I'm Jenna Fischer, and I'm Angela Kinsey. We were on the office together and we're best friends and now we're doing the ultimate office rewash podcast just for you. Each week we will break down an episode of the office and give exclusive behind the scenes stories that only two people who were there can tell you where the office ladies. Paudie and Bowen, Georgina, oh, oh, that's going to kind of come up later in this episode, there's going to be some accents later.

There are. Oh it's fun. Accent Day. Oh, no. People are turning us off. No, no, no. They're like, oh no, it's accent day because it's OK. We won't go crazy.

Yeah. This is a fun one. Jenna, tell them what we're doing today. We are doing product recall season three, Episode 20, written by Justin Spitzer and Brent Forrester and directed by Randall Einhorn.

Randall, I was so excited when Randall got to direct. We'll get into that.

But, you know, Randall was our cinematographer, so this was really fun for him and fun for us.

Did you know that Randall directed the most episodes of The Office?

No, I did not. Crazy, right? I think he did fifteen.

That is so wild. Well, I love that even more.

Well, I am ready for a summary, Angela, but I have got a little special something. Sam, it's Angela.

You know what to do up some we had.

That is so adorable, isn't that so cool?

It's so cute that was sent in by Joey Música and he said he recorded all of the parts himself, just like Andy I was, because I there's like a to do the part.

That's so cool. Thank you, Joey. All right.

So here is the summary for product recall. Dunder Mifflin is in crisis mode after paper with an obscene watermark, goes into circulation to customers who.

Michael organizes a press conference and apologizes to a client when the client demands that Michael be fired. Michael Recruit's Pam and Dwight to help him make an apology video.

The accountants learn how to make customer service calls from Kelly and Creed, who is determined to save his job, pins the blame on an employee at the paper mill for Debbie Brown.

Oh, poor Debbie. This is such a fun episode.

I loved watching it. I have so many fond memories.

Same. Oh my gosh. I feel like Steve is in rare form in this episode. I also personally think some of the best quotes of the whole Season three are in this episode. Oh yes. It's so many. We'll get to it.

And I just want to share one of my favorite quotes of the whole entire series is in this episode. Oh, right here.

This is also the episode of animal noises or non-verbal reactions, accents and non-verbal. Someone just fell forward. Oh, no. Well, fast fact No. One. I mentioned that this episode was written by both Justin Spitzer and Brent Forrester.

I should probably clarify that there are some writers who work in teams like we've mentioned before, Jean and Lee, they were a writing team. They were hired together as a duo. But Justin and Brent were not a writing team. They were hired separately. So this was interesting that they were co writing this together.

Well, we reached out to both of them to hear what it was like to be paired together on this episode. So they said that Greg just paired them together because he thought it would be kind of fun. And Justin told me that they basically just split it down the middle, that Brent took a pass, that act one, Justin did act two, and then they split Act three. And then they came together one afternoon and they kind of went over it.

And since Brent was the senior writer, he kind of took the lead on a kind of a dual rewrite. And then they turned it in and it was kind of, you know, punched up by the staff like every other episode.

I could see Greg doing this because he loved pairing together people to see what would come out of that pairing, whether it was characters or writers. You know, he loved to see what happened. Even our editors sometimes were paired up in different ways.

Well, Brent said that it's true that Greg did make it clear that he was the senior writer and that he had final decision on what went into the draft, but he said right from the start he could see that Justin scenes were just so good that it would be a terrible mistake to put, quote, my grubby fingers on any of it, end quote.

So he said that they didn't change any of each other's work. They ended up turning it in just as they had both originally written it. Well, that is so fun.

All right. Fastback number two, I asked these guys what was the inspiration for this episode? Was this based on anything in real life?

And Justin told me that he couldn't remember exactly where the idea came from, but he's pretty sure that it just came out of one of those pitch sessions in the room. So it wasn't like one writer had the idea, but it was sort of a collective one of your group mind things and kind of like group mind.

Well, he said he does have a very distinct memory as they were circling closer and closer to something that felt like an episode, Lee Eisenberg suddenly blurted out a product recall.

It's a product recall. And after Lee said that they knew it was going to be like a defective product and a mini scandal. But here's the thing, and here is why I asked. I did a little Googling.

This episode aired in April 2007.

And the crazy thing is that in August of 2007, there was a massive historic Mattel toy recall.

A huge product recall, what do they recall? They recalled 19 million toys, what was it? Some of them were recalled because they had lead paint.

Was it a GI Joe? No, I don't know what it was. A bunch of toys that were shown to have lead paint. And the other was because there was a tiny magnet that kept falling off and it posed a choking hazard. But also in 2007, there was a massive crib recall, one million Grainco in simplicity cribs were recalled and I even read an article that called 2007, quote, the year of the recall. Well, that's crazy.

I wonder if it was in the zeitgeist. It was in the group mind of the world. And it went into Lee's brain and he shouted it into the writers room.

And it became an episode of the office major group. Mind that some global group mind. OK, lady, I'm going to move us along to fast. Fact number three, I'm calling it Location Alert Network.

As part of this episode, Jim and Andy go to a local high school to apologize for the obscene watermark and kento pedia. Let us know because we got some mail. People wanted to know, was this the same school where we shot Doorly?

People love to know about locations. They know it. This was filmed at a different school than Diwali. This time we filmed at St John Paul Academy in Burbank in real life. It is a private Catholic stem immersion high school. The school colors are white, blue and red, and the real students at the school wear uniforms. For our shoot, we hired background performers to play the students, we did not use the actual students of the school.

I feel like that is a thorough answer to this location question. Yeah. You know, I went to a Catholic high school, all right? It was not coed. It was all girls. And I wore a uniform and our colors were green and white and grey and navy, I think were the colors we were allowed to wear. And yellow. It's a lot of colors.

It's really only five and you're only allowed to wear those colors, seems like a lot of skill at best. Do you do you wear? How many colors do you wear? I just grab whatever, you know, there.

