Stress Relief Pt 1

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I'm Jenna Fisher.

And I'm Angela Kinsey.

We were on The Office together and we're best friends.

And now we're doing the Ultimate Office rewatch 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.

We're the office ladies.

Hi everyone!

Good morning, you guys.

It's early here today for us.

It's early here and we have a lot to cover.

So much?

We came in early.

We have so much to say today, but I have to point out an observation before we get started.

Is it all my snacks and beverages on my side?

You actually do have a ton of snacks and beverages.

You have a hot tea, a cold tea, a water, a granola bar, a banana, and some naughty oats cereal.

I do.

It's a lot.

You knew this was going to be a big episode.

I came ready.

Clearly.

I came ready.

For an entire picnic.

I will always show up with iced tea and snacks.

Just know that.

That's me rolling in to any, any event.

My observation was actually going to be about your document.

Oh.

It's so charming.

It is

printed words.

It's not note cards.

It is a pile of paper.

But what you have done is you have taken like regular lined...

what's that paper called?

It's called notebook paper out of a spiral binder because clearly I ran out of printer paper.

Is that what happened?

That's what happened.

That's why your pages are on lined notebook.

It's printed, though.

Yes.

Did you think that I just wanted to print on notebook paper?

Lady, I didn't know what you were doing.

And I have a post-it note.

I just found it interesting when we sat down.

No, this is me, you know, last night as I print my document out.

You might have heard a few expletives because we were out of printer paper.

So then I was like, damn it.

It's nine o'clock at night.

A good hack.

There you go.

Hack.

Go into your kids' room, get their notebook, rip out the pages.

Your printer will print on it.

I feel like we might have helped some people today.

We might have.

All right.

Well, let's talk about why we're here today.

It is stress relief part one,

season five, episode 14, written by Paul Lieberstein and directed by Jeff Blitz.

Exactly.

You might be thinking, ladies, it's stress relief.

That isn't that big, except it had the cold open to end all cold opens.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

We'll be breaking that down.

Oh yeah, we will.

It's going to take a while.

This episode originally aired as an hour-long episode.

We're going to have to break it down in two parts.

So today we're covering the first half of stress relief.

Would you like a summary?

I really would.

All right, it starts with that cold open you were talking about, Angela.

Dwight takes matters into his own hands when his co-workers fail to pay attention to his fire safety seminar.

He used PowerPoint.

Big mistake.

Big mistake.

He's going to give us a practical fire drill.

Hands-on.

How will we react on our feet?

That's right.

Well, Stanley has a heart attack.

It doesn't end well.

It doesn't.

And that lands Dwight in hot water with corporate.

I mean,

he almost burned the building.

Stanley had a heart attack.

Dwight, how do you have a job?

Michael hires a CPR expert to teach the office what we should do if Stanley has another heart attack.

But Dwight has his own ideas ideas of how to use the CPR dummy.

Hello, Clarice.

Oh, dear.

Finally, we learned that Pam's mom and dad are having a rough patch in their marriage and that Pam's dad has actually been bunking with Jim and Pam.

Sam's robe.

Yeah.

Was he walking around in his tidy whities?

I don't know, but she needs to get him a robe.

Aww.

Fast fact number one: this episode aired after the Super Bowl on Sunday, February 1st, 2009.

I mean, if I had an air horn thing, I'd fire it off

because this was huge for us.

Sophia C wrote in to say, Jenna, I have a fast fact for you.

Sophia, this was the most watched episode of the entire Office series.

What?

Yeah.

And she's right.

I looked it up.

Angela, do you want to know how many people?

Oh my gosh.

I'm horrible at guessing.

Like, you know, guess the jelly bean in the jar.

I'm so off.

I know.

Yeah, I can't do that either.

Okay, I'm going to guess

10 million people.

That seems like a big number.

That is a big number.

But it was

22.9

million people.

Holy smokes.

Yeah.

So it is definitely the most watched episode of The Office.

And it's also the only episode of The Office to ever reach over 20 million viewers.

Wow.

But now I have another question for you.

I don't know.

Is it more guessing number stuff?

It's more guessing.

It's not numbers, though.

Oh, good.

Well, I have a shot.

Can you guess what our second most watched episode was?

Oh, no.

Of the whole series?

Of the whole series.

This was number one.

What do you think number two was?

The finale?

The pilot.

What?

The pilot.

Really?

It had 11.2 million viewers.

The pilot that I wore my own clothes in.

Yeah.

From Target.

Mm-hmm.

Wow.

11.2 million people saw your outfit.

Well, you're welcome, America.

Interestingly enough, airing after the Super Bowl did not seem to get us a bump in viewership going forward.

Oh, it was like a one and done?

Kind of.

So the episode that aired before the Super Bowl was Prince Family Paper.

Okay.

And we had 8.7 million viewers.

Okay.

That was kind of our average range.

Right.

After the Super Bowl is lecture circuit, and we actually had a drop in the ratings to 8.4.

Oh.

So

some regular viewers,

I don't know.

They were like, not after that Super Bowl stunt.

Fast fact number two.

Randy told me that there were rumors that we were going to get that 2009 Super Bowl slot from as early as the end of of season four.

Jeez.

Yeah.

Did they plan that that far out?

I guess so.

There had been some talk that maybe it would go to the apprentice.

The apprentice was going to get the slot.

But our executive producers really fought for the office to get it, and we did.

Randy said it was part of our internal shooting records as of May 2008,

which was well before we had ever started shooting season five.

So we'd known for a while this was coming.

I also reached out to Greg Greg Daniels.

Oh, yeah.

What'd he have to say?

He said this.

Oh, yeah.

This was a big deal.

Yeah.

Quote, we threw our biggest guns at it, which is why Paul Lieberstein wrote it.

That makes sense.

It's a fantastic script.

I texted Paul yesterday just a few couplets of dialogue.

I was like, this is perfection.

I'll tell you what I texted him later.

Well, Paul had been with us since the very beginning.

He is one of our best.

It made total sense that he should write this episode.

Right.

I got curious.

Okay.

And I started doing a little digging.

Angela, the script for this episode was 95 pages long.

I know.

I looked through it and I was like, what is this phone book I'm reading?

Oh my God, it's stress relief.

The candy bag.

Okay, the candy bag, our alts, all of our alt dialogue?

Yeah, all the extra jokes that they didn't put in the script, but that they want us to maybe shoot.

Oh my God.

How long was it?

Lady, it was 207 pages long.

They had 207 pages of extra jokes.

Yeah.

On the ready to go.

Yep.

Oh, my God.

So I thought we should tell everyone that this episode took us nine days to shoot.

It was a very, very big deal.

Greg also said that because we were running after the Super Bowl, it created a scrutiny from the network that was not normally present on our show.

Oh, yeah.

Lots of notes, lots of opinions.

Sure.

This is a big piece of real estate.

This will come up again later.

Mm-hmm.

Should I move us to Fast Fact number three?

Yes.

All right.

Fast Fact Number Three.

Greg told us that because there would be so many new eyes on this episode, new viewers, that they had to figure out a storyline that would appeal to both current office viewers and new ones.

And they also had to find a way to kind of reintroduce everyone's characters so that new viewers could follow along.

They really tried to stay away from existing storylines.

So for example, there's no movement or mention of the Angela Andy Dwight love triangle.

Right.

There's nothing about the company is struggling and there might be layoffs.

