says, stress relief. The main plot is Michael trying to make the office less stressful for
For Stanley and the mid twist, because this is a double episode, is he slowly realizes that the most stressful thing in the office is him, that he as a boss is stressing everyone out. So the second half of the episode is that he decides the best way
To de-stress everyone is to host a roast of himself in like Comedy Central roast style, which does not go the way he think it does when it turns out everyone genuinely hates him and says very hurtful things to him and he gets upset about that.
that. So that's kind of the A plot there. And then there's three B plots, or I guess since there's three of them, there's sort of three C plots. Do you want to talk us through Pam's parents? Okay, so Pam's parents are going through a rough patch, and Pam's dad has been staying with Jim and Pam, and Pam asked Jim to talk to her dad. See what you can do here? And he does, and then once, after Jim talks to Pam's dad, Pam's dad is like, I want to move out. I want to find my own place and leave your mom. And
Right.
And Pam is like, Jim, what did you say to my dad? And Jim's like, I don't know. I just talked to him. And so Jim can't really pinpoint what it was that he said. And so Pam is really upset because she doesn't know what it was. And she's afraid that it's going to be a problem for their relationship in the future. Ultimately, she ends up talking to her dad. And her dad says the thing that Jim said was that it just talked about how much he loved Pam and how special she was to him. And that made Pam's dad realize that he did not have those feelings for Pam's mom. So that is that story.
Yeah, I guess that would be the B plot because of the of the side plots. It's the biggest one. The other two kind of side things is that Andy is watching a pirated movie that is a movie within a movie starring Jack Black.
And Cloris Leachman and Jessica Alba. Jessica Alba has a scene in it. I forgot Jessica Alba was in it. Jessica Alba, whose side note, we've personally paid thousands of dollars because she has a diaper company that we really enjoy to use for our daughter. So whenever she shows up, I'm like, I've personally enriched you with my daughter's poop.
And it's just the entire joke of that one is that Andy keeps mistaking Jim and Pam's discussion of Pam's parents for analysis of the movie. And he thinks that they have a really deep understanding of movies. That's kind of the entire that plot. And then the other one is Dwight is required by corporate to apologize to everyone and have them sign a piece of paper saying that he apologized to them and none of them want to do that. And so he has to trick each of them, trick or bribe each of them into doing it in different ways. And so you have this kind of side thing where it's,
Dwight keeps trying to get them to sign pieces of paper. So there's a lot going on in these two episodes. They really use a lot of their 40 minutes. And I think that's one of the reasons that it works. This episode was written by Paul Lieberstein, who plays Toby on the show, and is one of the writers of the show. And I think...
I think as a result of just the structure of the office writers room where they have writers of the show who are also ensemble on the show. So they're within writing from within the ensemble. And a lot of the beauty of the office is that ensemble cast and the dynamic relationships there and the really strong characters and the puzzle pieces, how they interact with each other. It's, it's really, really wonderful. It's one of the reasons that the office works. And so this episode being written from someone within the ensemble, um,
Everything really shines. It really does give everyone their moment. It does, especially with the element of the roast. It gives these speeches that they get to give, musical performances that they get to have. Yeah, everyone's speech is a completely different vibe to reflect their character. Andy, because Ed Helms was very into singing, which is a thing I forgot that he was very into, but he gets to sing his. Oscar just rants at Michael in Spanish.
Like they each get to do a thing that reflects something about them. And it's not just each of them repeating that they hate Michael. I do think that The Office is unique in a lot of ways in having this writer's room cast crossover that aren't the creators of the show. You know, there's like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I think the cast are also writers, but that's because they all created the show together. But this is a case where we have Paul Lieberstein, we have BJ Novak, and we have Mindy Kaling who are all writers.
writers room cast none of them involved in creating the show but it just gives this very i think particular feel to the show where it feels like everyone's contributing it feels like a show that everyone is putting on rather than a show that's being done from the top down
And when they do talk about the writing of the show, the show is 100% scripted. They did allow time for the actors to improvise. And so there is some of that improvisation that goes into the show, which actually, because there was so much improvisation and just great writing, the show started to run long. So there are a lot of cuts and deleted scenes for The Office that are considered just a part of the show because of...
how much material there is for these characters. And it really does show in the ensemble that there is play allowed, that there is development allowed from the actors. And I feel like there is a lot of ownership of character among the actors. The actors really do feel like
solid feet on the ground, know who the characters are and know how they interact with each other. And the writers let them do that. Like you look at the Angela scene during the cold open with the fire, Angela reveals that she has a cat that is living in one of the drawers in the office and she tries to get Oscar to evacuate the cat. And it just, it's this great moment of hijinks, but we also are furthered in the character of Angela. Because of course Angela had a secret
cat majority. Makes total sense. The writers are allowing that to exist for that character and just giving every character a little bit of a bite of the apple in the show. Looking at both the viewers and the writers' perspective, one of the reasons I think this is a favorite is just...