I so imagine you're getting dressed in the morning and you have to limit it to only these five colors.

Well, listen, a friend of mine did that thing. Remember when ladies would get their colors done? Oh, yes.

And you find out if you like summer or winter or something. My mom did this. My mom was a summer. OK, so a friend of mine recently did this. It's great. They're still doing this. They're still doing it. It sort of went out of fashion, but whatever. She did it and she found out that she's like shades of blue and coral and white and and she just filled her closet with those colors.

She's always in those three colors. So what do you know what she is, is that summer blue and white? I don't know what it is, maybe spring. But listen, it's a commitment to stay in those three colors. I'd have a hard time. Oh, my God.

This is literally what I was saying. I said I could only wear five colors. And you're like, oh, that's a lot of colors. I don't see what the issue is. And now you're like, I would have a hard time only wearing a few color.

My point was, if you're going to have a school that has uniforms, you can't have a lot of options. Why, because you're looking at half personal expression within uniform. No.

Oh, my gosh, you're taking a stand. You're clearly not thought about this at all because you are taking more powerful positions on this one subject.

What's the point of having a uniform? If you can have multiple colors and freedom of expression, there's no point either having uniform or don't. All right. Well, we had to all wear the same skirt.

It was the same there was no choice or navy pants or a yellow shirt or a green shirt or a white shirt where we had to be done about on top.

You could wear the different colors, but they had to be a collared shirt and you couldn't have any logo goes. No logos, not even like, you know, some people, they would try to sneak in like a little polo match on their lapel and that would be a no. Wow, look at that. Yeah. Get up uniform. Lock it up, lady. Where are we?

Well, we're ready to take a break and then we're going to come back and break down this episode. Well, before we take a break, I want to just share one thing about this episode.

Oh, well, I'll just get to it. What is it? I had the hugest zit on my cheek and I remember being really bummed out because I had a nice big storyline and I woke up with an enormous sit on my cheek and they tried to cover it with makeup. Jenna, they didn't splurge for CGI and scooty it out. It's in the whole episode. There's so much makeup on it. It's like an orange patch on my cheek.

I did not notice it one time in my life watching this.

Do you have time codes for it? Is that something we can look forward to after the break? Yes.

Yes. Well, there you go. You want to close up? Well, listen, I'm sure you're riveted now. You can't wait to come back. We're going to take a break and come back with this episode.

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Get ready to love your scrubs. OK, so we start off this episode with a very funny cold open, I think it is one of the classics of all the cold opens on the whole series.

One hundred percent it is Jim dressed as Dwight acting like Dwight, and it makes Dwight crazy.

And some of the best lines right here in this cold open lady.

I remember filming this episode and John Krasinski was so funny we could not hold it together.

Well, we all knew how great he was in impressions. And so when he got to actually flex that a little, we were just like, oh, I can't wait to watch.

Well, Angela, I think this cold open has two of our most quoted moments for sure. No one bears beats Battlestar Galactica.

I mean, how many T-shirts is that on? It's on everything. And also, identity theft is not a joke, Jim. Millions of families suffer every year. That's right. I see that all the time. Identity theft is not a joke. Don't we sell pencils that say identity theft is not a joke? Don't we have a pencil pack on office ladies? Dotcom. Yes. And we have that quote, right?

We have. But we also have Bears Beats, Battlestar Galactica. It's just one of my favorite quotes. It is not my favorite quote of the whole episode, though. We'll get to that. But this couplet is so fun. And I have seen people like at conventions and stuff say this false blackbox like the whole thing. Oh yeah. Let's we should play it. Sam. Yeah. Let's play this play this clip question.

What kind of bear is best. That's a ridiculous question. False black bear. That's debatable. There are basically two schools of thought fact bears eat oh bears beats Battlestar Galactica bears do not.

What is going on. What are you doing?

I love it so much. I want to know what are the two schools of thoughts about bears? We never find out. We don't listen.

We had a fan question from Ashley Trick, Emily, Dennis, Faith, El Rianne Holub and Tara Laport. Basically, they all said the same version of this. Please, please, please tell us everything about the cold open. It is one of the best sequences on television ever. How long did it take John and Rain to get through it? Here's what I found out, Angela. OK, Kantar Media thinks we only did about eight takes of this.

He said it went a lot faster than we may realize. Well, it was a quick beat. You know, it was a quick scene. And then I asked Justin and he said that he and Brent did not write this cold open.

They wrote a cold open where Michael is getting scammed by a telemarketer. But during the rewriting process, Jean and Lee are the ones who came up with the idea for Jim to come in as Dwight. And they wrote The Cold Open. And it was Mike Shaw who pitched the line Bears Beats Battlestar Galactica.

Applause, applause. This is why you need a whole writing team. Look at that. That that's how the magic happens. It's a collaboration. People I have two other observations about this cold open, not as popular as the obvious ones, bears, beats, Battlestar Galactica, all that. But I have, you know. There is a new plant at reception. No, get out of here. What is going on? I am telling you, I don't know when I'll have time to do this, but I am going to the screengrab every plant on reception for the whole series.

What is it this week? It's a real sad looking plant. It's only got a few leaves on it. It's in a purple pot with it looks like some polka dots and it is through the whole episode. I notice it's in the cold open the tag and the whole episode and and Jim's talking head where he says he created that whole look for eleven dollars.

Yeah, we have an old tech alert. All tech alert, we have the old calculator watch. Oh, yeah, now I know that Dwight always wears one, but just to see Jim actually use it like you, you hear the beeping as he's adding on it.

I just thought it was really fun.

How often do you use the calculator on your phone? Surprisingly, a lot. I see why they made a calculator. Watch. Yeah, because you you know, I use it.

I mean, I remember like because I'm 100 years old that, you know, boys would have it at school and they would be told in math class they could not use it.

You know, I spent a year where I refused to let myself use a calculator and I had to do all of my math problems by hand.