No, there's nothing very complicated.

This is a very simple idea that can hook everybody.

Yes.

But they especially had to figure out how do we start this episode?

How do we hook these new viewers and make them stay for the whole hour?

Right.

So Greg had this idea.

What if an office weirdo who wanted people to listen to his safety ideas actually caused a fire emergency?

He was like, you don't have to know who's who.

It has a lot of energy and a lot of physical comedy.

There you go.

I mean, that is brilliant.

Greg is brilliant because instantly you're hooked.

Everyone has an office-like idiot that is going to like take matters in their own hands or something.

I thought it was amazing.

Well, we will break down this epic cold open after the break, but I have one more thing to say.

Okay.

This is a bonus fast fact.

Okay.

Did you notice the main titles?

Of course I did.

Everybody is in them.

I know.

This is the first time that our main titles featured the entire cast.

It was so cool.

We were so excited.

We all cheered when we watched it.

Oh my gosh, I remember my family, too, because like everyone in my family who had never seen the show saw it because it was after the Super Bowl.

And we were in the main titles.

It was really exciting.

It was special.

It was special.

The whole thing was special.

I mean, there are all these little milestones along the way as we're doing this rewatch and as we're looking back at our journey, I'm realizing all of these firsts.

And I would have never imagined I'd be on a TV show that would run after the Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl is such a big deal.

I remember commercial auditioning, and everyone wanted a Super Bowl commercial spot.

If we could just, I still, I still am like, oh, come on.

Yeah.

Let me throw a Dorito at your head and you catch it in your mouth and it ricochets off the ceiling.

Super Bowl, lad.

You heard it here, Doritos.

Office ladies throw Doritos and catch them.

We'll do it.

Jenna will do a cartwheel.

Wait.

She's very athletic.

What?

Better start working on my cartwheel.

I guess so.

Well, ladies, should we take a break?

And then when we come back, everyone, get ready.

Buckle in because we have an epic cold open with an epic cold open breakdown.

We do.

It's going to be good.

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All right, you guys, let's get right to it.

First of all, you should know we reached out to a ton of people to share with us how they made this cold open happen.

It was fascinating.

Actually,

finding out parts, right?

We knew our part, right?

But we're like, well, how did Camera do it?

How did they, like so many things.

So many things to capture.

So Randy Cordre, you guys know we love Randy.

He told us they had several planning sessions, right?

With all the department heads.

We had our director Jeff Blitz, cinematographer Randall Einhorn.

They had to walk through this whole dance that we did with the camera stunts, animal trainers, script supervisor Veda, like tracking the continuity.

And then our rock star first AD, Kelly Cantley, she then broke it down into smaller moments.

Dean Holland, our editor, who edited this sequence, he told me he was also brought in on those planning sessions.

He said he got

so much footage, but that it was actually really, really well organized and pretty easy to edit because they planned so well.

Oh, way to go, guys.

Randy told us that we spent an entire day shooting this.

One whole day, to be exact, it was Thursday, December 11th.

Oh, yeah.

And we had tons of safety meetings all this safety stuff i remember we did not shoot this in order right we shot it out of order and some of that was for safety reasons yeah let's describe it and then we'll go back and we will break it down piece by piece here's your overview everybody here's your overview of the cold open the first shot is dwight opening his desk and he sort of motions to the camera all sneaky and he's got lighter fluid and what looks like to be a blowtorch yeah so you know something's up.

Something Dwightish.

He goes in the hallway and he's kind of hiding out and he's whispering to camera and he starts like jamming the doors.

He puts a key in, he hammers it shut.

He puts his little wood wedges under and yeah, blowtorches the door handle and starts his speech.

Yeah.

He says that nobody paid attention to his fire safety seminar.

He blames himself for using PowerPoint.

Right.

And that experience is the best teacher.

So he will teach his coworkers proper fire emergency procedure the hard way.

And you guys, today cigarettes are going to save lives.

Yeah.

As he smokes a cigarette and then tosses it into a trash can and immediately a fire starts.

But no one notices it first.

No one notices

smoke piling in under the door.

And everybody is just quietly working.

And it's really frustrating Dwight.

So he's like, do you guys smell something?

And Angela's so snarky.

He's like, did you bring your jerky in today?

I know.

And then Pam Pam notices it, but Jenna, Pam notices it the way I react in moments like this.

You notice she didn't say fire.

She's like,

there's a, oh my, it's a,

she freezes.

Yeah.

Michael starts yelling for everyone to stay effing calm.

Dwight is kind of shouting proper safety procedures, but people are panicking.

It's suddenly total chaos.

This is what it sounded like.

Oh my God.

Okay, it's happening.

Everybody stay calm.

What's the procedure?

Everyone, what's the procedure?

Stay f ⁇ ing calm.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Take away your f ⁇ !

Calm down!

No!

No, Michael!

Exactly.

Well, amid all the chaos, Angela gets a cat out of a file cabinet.

Yeah.

Oscar escapes up into the ceiling.

I know you're going to have a lot to tell us about that.

Yeah.

And then Michael smashes a window in the conference room.

Kevin is going to make sure he's getting snacks during the fire.

He's like busting up the vending machines.

And then Dwight lights a bunch of firecrackers.

Yep.

To which Ed Helms's Andy says my favorite line in this cold open, which is, the fire is shooting at us.

Jim is like ramming the copy machine into a door.

Finally, Dwight pulls the fire alarm.

Why?

Because Stanley's having a heart attack.

Exactly.

Yes.

It's insane.

Yeah.

The whole thing is insane.

How did we do it?

Well, we we had amazing people.

That's how we did it.

We spoke to our cinematographer, Randall Einhorn, about how exactly they captured all these moments.

We reached out to him.

Here's what he had to say.

Yeah, I worked really closely with Jeff Blitz and our AD, Kelly Cantley, to

coordinate how exactly we were going to shoot that because there was a lot of moving parts, a lot of moving pieces.

It didn't want to feel like it needed...

50 cameras filming it.

It always wants to feel like there's just two cameras filming it and they're struggling to film it.

So it was a lot to work out because there was so much going on.

But because we're able to cut on some of the camera swishes, we're able to piece it together so it looked like it was one piece.

Because as a camera's panning from one thing to another,

if you're doing it right, you can make it look like you can create an edit point where

you're panning from the end of one piece and you're panning into another,

the beginning of another piece is really kind of how it's done that's how we all pulled it all together and made it look like it was a one frantic take i have learned doing this rewatch

how often we used that whip cut it was our friend clearly it's why this cold open happened lady we got a ton of fan questions about this cold open so why don't i go through them okay we said at the top of the episode rain's doing all his mischief with the locking of the doors and setting the fire we had a fan question question from Jaden C.

Was Dwight using a real blowtorch on those handles?

It certainly looked like it.

Why don't we let Rain Wilson tell us?

Rain, what you got to say?

Yes, it was a real live blowtorch.

It was not a CGI flame.

They had a lot of safety officers there.

You know, a fire marshal is there and a special effects coordinator.

And the handles actually did get very hot.

You know, nowadays they'd probably do CGI and maybe even make the the door handle a little red with the CGI, but that was all completely real.

I can't believe they gave him a real blowtorch.

I mean, if you look back over the things they gave Rain

that were real in episodes, they should have known going back to the Dundees when they gave him that operating keyboard.

Like just what he did with the fart key.

Don't give that guy real things.

