Fan war over Brit, American ‘Office’
By Mike Peters - The Badger Herald
December 8, 2006

“The Office” is well into its third season on NBC. Even after proving itself with multiple award nominations and wins, including a 2006 Emmy victory for Outstanding Comedy Series, some people continue to claim that it does not live up to the original British version created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

There are basically three types of fans of “The Office.” The first type, who I’ll call the “loyalist,” is the fan who believes the original British version is the best, and the American adaptation is not only disappointing, but is exploiting its predecessor’s brilliance.

The second type, who I’ll call the “colonist,” is strictly a fan of the American adaptation and is either unaware of its British origins or knows and is unimpressed.

The third type, who I’ll call “reasonable,” recognizes the genius of both versions. I am reasonable.

As a reasonable fan, I cannot conceive any justification for hating the American “Office,” aside from its threat of outdoing the British equivalent. As it stands now, I believe the American version has, in fact, surpassed its inspiration with its volume. I don’t just mean volume of episodes, but also volume of classic moments. I respect the writers of the NBC adaptation for continually creating quality programming for almost 40 episodes.

At the same time, I cannot help but respect Gervais and Merchant for limiting the number of their episodes to 12, plus one special, as a way of preserving the series’ overall quality. Just because I say the American adaptation has surpassed the British version in volume does not mean I would ever dream of ignoring the original’s innovation. There is a lot of excellence packed into that baker’s dozen.

Both the British and American versions are based on the same premise. A team of filmmakers (who are never shown) is documenting the goings-on of a paper-sales office. An immature man, who would rather be friends with his employees than tell them what to do, runs the office. There is an engaged receptionist and a male coworker who loves her. Throughout both series, the writers handle this romantic element with exceptional skill, giving the viewers hope for the relationship and then stomping on their hope. Along with several more similarities, the concept is compelling, regardless of whether it’s airing on BBC or NBC.

Aside from the quality of each program, a common disagreement between loyalists and colonists is over who makes the more entertaining boss. It is nearly impossible to compare Gervais and Steve Carell. They are both hilarious. They both brilliantly embody the boss who likes to think everyone is laughing with him rather than at him. They also both won a Golden Globe for playing fundamentally the same character. With so much going for them, they shouldn’t be compared, but rather individually praised. It doesn’t matter who is better. They are both great.

I can sort of see where a colonist is coming from, though. For instance, when ABC picked up “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” in 1999, most of us knew it was adapted from a show in Great Britain, and yet, no one cared. Regis Philbin hosted the show and the questions were related to American knowledge. Why, as an American, would I get more joy out of watching a British version of “Millionaire,” with questions geared toward the citizens of Great Britain?

Though an exaggerated example, a similar case can be made for “The Office.” There are times while watching the British version when I am confused either because I do not understand what is being discussed or because I do not understand a reference geared toward the British audience. On the other hand, this problem never occurs while watching the American adaptation, making that version, as an American, more enjoyable to watch in that sense.

Furthermore, Gervais and Merchant are executive producers of the American version. On top of that, they wrote last week’s episode, “The Convict.” If they’re okay with the American adaptation, why can’t we all be?

I recall watching an interview with Gervais on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” in which he said that American television was better than British television. This is the exact opposite of what many loyalists would say.

Nevertheless, I think Gervais’ remark may explain the loyalists’ viewpoint. So why is it some Americans feel the need to look down on their fellow Americans for liking American-made programming? It can probably best be summed up with the cliché, “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence,” or, in this case, “the grass is always greener on the other side of the ocean.”

However, British television isn’t necessarily better — it’s just different. The same goes for American television. Both have their pros, and both have their cons. If all were tallied, I think they would balance out.

I realize many of my arguments are leaning toward what I deemed the colonist viewpoint, but that’s only because loyalists generally outnumber them. I was merely trying to shift the argument back into neutral.