This episode really nails that it's an ensemble all working together. Every single character gets at least one moment, several moments, most of them interacting with different people. Like there's just so much of the ensemble working together in this episode. It is not like the worst episode where it is heavily focused on one or two characters at a time. This is one where just they're letting the ensemble constantly interact in new ways. And every scene where the ensemble is together, directorially, it's dynamic. Yeah.
So there's a scene where Michael is leading a relaxation workshop. So he has everyone in the room together, but their positions of their bodies are funny. And they're playing on that physical comedy there. Obviously, the fire situation where everyone in the office is together, but it's not stagnant at all. There's motion. There's commotion. That cold open has so much good physical comedy. I noticed this with Cheers. I think
I underrate physical comedy in sitcoms. I think of sitcoms as mostly verbal jokes, but Cheers has some great physical comedy. And then that opening was almost entirely just fantastic physical comedy. Great falls, great, like, just people throwing things through windows. Stuff falling out of the ceiling, cats falling out of the ceiling. Yeah, just stuff on fire, firecrackers, like, keeps getting amped up. And it's brilliant. This episode was directed by Jeffrey Blitz, for which he won the Emmy for Outstanding Direction.
Deservedly, I'd say. For this episode, yes. Agree wholeheartedly. Let that Emmy just shine, shine on because this is really just a phenomenal, phenomenal 40 minutes of comedy television. Really well directed. Really, yes. Using the bodies in the space, using the camera, playing the stakes and the tension. Just brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. So far, I'd say this is, I think, our favorite episode we watched in this project. It just feels like it's the one we enjoyed the most so far.
So far, it just felt like we were having fun with it. We were having fun with it. And there was there is so much craft to comment on, which is it's really cool. It's really cool to watch people be excellent at what they're doing and moving, moving the ball forward down the field for what television can be.
One thing I noticed... So sitcoms often struggle to hold up. Comedy is so specific to a time and a place. You know, and there's the classic thing where you watch a sitcom and you're like, "This is so offensive! Why did I not notice how offensive this was?" But there's also just stuff where it's like, "Oh, this kind of humor just feels really stale now." And I didn't feel that here. And one thing I noticed is that there is a lot of jokes poking very intentionally.
at pretty sensitive topics. There's jokes about race and gender. It didn't feel dated or like I was cringing at how offensive it was now because it felt like the writers and the performers were very aware of what they were doing and were doing a very intentional thing. They were poking at those topics thoughtfully and intentionally. And so to me, at least, it felt like those moments held up in a way that I think for a lot of sitcoms, they wouldn't. Yeah.
Yeah, I think a lot. I mean, a lot of the homophobic, sexist and racist remarks come from Michael. And in that way, it is punching up because it is very because everyone hates Michael. So if we're hating the person who is racist and sexist and homophobic, we are, you know, we're in the punch up. Some other thoughts I learned from the IMDb trivia for this episode that this episode literally saved a life.
Because there is a CPR class in the episode and somebody remembered that scene and successfully used CPR to keep someone who had had a heart attack alive in 2019 in Arizona. Which is great. Everyone watched that scene, which is a hilarious, absolutely hilarious scene because it goes very wrong several times throughout the scene. It ends with Rainn Wilson cutting the CPR mannequin face off and putting it on his own face, a silence of the lambs. But it
It is also very helpful in understanding CPR. ABC, guys. ABC. Other things. It was fun seeing Jack Black. Jack Black guest star. Yeah. This runner, this runner movie plot with Jack Black and Cloris Leachman, where they are having a love affair. Because I guess Jack Black leaves Jessica Alba and ends up with her grandma, who's Cloris Leachman. So there's some, there's making out scenes. And just such a great pairing between Jack Black and Cloris Leachman. I feel like they're both similar comedians and that they will go for it.