Don't give that guy real things.

Well, yeah, so real blowtorch, what else?

Well, we had another fan question.

People wanted to know if Rain was really smoking, and Rohit R wanted to know if it was real smoke in the trash can.

Here's what Rain had to say.

It was an actual cigarette that I smoked and lit, and I threw it in the garbage can with the paper, but I think they like ran in the second that camera panned away and tossed in some water and put it out.

And the fire that you see in the trash can is expertly created due to the magic of special effects.

There are so many amazing details throughout the episode that Paul Lieberstein, I remember, guiding me through.

I mean, I think he wrote it, but Paul was very instrumental in a lot of the details about how I smoked and how I casually tossed the cigarette, and he had it kind of visualized in his mind, how the wedges get hammered under the door, and all the details, the hammer in my pocket, and stuff like that.

So the great Paul Lieberstein, a.k.a.

Toby, really played a great creative part throughout the entirety of The Office and especially in this episode in this cold open.

Wow.

I didn't know that.

I didn't know Paul was behind all those beats, all the like staging of the fire moments.

Yeah, me either.

Also, Jenna, just on a side note, I've never had to smoke a cigarette in a movie or TV show, and it would be a disaster because I don't know how to smoke a cigarette and it would be so clear.

I wouldn't know how to be like fakey smokey.

Well, for all of our like kind of techie nerds out there, Randy broke down for me exactly how they did make that fire in the trash can, that smoke.

So Rain was right, right?

They extinguished the fire that you saw, but then to create that smoke billowing in, that was created by a special effects team led by Ron Neri.

And for the smoke, he used a water vapor generator.

with a minute concentration of glycol.

And I guess the glycol is what keeps the water vapor hanging in the air a bit longer.

Randy said it had no odor, and it was approved safe by both SAG and NBC Universal Safety Department.

What is glycol?

I don't know.

Google it?

You can Google it?

Google it?

What is it?

Is it

glycol?

Okay, there's two glycols.

Oh, there's propylene glycol.

Okay.

And then there's ethylene glycol.

Was one a good guy and one's not great?

I guess kind of.

I think the ethylene glycol is the stuff that's in like antifreeze.

Oh.

And it has like a sweet taste.

That's what it's poisonous, right?

You don't want your dog to lick it.

Right.

They're always saying don't lick your antifreeze.

They're always saying that.

To dogs.

The dogs are like.

We don't understand you.

No, cats love it too.

You got to be careful.

Now, propylene glycol is a substance that's commonly used as a food additive.

It's in a lot of cosmetic and hygiene products, including, I think, some toothpastes.

Oh, so that's the one we used.

I mean, I guess so.

Well, I think.

One of the glycols can also be used as some sort of a fiber.

I don't think we have time to, in the moment, deep dive glycol, but we were curious.

So I'm assuming that since SAG and NBC Universal said it was safe, then we used the safe one.

We used the safe one.

Look at us.

We're fine.

We're here.

Next fan question is from Mikey S.

Did Steve improvise when he said, stay effing calm?

No.

A little bit, though.

Well, that's Steve, right?

I mean, he got everything scripted, but sometimes he would juzh in the moment.

Here's what it said in the script.

Oh, God, it's happening.

Let me through.

Let me through.

Stay calm.

Stay calm.

Stay effing calm.

And then Michael violently pushes his way through to the front.

I think we did it.

I mean, very accurately.

We have more fan questions.

Angela, Jaden C.

wants to know how many times did Michael throw the projector into the window?

Well, he starts with the chair, right?

That's right.

It does not break.

And Randy said that for that, we used a plane of plexiglass.

Because they didn't want it to break.

They They wanted his first attempt not to go well.

Yes.

Then they replaced the plexiglass with breakaway glass and it shatters very realistically, but it never shatters in a sharp or dangerous way.

I have a little fun fact for you.

In the olden days of Hollywood, this was known as candy glass.

I know that, Jenna, because I got a tour of an old Western set with my dad, and they were like, all those windows that guys get thrown out the bars in and the saloon, that was candy.

Candy!

You could eat it.

I guess nowadays they don't make it out of candy.

But Randy said old schoolers still call it candy glass, even though now it's called breakaway glass.

Okay.

And Randy also told us, Jayden, in answer to your question, they got it in one take.

One throw of the projector broke the breakaway glass.

There you go.

Jaden would also like to know how many times did Kevin break the vending machine?

I reached out to Brian Baumgartner.

He said he thought it took about two to three takes.

They used that same breakaway glass.

He said it broke every time, but they had to do it a few extra times just to get a certain camera movement right.

You know, they were doing the whip cuts.

Right.

To make it look frantic.

Right.

Now, next up, lady.

I thought we should discuss this moment that no one wrote in about, but that was so epic.

I can't believe no one wrote in about it.

I know exactly the moment you're talking about because it was such a big deal to all of us on set.

And maybe people don't realize that because of what a badass Chris Workman is.

So what we're talking about is the moment when, led by Kevin, the Dunder Mifflin employees are running through the kitchen and take down our camera operator, Randall Einhorn.

Guys, this was a total mistake.

Yeah, we were like, oh my God, Randall's down.

But only for a few seconds.

We reached out to Randall because we had to hear this story from his perspective.

When Brian mowed him down.

I remember when I was running backwards through the break room, and Brian Baumgartner, who plays Kevin, was running at me because he's frantically trying to get out of there.

And he just kept running on me, running, and gaining on me and gaining on me.

And I'm running backwards with the camera.

And he just got so close that I think he hit me.

And I hit the ground.

I went down.

But my camera says Chris Workman, who's a really strong guy, just caught me with one arm, caught me and the camera with one arm and put me back on my feet.

And I'm like a 200-pound guy.

The camera's nearly 40 pounds.

And Chris just lifted me up.

I didn't even know if I hit the ground.

But that shot of me going down and getting back up actually made the show.

So thank you, Chris Workman, for picking me up.

And thank you, Brian Baumgartner, for running into me and making such a cool shot.

Well, Angela, i felt like we also needed to hear from brian baumgartner about this moment the mower and the mode exactly we needed a point counterpoint

well thank you randall i you know i wanted to make fun of you for getting the story wrong but but you complimented me and got the story 100 right i mean look i had people running behind me okay so i i i i had to run over whatever was in front of me or i would have gotten run over myself.

But actually, come to think of it, it's the first time that anyone has ever told me that I've outrun anyone.

I mean, you were running backwards carrying a camera.

But yeah, I had to put you down.

And look, the thing I remember is, yes, you went all the way to your back, as I recall.

And for me, out of the corner of my eye, it looked like...

Chris Workman, one hand picked you up, put you back on the feet.

And like the pro

you are,

well, you just kept filming.

I'm so happy that it made it into the cut.

And it's one of my favorite episodes.

It aired after the Super Bowl, obviously.

And that was a big deal for me.

And

yeah, one of our funniest cold opens for sure.

Well, lady, I just remember that moment so vividly because I do remember Randall is down.

What do we do?

And then Randall is up.

I guess we continue.

But it was amazing to me.

And that's the only time it happened.

And that's the take we used.

Chris Workman, man.

He is a machine.

All right.

Now, I think we need to discuss the thing that we got the most mail about.

Oh, yeah?

Save Bandit.

Save Bandit!

Now, Save Bandit was the last thing on our call sheet for the day.

All the rest of us had gone home.