In the end, though, there is no reason to argue over “The Office.” The dispute is about as ridiculous as my tactic of associating it with the Revolutionary War. Gervais and Merchant did a wonderful job with “The Office” and have now passed the torch to the Americans, who I believe can keep that torch lit. Whatever the cause may be for this debate, I hope loyalists and colonists can eventually stop quarreling and start being reasonable.

'Rock' drops, 'Trees' thrives
By Gary Levin, USA TODAY
December 7, 2006

Comedy couples. NBC's The Office (9.1 million viewers) matched its season high Thursday, while the season opener of NBC's Scrubs (7.7 million) marked the comedy's biggest audience since February. But companion 30 Rock dropped to 6 million. Tuesday's premiere of ABC's Big Day (7.6 million) proved small, but not compared with Help Me Help You, which sunk to 5 million, a new low.

On Television: The Paper Chase
Office life in two worlds
By Tad Friend - The New Yorker : critics : television
December 4, 2006

If Samuel Beckett were still around, his plays might begin on the late shift. “An office. An unattended PC glows under strong fluorescent light. Front left, a copying machine. Front right, a document shredder. Back, in near-darkness, a lounge with a disorderly refrigerator. A head peeps over a cubicle wall.”

Yet Beckett might consider an office too familiar, too encoded with generic misery. Just as a commercial about a fretful housewife readies us for a miracle spray, so a commercial set in an office—such as one for FedEx, Sprint Nextel, and countless others—prepares us for jocular scenes of oppression. The ads follow the blueprint established by the “Dilbert” comic strip and by Mike Judge’s 1999 film “Office Space” (where the boss kept dropping by to follow up on “those T.P.S. reports”). At the office, we have come to understand, the boss is always a blustery martinet; abbreviations are a B.F.D.; your co-workers eat your food, talk your ear off, and stab you in the back; and work has no inherent value.

The richest treatment of these themes—and other, more searching considerations—occurred on “The Office,” a BBC Two sitcom whose impact vastly exceeded the length of its run: a mere twelve episodes in 2001-02 and a two-part coda, “The Office Christmas Special,” the following year. Shot as a mock documentary, it examined the daily nonevents at a branch of Wernham Hogg, a fictional paper-supply company in Slough, the city west of London celebrated by John Betjeman: “Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! / It isn’t fit for humans now.” The show, which aired here on BBC America and is available as a DVD set, was indebted for its format and some of its improvisatory byplay to such Christopher Guest films as “Best in Show,” but while Guest’s characters are defined by excessive optimism, the paper pushers created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant were glum and self-loathing. They gauged their standing in the world by their jobs, as many of us do, and their jobs involved monotonous labor at a failing company in a collapsing industry. Like “The Office,” standout workplace sitcoms—including “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “M*A*S*H,” “Taxi,” and “The Larry Sanders Show”—take place at pokey or besieged outfits. Their characters’ struggles to have their lives matter make the show “relatable,” as the networks put it. Failure is repeatedly relatable, whereas triumph goes down best in a single serving, such as one of those movies about unlikely bobsled heroes or plucky pint-size hockey players. A Goldman Sachs sitcom would have to be set in the mailroom, because watching envy and truckling is a lot funnier than watching the distribution of Christmas bonuses.

The workers at Wernham Hogg wear muted blues and grays and seem to be drowning in queasy fluorescence; they never see the sun. The show’s format compounded the gloom, because our emotions weren’t being cued with pop-song hooks or jolted by a laugh track; yet, by placing the cameras right up in the action and interspersing one-on-one interviews, the show allowed us to discover the characters for ourselves. The documentary verisimilitude also allowed scenes to peter out with a blank look or a sigh rather than build up to the American joke-joke-joke crescendo, known as the “blow,” a structure that usually involves someone bellowing at a freshly slammed door, “Does this mean we’re not getting married?”

