After 201 episodes of Dunder Mifflin adventures, The Office — which set the trend for dry, music-free, single-camera American mockumentary sitcoms for years to come and spawned a countless trail of recaps, spoilers, reviews, thinkpieces, and GIFs — waved its final goodbye last night. While the past two episodes "Livin' the Dream" and "A.A.R.M." felt more like caps to this season's storylines, "Finale" served as a celebration of the show that went from the struggling underdog it was back in 2005 to the powerhouse NBC Thursday night leader of nearly a decade. The episode — which included some weirdly awesome cameos by Seth Meyers, Bill Hader, Eric Wareheim, Greg [...]
When The Office producers Greg Daniels and Mike Schur were putting together Parks and Recreation in 2007, it was originally supposed to be a spin-off of The Office. They instead opted to abandon that plan and make the show its own thing, but the duo revealed some of the options they considered for an Office spin-off to TV Guide this week, and some of them are pretty crazy. Here are six ideas they thought about and then discarded:
- A comedy inspired by the 1970s PBS documentary An American Family, which followed the upper-middle class Loud family of California. Daniels recalls, "We were going to do a [...]
Steve Carell has been saying for over a year now that he doesn't want to come back for The Office's May 16th finale and showrunner Greg Daniels denied Carell's involvement in the final episode as recently as last week, but despite all that, TV Line reports today that Carell will be back to say goodbye one last time. TV Line's source says that Carell's appearance in the last episode is closer to a cameo than a full-on guest appearance, but he will allegedly be in the episode somewhere – unless this is just another lie in this constantly flip-flopping story.
The Office only has four episodes left, with the last two set to air as a special one-hour finale on May 16th, and NBC just released a long list of guest stars for the finale plus a vague spoiler about the plot. Guest star-wise, Mindy Kaling, BJ Novak, Matt Jones, Andy Buckley, Mike Schur, and Bobby Ray Shafer are set to return with Office newcomers Rachael Harris, Dakota Johnson, Joan Cusack, Ed Begley Jr., and Malcolm Barrett set to appear in the episode. Hit the jump to read the light spoiler-y episode summary courtesy of NBC:
Here's the first episode of a new web series from The Office, tied to the show's series finale next month. Directed by John Krasinski, each episode features guest stars and regular actors from the show looking back at The Office and its legacy. Hopefully, everyone refuses to stop eating lunch the whole time like Will Ferrell did.