I know they did this because it was so complicated.

They wanted you to have the set to yourself.

I was not there.

Angela, please tell us, how did you pull this off?

Okay, so here's the thing, guys.

We had to have a lot of rehearsals.

You should know on the day when there was a lot of the chaos and we were all running around, I was there,

but the cat didn't work those moments, okay?

Yeah.

The cat did have to work one moment, Jenna, with all of us where I open the drawer and you reveal.

Yeah.

You guys are all in the background for that moment.

And I had to actually pick the cat up and walk over to where I would have tossed it.

And that was it.

That's all I had to do with the cat, with the group there.

Jenna, this cat was massive.

It looks big.

I'm like, did you cast the biggest cat they had?

Did you see the big one in the corner and say, we want that, dude?

Just taking it out of the drawer.

With the chaos, not even doing anything with it, just picking it up and taking it to my spot.

The cat was like, um, I'm out of here.

So I was really glad when we actually filmed the stunt part that you guys were all gone.

Right.

Oh my gosh.

Less activity for the cat to deal with.

The cat was already like, where am I?

What's going on?

All right.

So a lot of things went into make this happen.

And I'm going to share with you some stuff that Randy Cordre and Jeff Blitz shared with me, but then I'm going to tell you my personal memories.

So I guess in the script, there were a few alts about how the cat got in the ceiling.

Jeff Blitz fought really hard to have the moment where the cat goes up in the ceiling and then out a different part of the ceiling.

Yes.

That was the thing he fought for.

He said to do this though it would involve a pair of matching cats and two trainers in the ceiling.

One to catch bandit one and one to drop bandit two through a different ceiling panel.

So the idea originally was that you would go on a search for twin cats.

Twin identical looking cats.

Yes.

And Randy said that we worked with an excellent animal training company out of Sylmar, California.

Their name is Bob Dunn's Animal Services.

And our specific cat trainer for this stunt and many more episodes was Denise Sanders.

She was fantastic.

I love Denise.

And Randy would want you guys to know that we took the safety of not only the humans on set, but also the animals, took it very seriously.

Well, that was Randy.

Randy is a real animal lover, and he advocated for all of us.

Fur babies and real people.

Okay.

So Jenna, my memory is we had two rehearsal days for this stunt.

Wow.

Yeah.

One was just like a preliminary blocking, but then the second one was like, okay, we have to practice this as if we're doing it.

And our biggest rehearsal, it was me, Jeff Blitz, Randy Cordray, Greg Daniels.

I think some of the writers were there.

I think Dean might have been there, our editor.

Everyone that was going to be involved in this moment, Oscar, the trainer up in the ceiling.

There was a lot of people actually for this rehearsal.

And if I miss some of you guys, there was more people than you would imagine.

I had a stunt woman named Katina Waters

because they actually didn't want me tossing the cat up in the ceiling, right?

They wanted a professional animal wrangler stunt person.

Yeah.

Because what if that makes sense?

Right.

What if I got it wrong?

Right.

I'm not a professional animal wrangler stunt person.

You're not a professional animal thrower?

I am not.

But as we started blocking the moments of the scene, the cat wrangler, Denise, was like, you guys, we can't toss a cat up in the ceiling.

You know, we can't toss it up.

We can't toss it out.

There is no tossing of cats, guys, because not that it will harm the cat.

This isn't a very high distance or anything like that.

It won't physically harm the cat.

It won't physically harm the cat.

And then she used this phrase, Jenna, that was like...

A scratch on the record player.

She said, because it will blow out the cat.

And this is clearly a cat wrangler term.

It will blow out the cat.

We all, all of us went, huh?

Blow out the cat?

And then Greg goes, because Greg's such an inquisitive-minded person, he's like, I'm sorry, what does that mean to blow out the cat?

Yeah.

And she said, it will ruin its career.

Now, is that because just the stress of performing that stunt would make it so that the cat wouldn't be able to maybe go to work again?

Like the cat would be okay physically, but it would be stressful and they couldn't be sure that it would be a trainable cat in the future.

Right.

That's what I'm hearing.

Yeah, that's exactly what we all heard, which is the cat will physically be fine, but you might make it so it's afraid and we won't be able to train it.

Got it.

Right.

Okay.

Right.

So it could live out its life as someone's pet, but it's not going to be a working cat anymore.

It's not a stunt cat anymore.

Okay.

But this is her job, right?

Like this cat working.

This is her livelihood.

Right.

And so Greg, like as a problem solver, he was like, Well, what would it cost to retire the cat?

Could we pay you and retire the cat?

And that way, you don't lose your income in this cat.

Uh-huh.

She didn't want to retire the cat.

This is a very high-earning cat.

This is a very good cat.

It's the largest cat that's the largest stunt cat.

Clearly, the largest physically and the largest

monetary stunt cat.

So they came up with this idea.

They made it work.

This is what the animal trainer said that they could do.

We would toss up into the ceiling a fake cat.

Okay.

Okay.

Yes, a fake cat.

And then up in the rafters of the ceiling would be a trainer that would then gently be holding a real cat and release it onto my desk, which was just a few feet below.

Okay, I think I got it.

Tossing cat up blows out.

Tossing cat up blows out cat.

Can't throw a cat.

Dropping cat.

Onto its feet, totally fine.

Totally fine.

You know what?

I have to say, Sunny Cat actually enjoys a good toss.

Sometimes I'm doing laundry on the bed and he'll come up and he likes it when I give him a big hoist onto the pile of laundry.

And then he'll jump down and I'll do it again.

Sonny, you could have been bandit.

Sunny could have been banded.

He's like, I'll do it.

I'll do the toss.

Yes, Sonny should have been bandit.

Well, here's the deal.

Randy even went to extra measures to make sure the cat would be fine when they were going to drop it on my desk.

He and the animal trainers and our stunt guy, Eric Sulky, they came up with this huge inflatable safety airbag that would decelerate and gently catch the falling cat.

It was described as like falling into feathers.

And we did some practice runs and the trainers signed off on it.

It was fine.

The cat wasn't traumatized at all.

They hid this airbag in the corner of my accounting desk with like papers and stuff, but there was a cat airbag on my desk.

Okay.

And the ceiling panel had breakaway foam rubber.

All right.

So it was all very cushy-cushy.

But now.

I just want to say they did all of this and then gave Rain a real blowtorch.

I know.

They had an inflatable airbag cushion for this enormous cat.

But now, Jenna, enter in the people that make fake animals.

I'm scared.

I found them fascinating.

So, like, you know, if you have a show like CSI and there's a dead body,

these are your people.

They make fake humans, they make fake animals.

Jenna, they had to meticulously match the exact cat that we were tossing in the ceiling.

And it was a rush job.

Randy said this fake cat cost $12,000.

Oh, my God.

I know.

And I want you to know that thing was one of the scariest things I've ever seen, held, or touched.

First of all, it had these yellow eyes that would just look at you.

And then the fur felt real.

But when you picked it up, it was gelatinous.

So it like flop like as you held it.

Oh my God.

Like imagine like flopping a towel over your arm, a big thick towel.

It was like smushy.

It was frightening.

I, we started kind of pranking with it.

Like I set it on Oscar's desk and he walked up and he was like, oh God.

I had to like start covering its face with a piece of paper because the thing was so creepy to look at.

Where is it now?

I don't know.

NBC owns it somewhere, right?

They paid for it.