The show’s lodestar was Ricky Gervais as the regional manager, David Brent. With his dated Vandyke, darting eyes, and shit-eating grin; with his wish to be more of a friend and entertainer than a boss, a wish torpedoed by the coercive feebleness of his patter and his horrifying dance moves; and with his unerring gift for joining conversations and killing them with one unpardonable remark, David was a new figure in sitcoms: the unbearable lead. In the first episode, in a scene that extended for an excruciating two and a half minutes, he sought to impress the new temp by having him sit in as he played a practical joke on the receptionist, Dawn (Lucy Davis). After calling her into his office, he pretended to fire her for stealing. When she began to sob, he winced and shifted and finally murmured, “Good girl, that was a joke we were doing.” With her head still in her hands, she called him a “wanker” and a “sad little man.” “Am I?” he said, attempting nonchalance. “Didn’t know that.” But he does. And our slow discovery of how this self-knowledge eats at David made us, grudgingly, begin to think of him as tragic.

While Gervais and Merchant’s decision to end the show well before it jumped the scone was admirable, NBC’s decision to air an American version, beginning in the spring of 2005, seemed deplorable. The show’s cult of admirers was outraged; the New York Observer wrote that, to much of Hollywood, “this smells like another colossal failure in the works.” It was as if the network had announced that it was going to take a British institution like “Pop Idol” and remake it with a jingoistic title like “American Idol.” (Since then, Québécois, French, and German networks have rolled out local versions of “The Office”; the template is becoming as globally ubiquitous as “Baywatch.”) The doubters had reason for concern, though: while classic sitcoms such as “All in the Family” and “Sanford and Son” were based on British models, more recent efforts to adapt “Absolutely Fabulous,” “Coupling,” and “The Kumars at No. 42” had all gone amiss.

Initially, NBC was too respectful. The goings on at the Scranton branch of the Dunder-Mifflin paper company duplicated those at Wernham Hogg scene for scene, which didn’t play to the new writers’ interests or the new cast’s strengths. But in the fall of 2005 the writers, led by Greg Daniels, the co-creator of “King of the Hill,” declared independence, and soon enough the show became a hit, first as a downloaded phenomenon on iTunes and then in the Nielsen ratings. It also became the best sitcom on the air. The creative turning point was last fall’s Halloween episode, in which Dunder-Mifflin’s corporate office in New York tells Michael Scott (the American version of David Brent, played by Steve Carell) to fire an employee by the end of the day. As he loudly struggles to think of a way out, or a way to get someone else to do it, Carell lets us see his character rummaging around in his brain for ideas, rocking forward as if to tip one closer to his mouth. The episode becomes completely goofy when Michael, in costume with a papier-mâché head on his shoulder, persuades his dweeby but Machiavellian lieutenant, Dwight (a brilliantly humorless Rainn Wilson), that the second head is whispering advice about whom to fire.

The winning silliness was new, as was that episode’s final scene. We see Michael, after going through with the firing, sitting glumly in his condo. Then the doorbell rings and he brightens, spilling candy in his eagerness to befriend a group of trick-or-treaters. Sappy, perhaps, but also an assertion that work needn’t define us.

The British “Office” was a pitiless meditation on rules and class. (The American “Office” doesn’t care about class; the writers handle very gently the fact that Michael’s favorite New York restaurants are a Sbarro’s and a Red Lobster.) David Brent was always afraid that he was being sneered at—and he was. It wasn’t so much that David’s bosses spoke in the tones of the BBC, while he spoke Estuary English and prided himself on knowing all the pop-culture trivia familiar to readers of the Sun; it was his attempts to disguise his background by larding his conversation with Latin tags like “ipso facto,” always misused, and with management-speak about, say, “team individuality.” And there was his public behavior, as when a woman at a club accused him of wanting just to shag her. His wounded rejoinder: “Yeah, and from behind, ’cause your breath stinks of onions, and I didn’t tell you that, did I?” As he smirked at her—touché!—she slapped him, and everyone froze. The appalled silence was “The Office” ’s recurrent landing point.