It was just a weird commitment I made to not you know, I struggle. It was a weird commitment I made because I felt sort of like I should be able to add twenty six and 97 without a calculator, like just, you know, carry the one or whatever. How old were you when you made this commitment? I was in my 30s. Really?

Yeah.

I was really expecting you to say I was twenty four now I just got disappointed in myself for relying on my calculator for simple math problems.

So did I know you when you made this commitment because I knew you in your 30s.

Yeah, I guess you did. My guess I never added anything or subtracted anything around to my best friend in her 30s, took a year off from calculators and didn't tell me I do weird stuff like that sometimes.

What is that about me?

I think you like to make hurdle's for yourself. Was horrible. I just speak to a therapist about this. What am I doing?

I mean, why you heard you get you get into a real cushy stride. You're like, hey, these are clipping along. I'm having a great run here. I'm going to give myself a hurdle. Yeah.

I don't deserve to easy. I'm going to stop using a calculator. I don't deserve this because she's stride right now. I'm not allowed to use calculator. Oh, my God. All right. It's OK to use the calculator while I use what now? I mean, that was one of the dumbest things I've ever done, one of my dumber goals.

I'm sure there's a mathematician out there somewhere that's like really into that. You know, it's like, yeah, way to go. You know what I'll say at the end of the year, I was no better at adding, subtracting or multiplying than I was when I started.

You can't say that. That can't be your button. You have to wait that there was no skill gained.

There was like a bead. Nothing, I was still counting on my fingers to carry the numbers, I mean, it was like it was for nothing.

You just had a year where you were slightly more irritable. OK, let's get into this episode, speaking of people being irritable, everyone is on the phone with very upset customers. I want to share with you that there are a lot of delicious deleted scenes and one of them starts off in customer service with this speech and Kelly repeats it over and over. And Ryan is like dying inside because he's right behind her and it cuts to a talking head of Ryan and he's got it fully memorized.

But this is what Kelly says right at the top of the episode, had it stayed in? Customer service. This is Kelly. Oh, my God, I am so sorry that is so messed up. Everyone here is so upset, you have no idea. And rest assured, your voice has been heard. OK, I'll be thinking about you all day. Customer service. This is Kelly. Oh my God. I am so sorry. That is so messed up.

Everyone here is so upset. You have no idea. And rest assured, your voice has been heard. OK, I'll be thinking about you all day.

Wow, she says it on a loop. And Brian, it looks like he wants to just explode. Well, Michael has a talking head where he explains what happened, why everyone is so upset, why everyone's on the phone, I guess a disgruntled employee sent out 500 boxes of their standard paper with a pornographic watermark. Of two cartoon characters engaging in a sex act. Yes, he said it's a, you know, beloved duck doing something to a mouse.

Yeah. Now what's he talking about?

Daffy Duck and Mickey Mouse, because he says, never been a fan, not a fan.

Well, I think he would be talking about Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. Oh, yes. Because Daffy is part of the Bugs Bunny.

Kinky can't keep my duck straight. I just like the idea of that is that is the quote of the day, I can't keep my ducks straight. There's so many.

There's so many. There's so many cartoon ducks. You can Scrooge McDuck. There's so many ducks.

But I love the idea. It just makes me laugh that Michael has never liked Mickey Mouse. I know.

Not funny enough for him. I don't know. I guess not enough not enough jokes.

Well, Michael holds up the piece of paper to the light and shows the watermark.

And guess who did a little bit of a deep dive on water marks. You know, because it wasn't me and we're, shall we say, people, I'm not going to say I'm Cody anyone? No one. No, it was me. It was me. And listen, I don't know if this is going to be interesting. I found it fascinating. I'll do a quick overview, OK? So we all know what a watermark is, right, a watermark is basically this image that's applied to a piece of paper.

Right. And you hold it up to the light and that's how you see it. The term watermark comes from the way these designs are created. It's during the wet paper stage of making paper. Right.

It's almost like a stamp. You know, it's really fascinating. A damp water spot. Here's where it gets interesting.

Ready? Yes. Did you know that watermarks were first introduced in Bob Ariano, Italy and 12 82? Yes, I did. You did not. Of course I did not know that. Why didn't. Believe you, I wholeheartedly believed you like my delivery was very good. You're a very good actress. You should have won that Emmy that year. I was really mad you didn't curse on national television.

OK, so and they're not really sure why exactly watermarked started in Italy then it could have been, you know, to show like maybe it was the service of the king or to convey a secret message or prove authenticity of a message. Right. But now wait, they were deliberately invented. So one thing I'm curious about is that the watermark was not an accident that happened one day in the wet papermaking stage of papermaking. And then people were like, oh, my gosh, what if we did this on purpose?

Someone purposely watermarked? Well, I don't I don't have, you know, the fella's journal from 2082.

It might have been a thing where he was like, hey, that's my thumb. Hey, that's cool. We should do that. Oh, I bet the king would like this because then everyone would know it's his paper.

So this I love how this paper maker in Italy in the twelve hundred journals. Exactly like you.

Exactly. Oh my God. My thumb. Oh hey, I should tell the king about this.

You might like to have his official paper man going to have a glass of wine. OK. Oh look at the hummingbird's Ekso Ekso XOS paper maker guy smiley face. So Cartier Mililani Fabiano claims to have innervated three techniques which are still a part of papermaking today. But here's the fun part, Jenah. Put this on our bucket list. You and I can go and visit the paper and Watermark Museum of Ariano in Italy. Oh, that is one hundred percent happening now.

How much fun would we have walking through that, getting a tour? How perfect would it be these two people who are on a show about paper going to one of the oldest paper mills in the world? I can't wait. That is bucket list for sure. Let's get back.

Well, let me tell you what Brent told me about this obscene watermark. Oh, yes. Let's hear it, Brent.

Our writer told me that this watermark for our show was faithfully created by our prop department and that it really did look like a blank sheet of paper. But when you get up close, you can see this little caricature.

And he said after the episode, he asked the prop department to have one of the sheets of paper and he framed it. And it hangs on the wall of his office. And he says people come in all the time and they say, why do you have a blank piece of paper framed on your wall? And he says, it's a keepsake from the office. Look closely.