By the way, this is just the cat stuff.

We haven't even gotten to the fact that Oscar has a whole bit he has to do.

Oh, yeah.

Right.

So when we actually got to the day to shoot the stunt, I go over to the drawer.

I pull out the cat.

Now they said my dialogue and everything, I still had to be yelling.

Okay.

So I open the drawer and you'll hear in the take, I say to the cat, it's okay.

Like I'm trying to like be like, I'm not a bad person.

I lift up this enormous cat and then I have to go to my spot where Oscar's going in the roof.

And they wanted, so they could do that swishy cut.

Yeah.

They wanted me to take the cat.

I'm holding it to my chest.

They wanted me to swing the cat back behind me and then swing it up over my head and stop.

This is the real cat.

The real cat.

Okay.

The real cat gets the swinging motion.

Swinging okay.

Swinging okay.

Swinging approved.

Swinging approved while I'm yelling.

I only weigh 82 pounds.

Right?

I'm sure the cat loved that.

You know what cats love?

Screaming.

And swinging.

Yeah.

This cat probably weighed 20 pounds.

I'm not exaggerating at all.

It was enormous.

Just the swinging and getting it to my stopping point.

It was like,

I was like, oh, God.

And then I stop and I hold it in the air.

Freeze.

Then they yell, cut.

And in comes my stunt woman in the same outfit.

She takes real cat.

She holds it in the air.

I step away because what she's going to do with the cat jenna is kind of do the second motion where it appears like she's tossing but she doesn't toss the cat okay but she kind of gives it a little air but not a lot of air and this was like they don't want you to get all scratched up she knows how to give like a little yeah they had to give the idea of the motion yeah right right more than my swing got it okay and then of course we had to get a take where i had to take fake cat and do the same motion as the stunt woman i had to watch her and toss Faky Cat in the ceiling, right?

Yes.

They pieced all of that together.

So Jenna, I had talked to Jeff Blitz about this moment a while back because I distinctly remember when we filmed it, two cats coming out of the ceiling instead of one.

How?

How?

How?

How did two cats come?

I don't know.

That's my memory.

And I was like, wait, am I crazy?

And I talked to Dean Holland, who edited.

And I was like, Dean, did you have to CGI out one cat?

Because I know two cats came down.

I remember seeing two cats.

He was like, no.

And so I talked to Jeff Blitz and he goes, yes, Angela, two cats came down.

And I was like, what?

He said, on the take we used, the trainer that was supposed to catch the fakey cat missed.

Oh.

And so then on action, fakey cat came out the other side and real cat.

Oh,

two cats hit the desk.

And Jeff said, luckily, the way the camera was positioned, it only caught one cat.

And I think it's the real cat when you watch, because it looks like a real cat coming up.

Yeah, because it hits and it kind of runs off.

Whereas faky cat just would have gone plop.

Yes.

Right?

Yes.

So there you go.

One cat went up.

Two cats came down, but we got the shot.

It took all those people and all that maneuvering, but it made it in the episode.

Angela, that is amazing.

I did not know all the details of that story.

I was on the edge of my seat.

I absolutely loved that.

You You guys, the crazy thing is it took me that long to tell that story, but it happened in five seconds.

Oh my God.

When we actually filmed it, it was so quick.

So it was like me, drawer, cat,

swing, step out, step mom,

thank you, cat.

Oh my God, two cats.

React to one.

Well, you mentioned that there was something else going on during all this, which was Oscar going in and out of the ceiling.

Yes, that was a whole other ordeal.

Randy told us that that part of the stunt of getting Oscar up into the ceiling was the other most challenging part of the stunt because

there was nothing to climb into in the way that our set was built.

Like the actual lightweight drop ceiling, it was suspended from cables.

Yeah, very thin.

rigging wires.

It was faky ceiling, guys, because our set was inside a humongous soundstage.

Yeah.

So actually above the Dunder Mifflin offices was just air.

If you walked outside, you could look up and just see these wires holding fakey ceiling.

Yeah.

So he said in the weeks prior to filming this, our production designer Michael Gallenberg and construction coordinator Tim James had to completely re-engineer the ceiling.

They had to like build rafters basically that we didn't have, right?

Yeah, and it had to be enough to support not just Oscar, but all of the stunt personnel.

He said on the day there were two stunt coordinators, the animal people, Oscar, Oscar stunt double, and an NBC Universal Safety Coordinator all up in the ceiling.

Can you imagine that guy's day at work?

I can't.

Like, he's not normally with us.

He's just up in our ceiling now.

I can tell you that I had to look up into the ceiling.

And it looked crowded.

I get why someone might have missed a cat as it flew up there.

Well, we got a fan question from Alex M.

Did Oscar really fall through the ceiling?

Yes.

Well, yes and no, right?

We pulled it off using both Oscar and a stunt double, right, Ange?

Yeah.

So I reached out to Oscar and I was like, Oscar, you got to tell us everything about the ceiling.

I guess he gets asked this a lot.

And he sent in this audio clip.

I had a stunt man.

I had a Moroccan.

He was, he was, I think he was from Morocco.

He was, he was a, uh,

he was from Cirque-Sole.

He was a little shorter than me, and he was a stuntman, and I think he was jumping out from the hole and doing wonderful tumbles when he hit the ground.

I did half of it.

He did the really hard part.

It was a very funny scene, very complicated.

I remember in one of the shots, I made Steve laugh because one of the ways that I was coming down from the roof, on one of them, they had a big, a bar up there, and it lowered me slowly through the hole and that was a funny way to come down and when I made eye contact with Steve just hanging there with a straight face of course he laughed and then they figured out another way to bring me down which was the leap down but first I would just like one of the things we tried was just like being lowered down from the thing which didn't make sense but was very funny Do you remember that?

I remember it.

I do too.

It was very weirdly Matrixy.

It was.

And Oscar was slowly...

Like very slowly.

What was that Tom Cruise movie where he slowly lowered himself down?

That should have been possible.

It was like that.

Oscar was like slowly coming out of the ceiling.

It looked crazy.

And Oscar, of course, did not break because he never broke.

But we did.

And all the rest of us were like, we can't possibly continue as if that's physically possible.

And if Steve broke, you know it looked ridiculous.

Well, let me break it down for you for anyone who wants to follow along.

At two minutes, 38 seconds, the real Oscar is standing on his desk and he pushes up the ceiling tile.

At two minutes 43 seconds for that beat of Oscar actually jumping up and pulling himself into the ceiling, that's his stunt double.

You'll notice you don't see his face.

His double's name was Aladine Namu.

And to pull this off, I guess Aladine had to wear a safety harness underneath his Oscar wardrobe.

And it had this cable that went up through his harness to a pulley that was manned by two guys in the ceiling.

And after he would jump, these guys would like hoist him up using this pulley.

You got to trust the guys in the ceiling, don't you?

Then at two minutes, 48 seconds, we see the real Oscar again.

He's up there in the scaffold looking down.

He was also secured by a harness and a cable, just to make sure.

Finally, at three minutes, 33 seconds, Oscar appears to break through another ceiling panel over by the kitchen near Creed's desk.

That's his stunt doubles legs kicking.

Creed's reaction was so hilarious to me.

Sorry, go on.

But at four minutes, six seconds, that is when the stunt team dropped real Oscar onto the floor.

So many beats of this scene.

So many.

We haven't even talked about Stanley's heart attack.