Most of David’s employees didn’t know what to do with their embarrassment, but Tim (Martin Freeman), a salesman, usually bailed out of the collective mortification with a deadpan look at the camera. Making faces is the way the weak take their revenge. (Tim also regularly needled David’s provincial assistant, perpetuating a British tradition of repressive jeering that extends back to Mr. Bennet in “Pride and Prejudice,” who observed, “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”)

Many of Tim’s poker-faced glances and slightly pop-eyed takes were directed toward Dawn; he wooed her the way a dog woos its master. Their long-simmering mutual crush was the show’s sole gesture toward the optimistic American “arc,” in which characters go on a journey together and are rewarded. But the crush didn’t boil over, because Dawn was engaged to someone else. Tim and Dawn were afraid to break the rules-—and their colleagues, equally afraid, made sure that they didn’t.

David declared at one point that he’d like “to live, you know, on and on and on, you know—know what it’s like to live forever.” Yet the show’s blank interstitial shots of the photocopier chunking out documents and of people staring at their computer screens, just as before, became increasingly dreadful. “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!” as Estragon observes in “Waiting for Godot.” In the final episode, when David’s bravado crumbled and he pleaded with his bosses in a low voice to rescind their decision to fire him (“Don’t . . . make me redundant,” he said, barely able to get the words out. “Just say that it’s not definite now”), his appeal to keep things as they were, given how bad even he knew they were, was wrenching.

The challenge that faced the American “Office” was to honor the spirit of the original while tweaking the workplace dynamics so that audiences would want to watch more than twelve episodes. The British scabrousness and barely suppressed violence is gone, and the Scranton office—brighter and noisier, with more posters, parties, and pep—is Slough on Zoloft. Scranton has its thwarted lovebirds, too, Jim and Pam (the boyishly appealing John Krasinski and a depressed but radiant Jenna Fischer), who are better-looking and more assertive than Tim and Dawn. But two more office romances have been woven into the mix, and where Ricky Gervais’s David was nearly asexual, Steve Carell’s Michael Scott is weirdly and delightfully pansexual. Ryan, the go-getter junior salesman (B. J. Novak, one of several writers on the show who also play characters), tries never to be alone with his boss. It’s not just that Michael slaps him on the rear and calls him on his cell phone to coo but that Michael once proclaimed, when everyone was playing Who Would You Do?, “Well, I would definitely have sex with Ryan!,” adding, a moment late, “ ’cause he’s going to own his own business.” Which makes it perfectly understandable.

Referring to such differences, Kevin Reilly, the president of NBC Entertainment, has remarked that “Americans need a little bit more hope than the British.” In fact, conditions in Scranton are fairly hopeless: when it appeared, earlier this season, as if the branch might close, many of the employees were delighted. Toby, the doleful human-resources nebbish (Paul Lieberstein), told the camera, “For a minute there, I saw myself selling my house, moving to Costa Rica, learning how to surf. But, Costa Rica will still be there . . . when I’m sixty-five.”

What distinguishes Dunder-Mifflin from Wernham Hogg is not hope but consolation. In the British “Office,” we never learned most people’s names; the American version lovingly anatomizes everyone and takes advantage of the long-take documentary format to reveal the full complexity of everyone’s feelings (we glean, for instance, that Toby has an unspoken crush on Pam, and therefore resents Jim). Lost is the condemnatory power of the anonymous British chorus; gained are both a standard American melting pot and a commedia-dell’arte stock company, featuring Kelly the Yakker, Meredith the Lush, Kevin the Letch, and Creed the Cantankerous Freak, who is just a possession or two away from being a hobo. When Dwight is hovering uselessly in Michael’s office as Michael tries to deal with the sudden death of his predecessor, who was decapitated in a car accident, Creed (Creed Bratton) suddenly dips in his random oar.