And then they lean forward and they inevitably say, Oh, my God. Because, you know, on the show, we put the little black bar up to hide the real obscene part, but on the actual piece of paper. I think it's there, it's all there. Yeah, there you go. That was that was Phil Shey job that week. Lost his job. How was your day? I had to have a duck and a mouth do some stuff anyway.

How was your day? Exactly. I want to point out something before we get too far.

Remember we said at the very beginning, this episode, everybody's on the phone and they're talking to customers and they're like really trying to do damage control.

I wanted to point out that at one minute, 55 seconds, Crede is holding the phone up to his ear, but he isn't saying anything.

It's a little bit of foreshadowing, I think, for the fact that Creep knows he's responsible. He's just he's pretending to be on the phone with the customer, I think, but not really.

You could also just be Crede being crede. Yeah. Not doing his job again.

Exactly. So Michael gets everyone in the conference room. You know, this is like crunch time. And he he says, Crede, you really messed up the quality assurance.

So I feel like we we officially here.

Creed's job title, Quality Assurance Creed says every week he's supposed to stop by the paper mill, give it a check, the one year he blew this off. So good. So he hasn't gone for a whole year.

Well, I know I said at the beginning of the podcast that Michael is in rare form in this episode and he truly is in this conference room scene. But also Crede absolutely crushes it in this episode as well.

He does.

So we get back into the conference room. Michael has just great stuff.

He's you know, he was speaking in acronyms, Krzeminski, for FNC, not saving any time, as everyone points out.

And he's really I mean, Michael is really freaking out. He tells everyone this is threat level midnight.

Yeah. Midnite Oscar. Yeah. Threat level Midnite. This is such a fun call back to the client. Yes. And everybody gives a little looks to each other because of it too. Yeah. Well then Michael says today Kelly will be training everyone on how to do customer relations.

Oh. And Angela, you have a talking head where you just take a pill and you say you don't have a headache, you're just preparing.

Yeah, I loved I loved this back to back talking heads because Mindy Kelley is like this day, if you like, and she's so perky and happy.

And then it cuts to me just taking an aspirin. Yeah.

And my kids were really hung up on this. They really wanted to know, was that a real pill? Did I have to take it? They were like, it looks like you take it, you swallow water.

Oh, Angela, we got so much mail about this. OK, Carlos l t you see Emily W, Angela B and Lily and all said, what did you take instead of a real pill.

Well, I will tell you, I did a few takes of that talking head and I had to take sugar pills. Wow. So I guess that's a props thing. I've never had to take fake medicine on a show before, so that's weird. Yeah.

Phil, she brought it to me. He said, listen, it's just sugar. It's like a sugar pill, so you'll be totally fine. So I guess I just had a little spike in sugar that day, though.

Also during this conference room, seen Angela. We find out. That Jim's client is a high school and they printed their prom invitations on this paper. Yeah, so Michael tells Jim he has to physically go to the high school to rectify the situation. He says you have to bring someone, Ryan volunteers, Michael says, no, you have to bring Andy. William Dolto, your service, OK, I will do. And there we go. We said we were going to bring you access.

We didn't lie.

And Jim is like, yeah, I'm definitely going alone. And Michael's like, no, no, I need two men on this. That's what she said. No, but you did know, Todd, that is like such fantastic dialogue. Is that your favorite quote? Is that the one?

No, still. Not yet. Still not yet.

Well, I remember John could not keep it together in this conference room scene. And any time John starts to laugh, it is a very bad sign for the rest of us because you just know that we're never going to make it through. But Steve does something in this conference room scene that. Makes John Lewis that I'm going to guess I have no idea what you're about to say. OK, I know people can't see me, Jenna.

Oh my God, I'm filming.

This is what Steve does at four minutes. Two seconds. Just to mess with all of us.

Yep. There it is. Angela just put her foot up on the table and then leaned in to her crotch. Do you know how do you know how hard it is to lift your head like this high when you're short, like that table's kind of high. Yeah, Steve took his foot and he put it up on the conference table, and I remember the first take, he decided to do that. John lost it. Yeah, because we had no idea any time Steve did that.

Steve used to do that to John's desk all the time.

Yes, you would. And you know what, John? I remember in this scene when I lost it.

I completely lost it when Michael goes, here is your headline. Scranton area paper company Dunder Mifflin apologizes to valued client. Some companies still know how business is done. That's what I'm saying, it was it's like it's like the greatest hits of Michael in this one conference room in this episode. It's so good. Well, now Michael reveals that he has invited Barbara Allen, one of Dunder Mifflin oldest customers, into the office. He's going to offer her a personal apology.

He says if the press wants a story, will give them a story.

Yeah, there's a great deleted scene of Dwight calling CNN. Oh, I like no one.

No one will take his call. Like, it's really funny. Oh, my gosh.

I love it. I love that.

Jim is like, did the press ask for a story? No, no, no.

Michael explains in his talking head, when a company screws up, the best course of action is to hold a press conference. You've got to control the spin. You got to control the story. Well, this had me look up crisis management, Angelo, because that's a whole thing now. Now, I did a very shallow dive on it. All I found out was that this really became popular and like the nineteen eighties and this idea of getting ahead of the story is all part of the crisis management public relations handbook.

So Michael has it a little bit right here, but. He has it wrong in the sense that literally no one knows about this right now. Yeah, if Michael had not made a big to do, it would have just gone away. But now he's going to blast it and it's going to blow up in his face. Yeah. So now we see Crede is trying to do his own kind of damage control, I mean, Crede says that this job is the only thing separating him from being a homeless man because he was a homeless guy.

Yeah. I have to say, Creed, calling up this paper mill and asking who wasn't there last week? So that he can then pin it on this employee is kind of genius, oh, creates a survivor. I mean, he's smart. He's actually he's very smart. He's cunning. Yeah. I was actually impressed. Yeah. I was like, wow, wowsers. Who thought of that?

