Scrantonicity ~ “The Delivery”

I was born in Scranton at the Community Medical Center. Years later, my mother got a job there, working as the nightshift switchboard operator. So… I was, uh… hoping that Pam and Jim would choose that fine establishment as the place to bring Cecelia into the world. But they opted instead for the Moses Taylor Hospital, which is on Quincy Avenue, closer to the heart of downtown Scranton. The Community Medical Center would have been the better choice, as it is an easier drive from the mythical Dunder-Mifflin office. But I realize that’s just me talking, and it sounds a lot like the logic of the mythical Dwight Schrute.

The only way we know that it is the Moses Taylor Hospital is this: the hospital’s modern “M” logo with the name beneath it is clearly visible on the wall behind Pam when she is being dumped from… oops, I mean discharged in her wheelchair. The building itself doesn’t even remotely resemble the real hospital, and the lushly blooming landscaping does not exactly scream “early March” in Scranton, but dog-gonnit… the Moses Taylor logo is clearly visible, and that works for me!

Here’s something else that “works for me:” The show put a lot of effort into recreating the front page of the Scranton Times-Tribune newspaper for the great gag involving Andy’s gift. The layout and the print fonts were painstakingly perfect, and the paper’s two headlines were good for some big laughs; after Cecelia missed her “deadline” to be born, “Spring Has Sprung” now has to be replaced with “Scranton Strangler Strikes Again.” How could you not love this show?

They did let a great opportunity for a local reference slide by: When Dwight was pulled over by a cop, no police logo was shown on the side of the cruiser. It wouldn’t have taken much effort to stencil “Scranton Police” or “Lackawanna County Sheriff’s Department” on the car door. Even worse, they could have shown the Scranton Police Patch on the ticketing officer’s shoulder, but they didn’t. For crying out loud, they’ve used that patch before, on the cops that answered the disturbance call at Michael Scott’s condo in season 4’s “Dinner Party.” So, we know that they’ve got that patch gathering dust in the prop department! Uh, and don’t get me started about all the leafy, green southern California trees visible out the car window as Michael drives to the hospital!

One other possible/probable local reference was when Dwight was sitting in Jim and Pam’s house, talking on the phone to Angela at the office about the revised “baby” contract. Dwight is briefly shown swigging from a brown bottle, which could very well be a Yuengling beer. It went by too fast for me to be sure, but it looked like a Yuengling label. So we’ll go with that. He was drinking a Yuengling beer in that scene, OK? OK. (This is actually a sneaky “test” to see if anybody who really did recognize the bottle label is reading this; if so, surely they will swiftly and sternly rake me over the Anthracite coals in the comments section.)

~ Bob