CREED: You know, a human can go on living for several hours after being decapitated.
DWIGHT: You’re thinking of a chicken.
CREED: What’d I say?

It wouldn’t be the same without him. In the final episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” Mary Richards explained the hidden mechanism of our workplace sitcoms, telling her co-workers, “I thought about something last night. What is a family? And I think I know. A family is people who make you feel less alone and really loved. Thank you for being my family.” Somewhat more self-importantly, Michael Scott tells the camera, “A lot of these people, this is the only family they have. So as far as I’m concerned”—he pulls out a “World’s Best Boss” mug that he bought for himself—“this says ‘World’s Best Dad.’ ”

This office taps home the point that work is fundamentally alien to the workplace. The reason that bosses become blustery martinets is that any sensible employee at a place like Dunder-Mifflin would rather play video games or gossip than tutor clients in the manifold varieties of copy paper. Yet Michael is the worst offender; he hates paperwork and is constantly distracting his employees while supposedly motivating them—the man is a karaoke machine of samplings from leadership manuals, and his emotional declarations sound like “The 48 Laws of Power.” “Would I rather be feared or loved?” he wonders aloud. “Um, easy: both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.” There is something Trump-like about Michael—the inert quiff of hair, the bombastic maxims, the bluff, mechanical determination.

Where David Brent wields language like a blunderbuss, brandishing it before the gates of the establishment, Michael wraps himself in it like a Sean John jacket, longing, hopelessly, to be black. “Wassup!” he cries, to his “dawgs” and “be-yotches” when they’re “in the house.” Last week, in an episode guest-written by Gervais and Merchant, he put on a do-rag and pretended to be Prison Mike, giving his employees the 411 on why office life is, in fact, preferable to time in the hole. There are also, in a somewhat more Caucasian mode, his impressions of Moe Howard, of the Three Stooges, and Adolf Hitler, of the Third Reich. Steve Carell does wonderful work with his voice, going from strangled and squeaky when he’s wounded to orotund when he’s feeling statesmanlike, an effect routinely shattered by his penchant for cackling and blurting out “Fo’ shizzle!” or “What’s the dealio?” All the conversational lint that tumbles around the airwaves gets trapped on the blank mesh of his brain.

Michael is less concerned with class than David, but he’s classier. When layoffs loomed at Wernham Hogg, David leapt to take a promotion, even though it meant that his Slough office would close (in the end, he failed the physical). By contrast, when Michael is told that the Scranton branch will be shuttered, he and Dwight drive to New York to appeal for his workers’ jobs. Scranton winds up absorbing the somewhat more professional Stamford branch, not because of Michael’s ultimately irrelevant road trip but because Stamford’s manager leveraged the situation and got a better job at Staples. Jim tells the camera, “Say what you will about Michael Scott, but he would never do that.”

Aside from such occasional clangers—fundamental-decency alert!—the show has a near-perfect grasp of tone. When Pam accepts her “Dundie” award from Michael at the annual ceremony at Chili’s, she has been drinking and flirting with Jim and wants to show off for him, so she launches into a mock acceptance speech. “Finally,” she concludes, “I want to thank God”—and her pause as she glances at the award in her hand and the engagement ring she has worn for more than three years is strangely affecting—“because God gave me this Dundie, and because I feel God in this Chili’s tonight.” In such scenes, the show manages to send up the forced camaraderie that Michael demands while celebrating its haphazard but genuine epiphanies.

The American show is much more willing to bend reality in the service of a joke. Jim, who sits next to Dwight and is able to tolerate his pettiness only by thinking of ingenious ways to punk him, goes so far as to send him faxes that purport to be time-travelling warnings from “future Dwight”—and Dwight heeds them. But the new “Office” does fix the original’s nagging realism problem: it was difficult to believe that David Brent would have lasted in his job for eight years. The writers take care to demonstrate that Michael Scott’s intense, blundering amiability can close a sale, particularly when the client is drunk. Most of the time, Michael’s boss, Jan Levinson (a splendid Melora Hardin as a steely professional occasionally beset by self-doubt), can’t understand why she hasn’t fired him. But Jan also warms to Michael’s sympathetic side, particularly when she’s drunk. She even makes out with him, twice, to her everlasting chagrin.