It's exactly how I got my internship on Conan O'Brien, by the way.

How to wait. What? You know this story. Oh yeah. You called up and I just kept I would call and I would get like an answering machine, you know, because I wanted to do an internship at 30 Rock and in New York and you in back in the day before, like big Internet message boards and things like that, because I'm a hundred.

You would have a phone number you would call and it would I would say hi. It would be like. 30 Rockefeller Center, and I'm like, hi, I would love to apply for an internship. Hold one moment, please. Transfer you to a machine if you would like to apply for an internship at 30 Rockefeller Center, please leave your name and phone number and someone will call you. I got that message every day for three months. And so one day I called up, I got the woman, NBC, you know what, 30 Rockefeller Center.

I said, yes, I was just speaking to a woman about my internship and we got disconnected. She said, Oh, Barbara. I said, yes, Barbara. She said, let me transfer you. I said, thank you. Got to Barbara Barbas like, hi, Barbara.

I was like Barbara, I was just talking to someone about my internship and got disconnected and she was like, Oh, were you talking to Nancy? I was like, yes, I was talking to Nancy. Transferred me through to Nancy. Nancy answers. Hello. I'm like, hi. I was talking to someone about my internship. And she goes, How did you get my number? Did you tell her I told her, I said, well, for three months I called in, I got your voicemail and no one called me back.

So today I called and I lied. And I said that I was talking to someone and that person transferred me to Barbara. And then I told Barbara a version of that lie and she transferred me to you.

And did Nancy say, you're hired? Nancy said, can you be here Monday? And I was in Texas, it was a Friday, I was in Archer City, Texas, very rural area, three hours from a big airport. I said, sure thing. What time? She said, I'll see you Monday at nine. I said, great.

I got off the phone. I said, Mom, Dad, I got to go to New York, lady. That is what it takes. That's what it takes.

I think you just like when you're starting out and especially when you're like the lowest person on the totem pole, you got to have a little hustle.

Got to have a little hustle. Guys, you heard it from us. Get that hustle, OK, so there is a whole bunch of deleted scenes with Kelly in accounting. There's like a whole runner. It's really fun. I mean, at one point, Kelly and Angela get into this huge fight and Kelly says, you look old enough to be my mother. And Angela then calls her a slut.

Oh, my gosh. I know. And then they make up Kelly apologizes. And then she's like, oh, my God, we're best friends. And Angela is like, I don't know about that.

But there's a whole other journey that Kelly and Angela have that you don't see.

Well, now, should we go into the car with Andy and Jim driving to the high school? Yes. Is this it, Angela?

This is leading up to it. Here are some things we learn on this road trip with Jim and Andy. Number one, we learned that Andy says beer me when he wants something. Beer is like a verb, like, get me that beer me that water, right? Yes.

We also learned that Karen is one of Andy's oldest friends. What I think that just because they worked together at Stanford.

Yeah, yeah. And we learned that do not ask Andy to play music because he just he just sings like some a cappella version of Drift Away.

Well, this Biermann line is another one of our most quoted. And Jim even says, Lord, beer me the strength.

That's my favorite line. That's yours of almost like I think about lines from the whole entire show. And one of my favorite lines from the whole entire series happens at seven minutes. Fifty one seconds and it's Lord Fiame strength.

I love it so much. I don't know if it's because growing up there's been so many times where I've been like, Lord, give me strength. Yeah. And just to have Lord bear me strength, it just tickles me. I just love it.

Well I reached out to Justin and Brent because I was very curious. Who wrote this beer. Me. Joke. Oh, I would love to know. All right, they told me that their memory is that Ed Helms had a friend in college who used to say beer me. And it was Brent who expanded it and wrote the joke, Beer me a water. But this was based on a story from Ed Helms.

They said he also had this friend that would do the right thing to do and confirmed that. Right. Ed said he had a friend who would do like a jibberish thing to cut people off. Yeah. All right. Well, I texted Ed and Ed is like, I don't know what they're talking about. I don't have any memory of a friend. He was like, yeah, they're related to do. But I have no memory of a friend saying, bammy.

I don't know.

Oh my gosh. This is like that moment where, you know, something happens and you ask five people what happened and they all different.

Yeah. Yeah. No one we know is that Brent did write the joke beer a water. So Jim has sort of suffered through this car ride with Andy. Now they're in the high school and they're walking through and Andy's like, oh my God, what's my girlfriend doing here in terms like, oh, she like the counselor or something? And he's like, no, she works part time at the frozen yogurt place.

Yeah. She's that girl standing by her locker. Her locker, yeah, and Jim's like, oh, and Lord, so Andy goes up to confront her and she's like, I have to go to Spanish class, Andy's mind is blown. He had no idea that she was a high school student.

Andy does let us know that they did not do anything illegal except knock over a few mailboxes with her friends.

There's also a deleted scene where Andy talks about how they met in a talking head and he was at like a convenience store and she asked him to buy wine coolers for her and her friends.

Oh, boy. Well, the actress who played Jamie was Sheere Scott Mastrov and Lady, she was a contestant on The Bachelor Season 16, the one with Ben Bachelor. Ben, I don't I never watch The Bachelor. OK, well, she's part of Bachelor Nation, so I looked her up on Insta and I slid into her DMS. Oh, my gosh.

What she say? OK, well, first of all, Shira and I have a mutual friend in common and it's actor Michael Rosenbaum. So I think it was slightly less creepy when I slid into her DMS because I saw on her instead that she was friends with Michael. So I was able to lead with that.

That's good. Yeah, I'm always trying to find the least creepy way to slide into some of them.

You remember when you were on the office. You want to talk about it?

I haven't talked to him in a while, but what's up?

OK, OK, so we emailed her, she emailed back and she told me all about her time on the show because and whenever there are these scenes that happen on a location and we weren't there, I like to get details.

I want to know a little bit about it. No, I love it.

Every time we reach out to someone in scenes like this, it's always so fun and just kind of fills in the picture for us.

