He has very little camera time, but his role is so critical. This is the man that sold the vodka to Michael for the Christmas Party. He also confirmed that 20 bottles would indeed get them all plastered. And it certainly did.
Plus his sideburns are great.
Season 2 Episode 10
Michael overspends on his gift for the office’s “Secret Santa” exchange and is disappointed by the handmade item he receives. He forces the employees to participate in a “Yankee Swap” — leaving Jim uncertain about the fate of his special present for Pam while the staff guns for Michael’s gift.
Jim is ready to tell his feelings to Pam by giving her a thoughful present and a card with his thoughts…but of course he chickens out.
It is very easy to hate Michael in this episode. In fact, this episode alone could confirm his placement as one of the worst bosses on television. Somehow he saves it by serving vodka and encouraging crazy moments with his camera.
Um, and how about that “crazy moment” at the end when Meredith shows how drunk she got from the vodka. Michael’s reaction, and following snapshot, could be one of my favorite moments of the whole series.
How about you?
Here is a video from YouTube that has all of the great pranks from The Office. While I love seeing all the pranks again, and this video is done well, the song just doesn’t groove with the video. In fact, it kind of makes the dialogue hard to hear. Although the title seems to fit nice.
Either way, we always appreciate when someone takes the time to make videos.
By the way, don’t forget that “The Christmas Party” and “The Injury” are both on tonight beginning at 8:30.
And now, enjoy the show.
-Today, the Chicago Tribune compiled a list of the “5 Worst Fake Bosses”. As you would expect, Michael is right there in the list. The article is here, but because it requires a subscription, I’ll copy the part on Michael here.
Michael Scott, “The Office” (NBC)
Steve Carell does his BBC predecessor, Ricky Gervais, proud as downright dumb, politically incorrect boss of the fictional Dunder Mifflin. Carell’s Michael Scott doesn’t rule with an iron fist, but tries too hard to befriend employees, encourages workplace rivalries and makes off-the-cuff and politically incorrect remarks that would land a real boss in the human resources office.
The other bosses on the list are :
Bill Lumbergh, “Office Space”
Mr. Montgomery Burns, “The Simpsons”
Nina Fletcher, “Desperate Housewives”
Tony Soprano, “The Sopranos”
- We know that Creed was a member of the Grass Roots, and that he knows a lot about “grass” in general. LITO reader Clint sends in a great link to a Geocities page for Creed Bratton. It doesn’t look like it has been updated for a while, but it offers some cool real life information and shows us that he has a couple solo cd’s for sale. You can check out this page here.
Creed, come and come and do an interview with LifeInTheOffice.com. We’d really like to know more.
Yesterday, I posted about Jenna’s blog post that gave us an inside scoop on how the writers attack the show storylines. Part of that was:
The group of writers, we have about 10, sit around a table and pitch story ideas. An assistant takes notes. They spend days just yelling out ideas like “Michael has to pick a new health care plan”, “Pam gets drunk”, “Jim cant talk for the day”.
Well, Mark offered a great idea in the comments. He wrote, “Have your readers post their ideas for story ideas. The ideas have to be, say, 15 words or less.”
I think that’s a great idea. Throw out your ideas for the show. You can do as many as you want, but only one per comment and under 15 words. Maybe the writers will visit the blog and like our ideas.
Devin just sent in this link to YouTube that offers a tease of the upcoming Office webisodes!!! It’s short, but any new material is good material. Yippee! Who’s excited?
I look forward to Mondays because Time Magazine shows up in my mailbox. I was reading thru this week’s issue and was surprised to see the article titled, “Get The Office At Your Office.” The article talks a bit about the major networks taking baby steps into the World Wide Web. As one of the examples, they talk about the upcoming webisodes. The Office seems to lead the way on a lot of internet trials.
The most interesting part to me was when it warned that the FCC has no power over the networks when they air things on the web. So, shows could show and say more than they could on TV. Personally, I’d prefer for that not to happen. I appreciate when the networks keep out the foul language for instance. I was happy to see that executive producer Greg Daniels felt the same way.
Daniels considered letting actors swear in the Office webisodes but says he didn’t think “people wanted to hear their favorite characters shouting profanities they wouldn’t hear on the regular show.”
The whole article is quite interesting. If you’d like to read it, it can be found here on Time.com.
I probably don’t post about the character MySpace blogs as much as I should. I’ve just never been big into MySpace I guess. But thankfully a lot of LITO readers point me to the posts that are real winners. The post today is one of those.
Today, Jenna answered a whole list of questions from her readers. But, my favorite part of the post was the insight on how the episodes are written:
In case you were wondering how writers on a TV show work, I’ll try to break it down for you. (I really have no idea, but this is what Ive observed.) The group of writers, we have about 10, sit around a table and pitch story ideas. An assistant takes notes. They spend days just yelling out ideas like “Michael has to pick a new health care plan”, “Pam gets drunk”, “Jim cant talk for the day”.
Next, they go through the notes and write their favorite ideas on index cards. They tack these onto the walls. So, the walls are literally covered with index cards.
Then, they try to break a story. They pick a card and talk all about how it could be an episode. They try to give it a beginning, middle and an end. If they can’t break it, they put it back for later. If they do break it, they move it to a new place on the wall for Episodes.
Once they have enough Episodes, they break down each story even more and make a beat-by-beat outline. Finally, each writer gets an episode assignment. The writers go off on their own for 1-2 weeks and, using the outline, write their episode. That’s where they are now. Writing episodes! There are 10 people who know exactly what happens at the beginning of Season 3. Sadly, I’m not one of them.
You can read all the queston and answers on Jenna’s MySpace Blog here
Well, look who is doing an about face with YouTube.com. Instead of sending their lawyers after the site, NBC has decided to work with YouTube.
Today, NBC has announced a new contest for all the fans of The Office. Basically, they provide you with some material and you can put together the best promo that you can do. There are a couple rules that need to be followed, but this is really a call for some creativity. I think that this will be reason enough to go and buy that video camera I’ve been wanting. Oh yeah, “the winners will air on NBC during The Office this summer! ”
I was going thru the comments on past posts and was gently reminded by “DwightK” that we have not voted on our last haiku contest. In fact, he reminded me in a haiku:
These Haikus - they’re done?
No one’s writing any more.
Do we pick winners?
So, with that gentle reminder, here are the three finalists:
1) Dwight has a farm house.
Teenagers use it for sex.
I hope he doesn’t.
2)Jim, who would you do?
Pam looks nervous and hopeful
Kevin? Nice save Jim!
3)Work sucks, boring life
But Thursdays make it awesome
Hmm…not a bad day.
4)September’s far off
Reruns won’t work much longer
“Office” withdrawal sucks
5)Transfer? To Stamford?
Connecticut has no Pam
Who would torture Dwight?
Whew, I thought my job was hard to narrow it down to 5…but your job is much harder. Which one do you like the best? Give us a number and tell us why.