Michael is too dim to understand that Jan is way out of his league; he sees himself as a sort of man-about-town who’s not afraid to cry. In this vein, he regularly convenes breach-healing colloquia about diversity and tolerance, which always backfire. This fall, he tried to demonstrate that there’s nothing scary about gays by publicly embracing Oscar (Oscar Nuñez), an accountant who he had been told, privately, was gay. (Michael explained to us that he wished he’d known about Oscar’s sexuality, because then he wouldn’t have kept calling him “faggy.” “You don’t call retarded people retards,” he pointed out, with characteristic logic. “It’s bad taste. You call your friends retards when they’re acting retarded. And I consider Oscar a friend.”) Oscar rejected the embrace with a shove, declaring, “I don’t want to touch you—ever consider that? You’re ignorant. And insulting. And small.” Michael’s pained glance at the camera demonstrates Steve Carell’s particular strength as a comic actor: he doesn’t just deliver jokes and P.C. doubletalk—he swaddles them in bubble wrap and adds a gift card. When they don’t go over, he’s crestfallen. Here he ended up crying on Oscar’s shoulder: “Sorry I called you faggy.” Michael wants nothing more than to keep his humiliations to himself. But there are so many.

The biggest humiliation, though he hasn’t yet begun to acknowledge it, is the growing evidence that his office is not exactly a family. Michael’s employees, of course, recognize family metaphors as a corporate falsehood, and they behave accordingly: his wingman, Dwight, recently maneuvered to replace him, having earlier told us that his defining quality as a worker was loyalty—“but if there were somewhere else that valued that loyalty more highly, I’m going wherever they value loyalty the most.”

Similarly, Andy, a new guy from Stamford (Ed Helms, in a scene-stealing turn as a smarmy frat-boy type), tells us he’ll have the second-in-command job within six weeks, through “name repetition” and “personality mirroring.” Michael falls for the manipulation, of course, and his credulousness made us feel the sort of sadness we feel when a computer outplays Garry Kasparov. Even Jim has no problem with getting ahead and is now Michael’s No. 2. Class isn’t destiny here; destiny is achieved by selling and, in both senses of the word, hustling.

Gervais and Merchant’s handling of the Tim-and-Dawn plot was a master class in the pleasures of delayed gratification. At the very end of the show’s coda, “The Office Christmas Special,” Dawn tearily stepped into Tim’s arms. The related issue that the American “Office” must now resolve seems, at first, merely technical: how to perpetuate Jim and Pam’s mating dance as the show continues indefinitely. Their flirtation is more articulated, playful, and intimate than Tim and Dawn’s longing; it’s screwball rather than chivalric. They essentially serve as the office’s cruise directors, engineering a karate bout between Michael and Dwight and conducting an office Olympics with medals made from yogurt lids (they give Michael a gold lid for closing on his condo).

Inspired writing can multiply obstacles for a long time: Sam and Diane teased viewers for five years on “Cheers,” and Niles and Daphne eyed each other for seven years on “Frasier” before running off together. But when the will-they-or-won’t-they plot winds down, it often takes the show with it, as it did on “Moonlighting.” Precisely because Jim and Pam’s relationship has been so poignant—it’s the show’s chief ornament—they are fast running out of reasons to stay apart. At the end of last season, Jim approached Pam in the parking lot one night and said, “I’m in love with you.” A few minutes later in the darkened office, a likelier setting, they kissed. Then she said she was still going to marry Roy, her lunk of a fiancé. Yes, it made no sense. This season, even as Pam called off the wedding, Jim left for the Stamford office so that he could forget her; now the merger has brought him back, along with his Stamford colleague and new girlfriend, Karen (a spunky Rashida Jones). Their relationship feels much more mature than Jim and Pam’s skylarking, and so is clearly doomed.