All right. So here is what she told me. She said that when she got the audition for this, she had never watched the show before. Really? Yeah. So she said she watched one episode and then went to her audition. It was a cold read, meaning they would not give her the material ahead of time because they didn't want the storyline to leak.

Oh, that's so hard. So she had no idea. But then she got the job.

And also she told me because she had never really watched the show, she thought that she was going to be playing Michael's girlfriend.

So when she got to set, she was expecting to see Steve Carell, and that's when she met Ed and John. Now, here is the thing that I found absolutely fascinating. In this episode when she shot this, she was three months shy from turning twenty eight. Oh, my gosh, she was twenty seven years old. She said she was older than John Krasinski and only five years younger than Ed Helms.

Babyface. Oh, my goodness.

She said she had the absolute best time filming this episode. It is still one of the best experiences she's ever had. And after she filmed it, she went home and watched every single office episode from Season one. She totally binged it. And so she was super excited by the time her episode finally aired.

She was like a super fan. That is so fun. But she said to this day, people still write her about being on the show and she's so proud to say that she was part of the office.

Well, listen, guys, Shira was so lovely to tell us about her time in the office. She has a new film coming out called Half Brothers. She's also going to be in a pilot on Amazon called On the Spectrum.

Her Instagram is at Sheerest Scott Mastrov. But here's the plug. I can't wait to give what she is. The founder of an animal rescue organization called the Animal Rescue Mission. They rescue abused and neglected dogs and cats in Los Angeles and all over the world.

She just rescued like 70 dogs from death row in Tijuana. Oh, my gosh. And placed them in homes. So she said if anyone wants to adopt an animal or donate, you can go to the animal rescue mission. Well, and check them out.

I love that we have four rescues. I love little rescue animals. That makes me so happy.

I know. Should we talk about Dwight preparing for the big press conference back at the office?

Oh, yeah. Well, you know, he equates this to beat sales. You've got to put the money beats. Those are the attractive beats. You got to put them up front. That's right.

He has set up the conference room for a giant press conference. All for one man. Mm hmm. This is Chad Light from the Scranton Times.

He does the lighter side of life. Yeah. And the obits. Right.

And there's a great deleted scene with him. And Creed, where he recognizes Creed is a great creed. Bratton from the grassroots Jinno, he basically calls Creed out as himself. Oh, my gosh. And it got deleted again. This origin of creed keeps getting deleted. It got deleted out of booze cruise. It got deleted out of. What was the other episode where we found out that he stole his name from someone in prison, the convict.

And now again, so Chad, like goes Creed Bratton from the grassroots and creeds like. Yeah. And he goes, I wrote your obituary. I was like, oh yeah.

Creed has this great talking head that he faked his death so he could get like an insurance claim or something. He gets money. And so.

Yeah, amazing. Amazing. Well, Chad Light was played by Anthony Russell. And I found this in Anthony's bio, which I thought was absolutely so charming.

It said, as a child, he played harmonica, ukulele, guitar, trombone and piano. He worked his way through college singing in a show band. And after he graduated Montclair State College with a major in trombone and a minor in piano, his band was booked as a Las Vegas lounge act for many major hotels. Well, I played the trombone. No, you do not. Oh, yeah, stop it. And what are you talking about?

Yeah, when we moved to Archer City. Very small town, like in football, it was close to a super small town, so to have a marching band, pretty much everyone had to participate. And so all my friends and the town was you know, I graduated with like 34 people.

So my friends, you I was like, are you going to play in the band?

And I was like, I don't know how to play an instrument. She goes, doesn't really matter.

We studied people. And so I was like, well, what do you play now? My best friend was six foot three guys. She was like star basketball player. I said, What do you play? So I play trombone. I was like 14. I was like, Yeah, OK, sounds good. I'll do what you're doing because I wanted to be able to sit next to her. There was only three people in the trombone section, Shannon, Bill Crutcher and me.

And I said the first day I sat next to Bill and I said, Bill, what what are you playing? Because I all I could hear was like and he goes, I just play letter F the whole time.

I said, OK. So Shannon was the only one that could really play. But I did learn how to play tequila. What's that Banat an now, but yeah, I learned how to play that is really fun on the trombone because you can you do this big slide burn and then I could never reach the the last position, you know.

Yeah. Seventh position because I was too short. My arms didn't extend. Jenna, you wouldn't you wouldn't use a calculator for the year, I was in a band playing a trombone for a few months of my life, very poorly, by the way, very poorly playing the trombone.

I'm speechless. I know. Where are we? God, I don't know if anyone even is listening anymore. Well, listen, I'll tell you where we are, Chad Light has gotten level three security clearance. Don't get excited. It's level three out of 20 and they're getting ready for this big press conference. Meanwhile, Kevin, Oscar and Angela are busy apologizing to customers and it is not going well.

Well, because Angela refuses to say the words, I'm sorry, she will not apologize. She keeps saying things like our official position is one of apology. Like she's like will not just say, we are so sorry.

I love it when, like, Kelly is just patiently trying to coach her to say, like just to make conversation. And she's like, where are you from? Ohio. That's nice.

It just does not want to be talking to these people now, now. And also, by the way, in the meantime, Creed has found out that Debbie Brown did not show up to work last week and he spends a whole tale for Dwight. He says, well, now she told me that she had an emergency dentist appointment. And Dwight gives a look to camera, which I think is a little bit of a callback to his lie to Michael about his dentist appointment.

Remember the dentist? Yes. But then he says, well, then Debbie told the people at her work that she had the stomach flu.

So she's clearly just making things up to avoid taking responsibility for this watermark.

He's really laying it on thick crit. Vicious. Yeah, well, Miss Allen arrives. And before we get into this really embarrassing press conference, why don't we take a break, y'all?

We need a moment.

Before we get to this, we promise we're going to just talk about the office for the rest of the show. Why would you promise that when we know it's not true?