The two of them will like there is they have no fear in a scene and they will absolutely take it all the way to the wall, both of them. And I think it was great. I enjoyed some signs of the times. There's a scene where somebody texts on a flip phone, which was fun to see. And then there's also a joke that Michael's dick is so small that it's an iPod shuffle, which I'm just like, this is not a joke that would play for the youth because they don't remember the iPod shuffle.
That was such a specific because the iPod shuffle is the one that didn't even have a screen, right? Like you just had no control over the music. It was just like a tiny little tile that played whatever it wanted to play.
There was a couple moments that felt like just enjoyable looks at how TV was made. One was that there's a scene that is absolutely not about what's in the background, but in the background there is a cereal box that is a completely fake prop cereal box for something called Fruitful Morning Cereal. And it's just like a very obvious Hollywood prop cereal box, and I enjoyed that. That's you. You're always looking at that cereal. I even Googled to make sure. Yeah.
I'm a cereal guy. I fall asleep to a podcast that is just discussing cereal in a very soothing way. The Empty Bowl, if anyone's looking for something to fall asleep to. Another one is that there's a scene where Stanley has a biofeedback machine attached to his hand.
And the biofeedback machine is so clearly just a computer mouse strapped to his hand. They don't even try to hide the fact that it's a computer mouse, to the point where I thought it was going to be a joke that Stanley was fucking with him by having a fake. But no, it's played as a real biofeedback machine. They just didn't bother to make a prop one. They just strapped a computer mouse to his hand. Yeah. It feels like, similar to how House...
had that bus crash scene very visibly in a backlot in a way that shows don't like doing now. This felt like at a time where TVs were HD enough that they snuck little inside jokes into the background. There's a fun little thing where behind Michael on his wall, there's a certificate of authenticity for a Seiko watch, but it's spelled wrong.
So it was HD enough that they could do stuff like that, but they still had the TV mentality of, you know, fuck it, we can just strap a mouse to this guy's hand and call it a biofeedback machine.
One of the beautiful things that happens at the end of this episode, so the roast becomes too much for Michael because his feelings get hurt. And so he leaves and then he doesn't come to work the next day. And then he takes a moment to think about it. And then he comes back into the office and roasts everyone else. And his roast of Stanley makes Stanley laugh really, really hard. And then everyone in the office starts laughing really, really hard. And that is the ultimate stress relief is that
While they are all very irritated by each other, they also are very entertained by each other. And the greatest stress relief of all is laughter. And so the episode ends with all of them laughing and Stanley laughing really, really hard. They find a nice character moment that doesn't forgive Michael. It's the tricky line that the show always has to walk, is that Michael is a bad person and you can't forgive him for the bad things he does. But you have to find...
beats where the characters learn to live with them a little because they don't have a choice and so i think that's the nice beat they found is that you know they're stuck with them so they gotta they gotta learn to deal with it somehow and they genuinely do find stress relief and in the comedy of that
Any other thoughts on this one before we wrap up? Rolling Stone called The Office one of the 100 greatest television shows of all time. And I think this, among many other episodes, definitely earns that place on the list. When we think about how did this meet our expectations, I think it was exactly where I thought it was going to be. It's such a part of the comedy DNA of modern television that it
I would say it held up completely. I would absolutely keep watching this. Like I would watch an episode of The Office right now. That'd be fun. Even at its worst, you could see why it worked so well. All right. And now would we show this to our two and a half year old? Oh, our other show, The Littlest. The Littlest. The Littlest.
And what do you think would happen? I would show it to our two-year-old because I don't think there's anything. As we've discussed, when you're that age, there are two kinds of things on the TV, good and scary. The idea of quality doesn't enter into it. And nothing in this show, I think, would be scary, except maybe that cold open might be a little scary for her because there's just people yelling and seeming scared. She can pick up on that fear. I think she would have some fun with it, just because I think...