Oh my gosh.

At the end of all of this, he's on the ground

and Michael is like telling him he can't die.

He can't die.

He's shoving a wallet in his mouth.

Yeah, Michael's yelling, Barack Obama's president.

You can't die, Stanley.

We got a fan question from Megan G.

Leslie David Baker spoke at my college and said that the scene where Michael puts the wallet in his mouth was improvised.

Is this true?

Lady, I looked it up in the script.

It is not there.

It ended with him saying, you can't die, Barack Obama is president.

That wallet bit was on the day.

Oh my gosh.

well i have a fan question that made me chuckle jenna emma n wrote in and said meredith has these kind of dirty question mark brown boots she's carrying at around one minute 49 seconds and throughout some of the cold open was there any deleted scene or explanation about this oh well emma you got me curious i went to your timecode you are not wrong i took a photo look jenna i'll put it in stories what is that i looked at this photo and i was like, Emma, I recognize these boots.

I would bet money that those are Kate's Ug boots that Wardrobe gave us to keep under our desk when we were so cold.

They're not Meredith's boots.

So I texted Kate.

I said, Kate, in stress relief, when Dwight almost burns down the building, Did you grab your actual Ugg boots from under your desk?

Fans are asking.

And I sent her the picture and she wrote back, ha ha,

I did.

So the direction we were given was clearly everyone's panicking and they're grabbing their things.

They want to get out of the building.

And she said, I grabbed my Ugg boots.

They are actually not dirty.

They're a dusty pink.

Oh.

So there you go, Emma.

Nice catch.

Lady, I think we should take a break.

That's the cold open.

That's just the cold open.

We still have this whole episode to break down and there is so much more to talk about.

All right, we'll be back.

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Hey, everyone.

It's Jenna.

I'm in Chicago.

I'm working on my play, Ashland Avenue, and I'm staying in an Airbnb and I'm loving it.

You know, the play I'm doing is set in Chicago.

And so I wanted to find a place where I could have a really authentic local experience.

That's why I got Airbnb.

I just love it.

And it's especially great because my kids are going to be coming back and forth to visit me and I've got a bedroom just for them.

So we can really spread out.

And I don't know if you've ever stayed in Airbnb, but wouldn't it be cool to give that experience to other people?

You can earn some extra income.

I mean, if you're traveling frequently or have a seasonal home, and then while you're away, you can earn extra income and pay for your vacation.

Or maybe you're saving up for a home renovation.

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Find out how much at airbnb.com/slash host.

All right, we are back.

Dwight and Michael are at a meeting in corporate because, um, hi, Dwight almost burned the building down and Stanley had a heart attack.

So they're having to meet with David Wallace and Kendall from HR.

Yes, Kendall.

Guest Star Alert.

Kendall was played by John Hartman.

Now, we've heard of Kendall before.

He was mentioned in previous episodes, and we heard his voice, remember, when he yelled at Holly.

Oh, yeah.

So John Hartman did the voice.

and now here he is.

He's at the table.

He was so good.

You know that bit where they do the little runner where like take heed, heated.

Did you look it up to see if it was scripted?

I did because Sonia Y wanted to know.

Sonia, so did I.

It was scripted.

It was scripted until the very last Michael heated.

Again.

Yes.

Steve.

Steve added to the bit at the very end, but everything else is scripted.

I actually texted that couplet of dialogue to Paul Lieberstein.

I said, this is perfection.

You are so funny.

And then Steve at the very end added one more.

And I can see Rain trying not to break.

He actually has to look down at the table.

Yeah.

There's two things I have to point out also in this scene.

First of all, in this dialogue, Dwight's like, imagine my frustration, a safety officer, that they're not listening.

Excuse me?

Angela Martin was the safety officer in basketball.

She couldn't find the first aid kit because Dwight had moved it.

And she said, how many times do I have to tell you I'm the safety officer?

It was like their first little like spat.

Yeah.

So I don't know what's happened.

Dwight clearly has not let this go and he thinks he's the safety officer.

Well, he's not the safety officer anymore.

No, he's not because Michael's going to be the safety man.

That's what he calls it.

He calls it the safety man.

I have one other thing I have to point out because it made me laugh so hard, Jenna.

I rewound this and watched this beat three times.

When Michael gets up and walks out and looks out at the city, you know, and then he comes and sits down next to Kindle.

He like scooches Kindle over and he says, can you shove it down, please?

Shove it down, please.

I didn't catch that.

It's so funny.

That is not in the script.

Shove it down, please.

It's not in the script.

And the way that John and Andy Buckley just rolled with all of those little moments, oh, they're so good.

Well, when they get back to Dunder Mifflin, Stanley is coming back into the office.

Michael's like, shh, quiet, quiet, quiet.

No loud noises.

Yeah.

No surprises.

Yeah.

Stanley has a talking head where he explains that in the past he has been very abrupt with people, but the doctor said he needs to find a more positive way to relate to people or he will die.

Mm-hmm.

Well, you notice in that talking head, there was a montage.

A montage of moments of Stanley being abrupt with people.

Yeah, of him losing his cool.

A montage like this was very unusual for our show.

It was added to help give more context to the character of Stanley for all of those post-Super Bowl viewers.

I was going to say, because a documentary doesn't do a montage.

Not normally.

Not normally.

But when you're after the Super Bowl,

you do.

Another beat of this scene.

that didn't make it in, it's in the deleted scenes.

It really made me laugh, Jenna, is that Michael, you know, wants everyone to help Stanley.

He's urging them.

So here is how that manifests.

Andy makes Stanley a mixed CD of Inya songs.

Oh.

Stanley's like, thanks.

Michael assigns Kevin to be his bathroom buddy.

Okay.

As Kevin says, in case you have a heart attack on the crapper.

Okay.

And Stanley's like, I can go to the bathroom by myself.

Thank you.

Phyllis just looks at him and can't stop smiling.

And she has a really sweet talking head where she says she's known Stanley Hudson a long time.

And the way he breathes, his sort of loud breathing is soothing to her.

It's really cute.

So you have that Phyllis moment.

And then Michael says, don't worry, Stanley, I got you a portable defibrillator.

Oh.

And then tries to go put it on him.

And everyone's like, no, no, no, no, no.

Oh, my gosh.

I remember shooting that.

Yes.

And then Michael like thinks it's funny and wants to like hook everyone up to it.

They're like

defibrillate.

Yes.

Defibrillate.

Everybody.

And then Kevin Kevin gets the defibrillator and, as a joke, puts it on Meredith's seat.

Meredith sits on it and doesn't even notice it, but all of her hair goes up in the air.

And that's another stunt we had to do.

They had to make Kate Flannery's hair rise up with static.

Wow.

Didn't make it in, but it was pretty funny.

Michael is determined to make sure that we all know what to do should Stanley ever have another heart attack.

He's asked us all to come into the conference room for a CPR class.

Yes.

A class he wishes he was running, but apparently you have to have an actual CPR trainer or else you don't get the dummy.

Yeah, the Red Cross won't give you the dummy doll unless you have an actually trained CPR instructor.

We got a fan question.

Okay.

From Stephanie H.

I loved this question.

Who played Rose the CPR instructor and why is she so perfect?

She is absolutely amazing.

Her name is Robin Lynch.

She is an actress.

I believed she was a CPR trainer.

I reached out to Allison Jones and she said she found Robin through just a general casting call and that Robin was by far the best person that they saw for the role.