Oh, we'll try. We'll try. You know, over the past few months, a lot of us have had more time to ourselves than normal, and it might not always feel like it, but spending time with yourself can be helpful because it can allow us to check in with how we're doing.

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I know that it can be scary to reach out for the first time and decide that you're going to call someone for help.

No, I think that's really true. I know I have a hard time asking for help. That burden that is lifted off my shoulders when I finally do and when I can start sharing and talking, it just feels so good.

Well, better help has licensed online therapists. They have helped many people manage their mental health. And they're here to help you, too. They have experts in a broad range of areas, including anxiety, depression, grief, trauma and more.

So what you do, you guys, as you fill out a questionnaire and it helps them assess your specific needs and then you'll get matched with your counselor in under 48 hours. Yeah, and they did a study with Berkely Wellbeing Institute and found that ninety eight percent of people using better help made significant progress and 94 percent of them even preferred better help over face to face therapy. I prefer that. Well, also, I think right now, especially being at home is the safe place to be.

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All right, so we are back, we are laser focused and we are in a press conference.

Oh, it is not going well.

No, Michael apologizes to Mrs. Allen and he offers her a giant certificate.

Which, you know, he loves, remember, in Casino Night, he was like, Toby, are you going to have one of those giant checks?

He said, yes, it's a novelty check, as what he calls it. It's a novelty check. It's big, huge. It says six three months of paper or 25 reams, whichever comes first. And Mrs. Allen does not accept the apology.

Mrs. Allen gives zero FS, as the kids say. Oh, yeah.

She literally says, I do not accept your apology. It's so good Michael doesn't know what to do with it.

And, you know, Chad is back there taking up all the notes on this press conference. He's ready to write his article.

Oh, he's his hand is flying across that. No, Pattie's jotting everything down. So this back and forth between Mrs. Allen and Michael, it just starts to escalate. And then he just asked her to leave and she just storms out. And so she's going to call the Better Business Bureau. And Michael's like, oh, yeah, well, I'm going to call the ungrateful bitch hotline. It really, really did not go as planned. I mean, I don't think there's any way to say, I don't know, it could have gone worse.

I really don't.

Well, lady, Mrs. Allen, the woman who played Mrs. Allen so very well was Lisa Daar. And she has done a ton of stuff like Curb Your Enthusiasm. She was a regular on life as we know it, and popular.

She also had a recurring on strong medicine, which is the show that I had a one day guest role on where my brain melted, but I found this very fascinating because I ended up doing a deep dive on her IMDB page. This is crazy. Are you ready? Yes, she appeared in three episodes of Murder, she wrote. But each episode was in a different season and she played a different character. And then she was in two different seasons playing two different characters of CSI.

So she is such a good actress that she can appear multiple times in the same television show playing a different character each time, I felt like that was very telling of her talent.

It is. But also, would she change her?

Look, I don't know, because I didn't do that deep of a dive. I didn't like YouTube by her appearances. But I mean, I found that significant. Yeah, and unusual. Yeah, unless I feel like that happened more back in the day, like on Bewitched, weren't there to Darin's and like it was never explained or something.

Well, that's like a major character change. This is like a guest role. Right. But they hired the same actress in three different guest roles. They loved her clearly. Clearly, well, I loved her, I thought she was great on our show. She was so good and she really just I've been pushing Michael over the edge. Oh, my gosh. You know, Jane, I did say what could have made this press conference worse. And I and Dwight, once again, does not help.

He said he thought both animals were smiling. There is a fantastic Dwight talking head where he talks about growing up on a farm and he has seen a lot of animal action and he says really matter of factly, whoever drew this got it exactly right. Yeah. He tries to tell Mrs. Allen that the cartoon did seem to depict a consensual sex act.

Mm hmm. Because they were smiling and Dwight would know right off his farm life. Right.

Well well, Michael is really upset. He starts to vent to Pam. I mean, that things got out of control. It's going to be a national story. She's like, Michael, this is the Scranton Times.

And he's like, no, it's we need we need to do an apology video. Well, then Michael pulls out the video camera. And Jenna, the look on your face, Pam, is so brilliant. It's so brilliant. Jenna, it said so much history. How many videos has Pam had to film of Michael apologizing for things? I will tell you in the deleted scenes, there's a runner of videos and they're fantastic.

I was going to say that that we shot a whole bunch of former apology videos and they didn't make it in the episode. I will tell you that shooting this scene with Steve and Rain and then also these old apology videos is some of the most fun I ever had on the show. It was so hard to get through this. It was so difficult.

I don't know how you did it. And everything about your expressions are perfection. You don't give away much. But it says so much about what Pam is thinking. I just thought you did a phenomenal job. And I loved these scenes. I love seeing the deleted ones. I want to see more. I could just see a clip show of all these videos that you guys had to do.

And I loved the small touches. I love the American flag behind him. Clearly made out of four pieces of paper taped together. Yep. And I loved that from fifteen minutes. Fifty five seconds to 16 minutes. Five seconds. Dwight is just spraying Michael's hair. Yeah, 11 seconds of silence, except for.

When he sprays the hair. I couldn't get through that, I laughed so hard, I broke constantly, it was very, very difficult to get through that.

When you think about the real estate of a show, like every little moment counts, you're trying to just jam it with as much as possible. And I loved that our show would take these beats like this in seconds. No one's saying a word. Just an aerosol can longer than you have to stay on a bull. That's true.

Thank you for bringing my measurement of time back to bull riding. Well. Also, I don't know if you noticed in the scene, I kept my gaze on the camera, I never looked up to Steve, and I did this for two reasons. One, because it just felt like I'm in charge of operating the camera. And so I was going to make sure he stayed in frame. And that just seemed like sort of my job. But the other reason was because I could look at the little plastic corner and then I wouldn't have to actually see Steve.

And it was easier for me not to laugh.

I wondered about that. I was like a it looks like you're really operating a video camera, but how lucky were you that you didn't have to make eye contact because you were to burst into laughter?