The performances are big enough that even if she's not following the punchlines, I think she would enjoy. She would probably get bored after a little bit. What do you think? I agree. I don't know if it would hold her attention in the way. I think the physical comedy might work for her, but the sort of nuanced jokes and not to underestimate her ability to understand character. But I don't know that if the relationships would be impactful enough for her to find humor there. I'm also curious just in this new world scenario,
remote work is more common. I don't know how that has changed office culture, but I'm curious how people that have never had to work an office job like that relate to this show if they'll have the same feelings because I think millennials very much had that office experience and we were maybe the last generation to definitely have that exact office experience. I've worked in many a shitty office like that and we, unless you were born rich, we all have and
And so I'm curious, just people who grew up working remote or working gig jobs, if they relate in the same way. Yeah, or working in service industry. I feel like if you're a millennial, you either are on the service industry track or you work in an office doing data entry. And just I was a for was it?
eight years, maybe I was a claims executive at an insurance agency. So I just, if you had a car accident, you called me and I tried to help your you file an insurance claim and hope that your insurance company would pay you money. So I did that for years in my in my cubicle, wearing my business casual clothing and eating sad lunches from 711 and did that for probably too long.
I mean, I did a number of temp office jobs. And then for three years, I ran the customer service department for a prepaid debit card company, which was exactly what it sounds like. And then I got laid off from that. And two months later, wrote the first episode of Welcome to Night Vale. So that was a layoff that worked well for me, I guess. But I definitely, I remember...
approaching that three-year anniversary just thinking, I cannot believe I have been at this office for three years. What am I doing with my life? And then also just the specific thing of being a millennial in an office environment where you are the only person in that building who knows how the computer works.
And so whatever your day is, you're not doing your job or you're not just like, you know, trying to put your brain in a Reddit hole to get away from it. Someone is asking you how to attach a PDF or to create a PDF or to send an email or to restart their computer. Like you are, you are it in the absence of it. Yeah.
There was just so much that. But the other side of that coin is you get to feel like a genius for knowing where the power button is on a computer. I forgot to talk about this. Checking my predictions or at least my pattern noticing with best and worst. So the worst...
I think will usually be either first season or last third. This was that. It'll be after a cast change. If there was a cast change, this was that. I also think the worst one will tend to be just a normal episode done badly. It won't be a format breaker usually. I think format breakers, even when they don't go well, people are kind of interested in that. So I think the worst rated episode will usually just be a standard episode of the show not done very well.
Whereas I think the best one, the best one will usually be, I think, in the middle third of a show's run, which this one was. It was a season five out of nine. And then I think it will also be a format breaker more often than not. So with Cheers, we had an episode that was mostly in Fraser's apartment away from the bar. With House, obviously, that was the most format breaker. It was this whole dream episode mystery episode.
And with this one, it was a double episode, which I guess isn't the most format breaking, but it is still twice as long. I just think that episodes that are a little different will get an edge on ones that just do the formula well. So these are... We'll keep an eye on this. See, I know that our next...
show will already be breaking one of these rules, I think. Or not rules, but observations. What is our next show we're covering? Our next show is X-Files. I'm so excited for the X-Files. I'm so excited for you, for us, for the X-Files. I think we're going to have a good time with that. There's certain shows on our list where I'm like, these are popular shows, but I'm not sure I'm going to enjoy watching them. I'm going to enjoy watching the X-Files, I think.
Thank you all so much for joining us. Thank you to The Office for being made. Check out our Patreon-only show, The Midlist, where we will be discussing the exact middlest rated episode to see what the show looks like when everything is exactly average. That episode is season two, episode 19, Michael's birthday. And we will see you there. See you there. See you there.
Okay, if you enjoyed that, you can check it out at nightfailpresents.com or on any podcast app you like. Okay, thanks. Bye. Hello, iPod broadcast listeners. My name is Meg, and I am one of the esteemed tri-hosts of the beloved iBroad Good Morning Night Vale. I, along with my hilarious friends, fellow Night Vale actors, passionate eaters, and soft-hitting journalists,
Symphony Sanders, and Hal Loveland are now over 100 episodes into our deep dive recap show of Welcome to Night Vale. We've tackled topics like soft meat crown head cannons, Cecil's fashion, and whether Steve Scones were really all that terrible. Plus, behind the scenes stories from the Night Vale creative family.
And we've heard from listeners like you about queer representation, Night Vale named pets, major theories, minor questions, and of course, best and worst practices for alternative spa therapy services. If you know, you know. Check out Good Morning Night Vale every other Thursday, wherever you get your iBrods, iCasts, PodBrods, and podcasts. I think I like PodBrods the best. I'm a real PodBrod myself. From PR.