She just plays it so perfectly straight.

She's there to teach CPR.

This office goes off the rails and she just tries to stay the course.

I did slide into her DMs on Insta.

Yeah, Robin, we tried to get a hold of you.

We wanted to chat with you, Robin.

If you ever see our message, let us know.

We'll chat you up in a revisited.

Should we talk about all the things that go wrong in this CPR class?

There are many.

There are many.

First of all, it starts with Kevin.

Kevin gives out at 20 seconds.

He's like, I'm calling it.

Yeah.

And then Rose is like, Does anyone else want to turn?

And Dwight says, absolutely, he would not.

And as the camera is pulling back away from Dwight to reveal the room, Jenna, at nine minutes, 50 seconds, I am whispering to someone off-camera, no.

What are you talking about?

What are you saying?

I'm not looking at Rose.

I'm looking at someone off-camera.

I don't know who I'm talking to.

Wait, let me ask you this question.

What?

Could you be saying no to the other camera?

I think so, maybe, but it looks really weird.

And I filmed it and I'm going to show it to you.

And I'll put this in stories, but first I'm gonna show my BFF guys okay ready hit playedly saying

no

and look look at my face no

I think I don't know if that's an improv you're doing if you're doing it to camera I think it's an improv that I'm doing to Matt Zone B camera yeah Angela in deleted scenes had a talking head where she's like, I am not putting my mouth on that thing.

Who knows whose mouth has been on it?

So I think I was sort of improvising off that talking head.

But it looks really random if you catch it.

It's a very, very good catch, lady.

Well, Stanley's going to give it a go because for some reason, Michael thinks Stanley should learn how to resuscitate himself.

We might not always be there.

Right.

And then, of course, in true Michael fashion, he takes over the meeting, right?

He's going to tell them how to do CPR now, right?

And they're doing it all wrong.

Rose says, listen, guys, you need 100 beats per minute.

And she suggests they pump to the tune of staying alive by the Bee Gees.

At first, Michael confuses this with I will survive,

but then Rose starts singing, staying alive, you know, ah, a, uh, uh, staying alive, staying alive.

Then Andy starts singing, staying alive.

Kelly starts dancing.

It turns into a dance party.

I actually have the clip if you want to hear it.

Let's hear it.

Staying alive.

Staying alive.

Staying alive.

Staying alive.

You can't tell by the way I use my walk.

I'm a woman's man.

No time to talk.

Worse and love women more.

Been kicked around since I was born.

Well, it's all right.

It's okay.

You can't look the other way.

You

I mean, poor Rose.

We had a fan question from Megan Dee in Scotland.

Was any of the scene with the Red Cross lady improvised, such as Kelly's dancing or Andy's singing?

No, guys, this whole thing, all the singing and the dancing, it was all scripted.

And we followed this scene pretty much as written.

Brilliantly written.

I found out who pitched this idea.

Oh, I know.

Tell them.

It is Jen Salada.

Yes.

This whole staying alive CPR idea came from her.

She said that she had heard it was true.

She looked it up and cross-checked it.

She said she cross-checked it again because she didn't want to put it on TV unless it was true.

And then she shared with me that before the office, she had been a writer's assistant on home improvement and that the writers had done an episode where the Jonathan Taylor Thomas character found a lump on his throat.

And it turned out that it was a thyroid issue in the episode, right?

And Jen said that she was later in charge of opening the mail and they got letters from all of these families that said after watching that episode, it helped save their children's lives because their children had had a thyroid lump.

And because of the episode, they got it checked out.

And guys, since this stress relief episode aired, people have used this CPR technique to save lives.

They have.

Jen shared with us that she heard about a guy pulling a woman out of a car and doing CPR to the tune of staying alive because of this episode.

I looked it up.

It's true.

There's many articles.

I'm going to start with this one.

Okay, in January of 2019, Rolling Stones ran this story.

A scene from the office that dealt with first aid technique is credited to helping save a life after an Arizona man, despite having no CPR training, managed to resuscitate a woman in medical distress.

His name, interestingly enough, is Cross Scott.

Whoa.

Yeah, his last name is Scott.

So he found an unconscious woman behind the wheel of her car that was rolling down a dirt road.

Wow.

He smashed the window, got her out, and then he's quoted as saying, I've never prepared myself for CPR in my life.

I had no idea what I was doing.

Thankfully, Scott had seen the episode of The Office that dealt with CPR training and knew to do chest compressions to the cadence of staying alive.

They reached out to Courtney Slaniker, executive director of the Red Cross Southern Arizona chapter, and she told the Daily Star that if you don't do CPR, the victim will die.

Don't be afraid to act.

Whatever you do will help that victim and hopefully prevent a death.

And Courtney confirmed that staying alive is in fact the correct rhythm for chest compressions.

Wow.

Jensalata, you got it right.

Wow.

There's so many guys, but just recently in January of this year, the Today Show shared a story about a four-year-old girl who collapsed while playing tag, and her dad, Matt Uber, found her and started chest compressions again to the tune of staying alive.

And he's quoted as saying, when I was trying to think about what to do about CPR, my mind literally went to that episode of the office where they are doing CPR training and doing the compressions to the beat of staying alive.

I mean, that just got me choked up to imagine that father in that moment.

I know.

And then he had something, anything he could do.

I know.

I know.

And there's more.

I know there's more stories, but those two were two that stood out to me.

Amazing.

And one of the things that after reading some of these stories, Jenna, that people share is that how important knowing CPR is and that we should all learn CPR.

Yes, we have this staying alive, so you know the beats, but that we should all learn our CPR safety because it really can save a life.

I know that when we had our son, our first child,

Lee and I both did an infant CPR training.

Same.

But we should do a refresher.

Yeah.

Well, it's not over for Rose.

She's not out of the woods yet.

Things are about to get even crazier.

Yeah, she announces that we failed to save the life of our cpr dummy dwight suggests that the next course of action would be to harvest the organs

for organ donation and then he of course grabs the giant knife that is strapped to his cap

yeah and he hacks into the dummy's chest yeah and we all freak out yeah we freak out because then he cuts off the dummy's face and puts it on his face like silence of the lambs yeah We had some fan mail about it.

People would like to know how many CPR dummies were used in this episode.

Hmm.

Well, I asked Randy.

I know for sure Rain really did cut into it because we watched him do it.

Randy said we used three CPR mannequins in total.

Now, in a minute, David Wallace is going to say that they cost $3,500 each, but Randy said that was a little exaggerated.

He said there are some top-end dummies that come come with very sophisticated features like articulating heads and heartbeat simulators.

Those cost at the time around $1,000 each, but we used one that cost about $750 each.

Okay.

But listen, Dwight is in trouble again.

He has to go back to corporate and he has to discuss his mutilation of the CPR dummy.

I really can't believe the guy is still employed.

I know.

Now he has this huge task where he has to go make this very public apology to his co-workers and they have to sign that they received his apology.

Yes, that's going to be now Dwight's task.

Meanwhile, we've got this very interesting,

somewhat odd other storyline that's going to come up.

It really seems like it comes out of nowhere.

It's in the break room.

Andy, I guess, is really good at pirating movies, so you can see them before they come out.

And Jim and Pam are going to watch this movie with Andy on his laptop.

Yes.

We got a lot of fan mail about this pirated movie scene.