How this matter plays out will define the show’s view of office life. Is this “Office” a romance, a place to find your soul’s counterpoint? Or is it a comedy of consolation, a place where dreams of love and Costa Rica gradually slip away? Michael, at least, would argue for the romance. Last season, he urged Jim to “never, ever, ever give up” his pursuit of Pam. It helped, somehow, that Michael uttered this Churchillian sentiment while wearing plastic handcuffs and shivering in the makeshift brig of a booze-cruise boat on Scranton’s Lake Wallenpaupack. The frigid weather and the correctional setting were straight out of the British original; the unlooked-for kindness was a local contribution. The BBC and NBC are two offices separated by a common language.

Krasinski suits up for Clooney pic
By Borys Kit
Hollywood Reporter
December 1, 2006

John Krasinski, one of the breakout stars of NBC's "The Office," is in negotiations to star alongside George Clooney and Renee Zellweger in Universal Pictures' "Leatherheads," a 1920s football romantic comedy that Clooney is directing.

Written by Steven Schiff and Clooney, the story centers on team owner Jimmy "Dodge" Connelly (Clooney), who hires straight-laced college football sensation Carter Rutherford (to be played by Krasinski) to play professionally. The scandalous sport becomes popular and commercialized, and confirmed bachelor Dodge falls for Carter's reluctant fiancee, Lexi (Zellweger).

One point still being ironed out is how to make the movie -- slated for a spring shoot -- fit in to Krasinski's schedule, which has him making the Emmy-winning NBC comedy until March. Considering that "The Office" is an NBC Universal TV production, sources said the two sides are working together to find a solution to production timing issues.

Clooney's Smoke House producing partner Grant Heslov is producing with Casey Silver.

Krasinski has a starring turn in Warner Bros. Pictures' comedy "License to Wed."

He also has cameos in Columbia's "The Holiday," DreamWorks' "Dreamgirls" and Warner Independent Pictures' "For Your Consideration."

Krasinski is repped by CAA and James Suskin Management.

The Office opens doors for Rainn Wilson
By Terry Morrow
Scripps Howard News Service
November 30, 2006

Rainn Wilson, who plays buffoon Dwight Shrute on NBC's "The Office," could have the oddest fan base of any actor in primetime.

"I get a lot of teenage boys and guys in the mid-20s who like to come up and (yell) 'Yahoo! Dwight rules! Dwight rocks and rolls.' I also ran into ('Angels in America' playwright) Tony Kushner, and he told me he loves my work," Wilson says. "So there you go."

Dwight is the office nerd who thinks he's more cunning than he is and not nearly as bright as he wants to be. He also is a little power hungry, desperately wanting to rise above his co-workers at a modest paper company office in Scranton, Pa.

In one episode, when a nervous Dwight was forced to address a convention of fellow paper salesmen, he turned his speech into a Mussolini-eqsue moment, complete with a mad grin and fists in the air.

"The Office" can be seen at 8:30 p.m. (EST/PST) Thursdays.

"There are a lot of people out there like Dwight," the 40-year-old Wilson says. "His comedy comes from a lot of different places. He's in every office in America."

Before "The Office" introduced him and Dwight to a wide audience, Wilson was a character actor known mainly for his short stint on HBO's "Six Feet Under." He played asexual mortician Arthur Martin. He also had parts in indie films such as "House of 1,000 Corpses."

When he took on "The Office" he didn't expect a long stay.

"I thought we'd be one of those shows that, if we're lucky, we'd be like 'Arrested Development' and maybe go two seasons," he says. "But this is great. It looks like we are going to be on for a little while. I'm astonished."