Also, when rain drops one of the cue cards and it makes a thud on the ground, that made me laugh. It was like when I was watching the scene, just I was breaking constantly, those poor guys, I mean, they must have been like, do you need to leave the room?

Well, there is a deleted scene of, you know, Michael does the first video and he's not happy with it. Right. Well, in the deleted scenes, Jonah, there is his second take at the video.

You know, you guys shoot the first one. Yeah. And he doesn't like it. He doesn't like it. And there is a deleted scene. And Jenny made me laugh so hard. Michael goes on to say, I need this job. My mortgage is hundreds of dollars a month with this job. I can barely cover that. I have a company car, but I still have to pay for the gas. Gas prices are high and I have no savings whatsoever.

Oh, Michael, what's kind of fun for this, for those folks who like to catch things in the background, is that deleted scene dialogue is on the cue card in their second attempt is right there. You can zoom in and see it.

Yeah, a lot of people wrote in to ask how come what Michael is saying isn't what is printed on the cue cards when they go back and forth. It was just because we cut some stuff out. We trimmed out some stuff.

Yeah, he actually said everything that was on the cards. We just had to lose some of it for time.

Yeah, well, over in accounting, we had someone write in. Megan Ullman said. Seventeen minutes. Six seconds. Kevin SACE.

Yeah, serious. Kevin says like he's been holding it in for so long he just couldn't wait.

Now he's got something on her. Yeah. Angela is critiquing Kevin's math skills and he then gives some sass by insulting your customer relations skills.

Yeah, and then I call them apes and then Oscar's like, apologize for that and I'm like, Oh, I'm sorry, you're both morons and they're like, but you said sorry, it's like it's like I'm sitting with my two, like, junior high brothers.

Yeah, that's what they're like. And I want you to know that Brian and Oscar improvise their sort of little high five at the end and that they they don't quite get it right. They were so tickled by that moment. They they kept cracking up. Brian kept cracking up.

I looked and they had they like did a few different tries at it. And it just was like their favorite thing.

OK, well, I loved that moment. It made me laugh. Me too. Because why couldn't they have just high five? They were kind of doing like a coronavirus high five where you don't actually touch well.

And they were trying to do like a fist bump and er and but they're right there. They could have easily touched one another, but that's what it made me think of.

I think they love the Jim Pam er high five dude version.

Also funny would have meant that one of them would have, would had to get up ah lean over awkwardly.

And so I just, they were like wow. OK, well I guess it was an optical illusion because it seemed like maybe they could have just made a connection, it would have required one of them getting up at night.

OK, there you go. It.

Well, maybe we should go back to the high school for a second because we forgot to mention that Andy and Jim do meet with the principal.

And it doesn't really go well because Andy is so preoccupied by learning that his girlfriend is at the high school. Yeah, I don't really know.

Did they get this account back? We don't know. It just seems like Andy's about to have a breakdown and Jim is just trying to get them out of there.

Well, the principal was played by Jim Janssen, who also played Reverend Skinner on Gilmore Girls little bit.

Oh, that is good trivia. I know. And yeah, we don't really find out how that went. But as they're driving home in the car, Andy is still clearly bummed out and Jim wants to cheer him up.

I mean, Jim really, really goes for it here. He just starts going a wimoweh, a wimoweh, a wee wee wee wee.

And Andy's fighting it. He's fighting it. But then he just he can't resist. He's like. And not jump in. Do you remember that time on the show when we all sang that? In the bullpen, was that for an episode or were we just doing that one day? I think we just started doing it, yeah, because it is kind of infectious when someone starts it.

Yeah, we were just a little loopy.

I think so, too, in that jungle. The quiet. Yeah.

Oh, one last thing now before we end this episode and get to this amazing tag is Crede. Yeah. Crede got this woman fired and he's going around the office collecting money for her.

He's going to put it in a card.

You know, why do bad things always happen to good people? He asks.

And then he tosses the card. He puts the money in his pocket. Create is diabolical. Yeah. And we also find out that, in Pam's opinion, Michael made the best apology video ever. Yeah, that ended with an ultimatum. You have one day. What? Yeah. And where are these videos going, Ginna? Where.

Oh, they go nowhere. I'm pretty convinced that Pam never send them anywhere. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Well now we have such a fun tag and rain had so much fun doing this. Yes.

Dwight arrives for work the next day dressed as Jim.

But it backfires a little bit because everybody just compliments him on how great he looks and he gets a little frustrated and he tries to do like the gym look to camera, but it's like, so awkward.

Yes.

Well, I want to tell you that this was originally in the script as the alternate ending to the cold open. Dwight had a little talking head where he said, to defeat your enemy, you have to become your enemy. And then he showed up to work dressed as Jim. But in the editing process, we split it up, which I think was genius.

I love that. I love that we end with it.

I remember how much fun Rainn had doing the scene, but I also remember him talking with Randall, the director, about how Dwight couldn't be as good of a mimic as Jim. So whereas Jim could come in and just do the spot on impression, they sort of felt like Dwight's version of Jim had to be a little messier. But like, how do you thread that needle? Right. Like how do you do an impression? But it's Dwight doing the impression because rain could do an amazing impression of Jim Halpert, but he had to do it as Dwight.

So I remember them playing with that a lot on the set when they were shooting this.

Yeah, I feel like those moments would come up for us where it was like your character steps out of its comfort zone a little bit to do something, but you still have to do it as your character and through that filter.

Yeah. But it was fun, it was fun for us. You watch the those fellows do that. Well, you guys, that was product recall. Thanks for taking that journey with us. We we got off topic a few times, but, you know, there's some real nuggets in this Lord bear my strength.

Oh, yes. And listen, identity theft is not a joke. Millions of families suffer every year. All right, guys, we'll see you next week. We'll see you next week. Someone beer me a snack, I'm hungry. Thank you for listening to office ladies Office Ladies is produced by Airball Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. Our producer is Cody Fischer, our sound engineer is Sam Kiffer, and our associate producer is Ainsley Butko. Our theme song is Rubber Tree by Creed Bratton.

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