Hannah E., Abby S, and Bet S said, I am absolutely obsessed with the strange mini-movie Andy watches with Jack Black and several other big names.

How did this subplot come about?

Does it rhyme with Schooper Ball?

It does.

It does.

Remember when I said there was that extra scrutiny?

Well, one of the things that the network was very insistent about was that this episode have big name guest stars.

So they could flash it about.

Yeah.

Jack Black.

Jessica Alba.

Yes.

There was a lot of comparison to when other shows had run after the Super Bowl, like Friends, who had featured big guest stars.

But Greg.

and the rest of our writers were very against this.

Especially against it was Allison Jones, our casting director.

They all felt that to have like a big-name guest star walk into the office pretending to play a character at a small paper company would just totally shatter the reality of the documentary premise of our show.

We would get all these new eyes on the episode, maybe, but the conceit of our show is that it's a documentary.

That's right.

You won't have Jack Black come in and pretend to be a salesman.

Exactly.

But you can, years later, have James Spader play Robert California.

And have Idris Elva come in and all these other people?

And Timothy Olivant and Kathy Bates.

Okay, but for now, for now, our integrity is intact.

Okay.

And Greg came up with this idea, this fix that would not infect the reality of the show.

And that was where the idea for Pam, Jim, and Andy to watch this pirated movie.

And I guess Terry Weinberg, who was one of our original executive producers, was now working as the executive vice president of NBC Entertainment.

And Greg said that she was really instrumental in fighting like the kind of top brass at NBC

to agree to this fix.

They did.

Jack Black was the first person to commit.

He was all in.

He loved our show.

Cloris Leachman.

Amazing, by the way.

Amazing.

She heard a pitch on what the story would be and she was like, yes, I am in.

And then finally, we got Jessica Alba.

So the movie is called Mrs.

Albert Hannady

and Jack Black is playing Sam.

Cloris Leechman is playing Lily, aka Nana, and Jessica Alba plays Sophie.

It's sort of a romantic love triangle story.

Yeah, Jack Black is dating or engaged to Jessica Alba's character, and she's introducing him to her grandmother.

And there's an instant connection.

I mean, they go to shake hands and music starts playing.

Yeah, there's some electricity there.

Well, I want you to know there were some alt ideas for this parody movie, Jenna.

Oh.

And I went back to the table read draft, not the shooting draft, just to see what it said in the table read.

In the table read draft, the movie was going to be called Hang Glider Cop.

What?

And Jack Black would be a cop named Tanner that's kind of a rogue cop, and he gets, as punishment sent over to the hang gliding division.

Okay.

Now he's going to be a hang gliding cop.

A wacky comedy.

Like a cop comedy.

Okay.

They didn't go with that one.

Probably getting a hang glider was too much of a project.

Gosh, I'd love to see that movie.

Hang glider cop.

Jack Black, are you listening?

HG division.

We got more fan questions about this.

Livian G, Norit F, and Maddie L said, did we get to meet Jack Black, Chloris Leachman, or Jessica Elba?

No.

We did not work the same days they worked.

They filmed all of their stuff in one day at a private residence in West L.A.

The rest of us all had the day off.

They didn't even come to our base camp.

No, they were at a house.

I looked it up on the call sheet.

They started really early that day.

On the call sheet, it said breakfast would be ready for the crew at 4.42 a.m.

in a nearby park.

Oof.

They had to get everything in one day.

Yeah.

The actors all arrived really early.

They did their hair, makeup, and wardrobe fittings all in the morning.

And then they were finally allowed to go into the neighborhood where the house was located at 7 a.m.

So they had vans that took everyone from this park base camp over to the location.

And that's where they filmed it.

So we never met.

So while they're watching Mrs.

Albert Hannity, we start seeing Pam getting all these text messages.

And we learn this storyline that Pam's parents are in a rough patch.

Yes, and that Pam's dad is bunking with Jim and Pam.

It is really funny though that Jim and Pam were having these little sidebar relationship conversations and Andy thinks it's about the movie.

Yeah.

Andy thinks you guys are just like geniuses at relationships that you can just figure all this stuff out.

Well, something else I should mention, Angela, is that we were actually watching.

That's one of my questions for you.

I was like, ask Jenna, were they actually watching the movie on the laptop?

So we were.

How could you not react to Chlorus coming out of the tub?

You had to be distracted on your phone.

I was like, holy crap.

So.

They had shot this a long time ago.

If you look at the call sheets for this episode, this bit of us in the conference room was not even on the schedule for these nine days.

We shot this another week week later so that they could put together this mini movie so that we could have some reactions.

The first time they played them for us, we couldn't speak.

We were riveted.

We were like, what are we watching?

That was what I thought.

I was like, how can Jim and Pam like not just be falling out of their chairs right now?

And Andy's like, guys, they're making out.

So what they did was they showed it to us, and then we watched watched a blank screen, but we knew what we were supposed to be reacting to.

You knew the beats of it.

Yes.

Yeah.

And then they inserted it into the screen.

You know, if you notice, it's all over the shoulder.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was very curious about that.

Yeah, it was bonkers.

Well, after all the texting with Pam's mom and dad, Pam says, Jim, can you talk to my dad?

You're so good.

Yeah, maybe he'll open up to you.

Yeah.

This is not going to go the way Pam planned.

Yeah.

But that's for next week.

Well, before we close out this episode, Michael has decided to do yoga in the conference room.

For relaxation.

It did really make me laugh when he was like, um, if you have your legs open, close them.

No one needs to see that.

Um,

or whatever he said.

Cracked me up.

It also really made me laugh when Jim says to Pam, don't open your eyes.

Don't open your eyes.

Why?

Oh.

Oh, God.

I don't know if you noticed Dwight and Angela are laying side by side.

Oh.

Yeah, that's because because there was a deleted scene where Dwight whispers to her, I will make love to you the way I used to if you will sign my apology letter.

And she's like, no.

Wow.

Well, during all of this, Stanley has a little heart monitor on and it beeps whenever he gets stressed.

Turns out every time Michael gets close to him, it starts beeping.

And then when Michael walks away, it stops.

So Michael has this very funny talking head where he says, it turns out that Dwight wasn't the killer after all.

The killer was Michael.

And he says, quote, you never suspect you are the killer.

It's a great twist.

Great twist.

Oh my gosh, you guys, that was stress relief part one.

I did it.

We did it.

We did it.

Next week is part two.

Boom.

Roasted.

That's next week.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this episode.

Thank you, Oscar, Randall, Rain, and Brian, for sending in your audio clips.

Guys, Rain and Brian both have podcasts.

They are great.

Rain is the host of Metaphysical Milkshake and Brian is the host of The Office Deep Dive.

Yes, and also a huge thank you to Randy Cordre, Greg Daniels, Jeff Blitz, Gin Salata, Paul Lieberstein, Dean Holland, James Carey.

Oh my gosh, Kate Flannery.

We reached out to so many people.

We always say thank you, but it's because we mean it.

Really?

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you guys so much.

And thank you for listening.

We'll be back next week with part two.

Have a good one.

Thank you for listening to Office Ladies.

Office Ladies is produced by Earwolf, Jenna Fisher, and Angela Kinsey.

Our show is executive produced by Cody Fisher.

Our producer is Cassie Jerkins.

Our sound engineer is Sam Kiefer.

And our associate producer is Ainsley Bubico.

Our theme song is Rubber Tree by Creed Bratton.

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