The numbers may not be there, but the industry love is. Most critics rave over "The Office." The Academy awarded it as 2006 Outstanding Comedy at this year's Emmys.

Wilson, touted as a shoo-in for a supporting actor nomination, was shut out. All Wilson would say of the overlook is, "the Emmys are notoriously conservative."

"The Office," while far from a top 10 smash, has opened doors for Wilson in other ways. He recently co-starred in "My Super Ex-Girlfriend" and has plans for more. Over the summer he shot "Mimzy," a sci-fi comedy.

Fans of "The Office" include many top executives in the movie industry, Wilson says. "There are a lot of doors opening for me in terms of films and comedy," he says.

Still, there's a downside to such industry attention, he says. The roles he is being offered are "very broad" comedies, essentially typecasting him.

"I know my range is much larger than just playing large buffoons or nerds," he says. "I am always going to play eccentric characters, and I have no problem with that.

"That's the persona I have. That's the way I come off in my acting."

He says his parents - "screwed up hippies," as he lovingly refers to them - are to blame.

"I grew up with the misfits in suburban Seattle," he says.

He also moved around often. His first job - coming as no surprise - was in theater and improvisational comedy in Chicago.

Wilson, though, is far from the screwed-up characters he plays. He's been married 11 years to fiction writer Holiday Reinhorn. They have a 2-year-old son, Walter.

He counts "The Office" as the cherry on top of his cake.

"All I can figure out is that if I am appealing to teenage boys and Tony Kushner," he says, "then I must be doing something right."

St. Louis Actress In Starring Role On NBC's 'The Office'
KSDK NewsChannel 5
November 29, 2006

(KSDK) - Jenna Fischer is the latest St. Louis native to make a name for herself in Hollywood. Her character, Pam Beesley is a receptionist on the hit NBC show "The Office."

It's a role that has not only moved her into star status, but it's a position she has played in real life as well.

"I worked for many years as a secretary and as an administrative assistant while I was a struggling actress.

"I know what it's like to sort of sit behind a desk, doing a job you are not passionate about, wishing you could do something else," said Fischer.

Fischer credits her success to never giving up on her childhood dream.

"I wanted to be like Shelly Long on Cheers. I wanted to play a role like Diane Chambers, just what I thought was some defining role on a comedic television show," said Fischer.

It was a lofty dream for a young girl from Manchester who graduated from Nerinx Hall.

"I really credit Nerinx with giving me the courage as a woman to be ambitious," said Fischer.

The popularity of "The Office" has really thrown her into the spotlight and she has been named one of "People" magazine's most beautiful people. Fischer really likes her job and working on the show.

"It's a fun time. We have the best time. We've all gotten really close.

"The girl who plays Angela (Angela Kinsey) is my best friend in real life. We do everything together, we go to Target, we walk the dog, we have tea, and we're just best girlfriends, and that's just a gift. All of us we've just really bonded and it's a dream job," said Fischer.

What would Fischer like to do next?

"Definitely kids, kids would make my life perfect."

Fischer is married to writer/director James Gunn who is also from St. Louis.

"If you've been married for six years in LA, that's as good as a 25th wedding anniversary, so we're doing pretty good," said Fischer.

At age 32, Fischer has almost everything she has ever wished for.

"I'm done. I'm going to have to come up with something new. In some ways, I didn't know if it would happen. I'm going to have new ambitions or something - gotta come up with something."

They gave at 'The Office' — twice - Los Angeles Times
At this sitcom, the actors are writers and vice versa.
By Scott Collins, Times Staff Writer
November 27, 2006

If NBC's comedy "The Office" feels like nothing else on television, it may be because the actors and writers are so often on the same page. In fact, they're frequently the same people.

Everybody's heard of performers who squirrel themselves away in their on-set trailers and pound out the odd script that winds up on the air, typically as a token of favor from the producers. But "The Office" is something else entirely, the rare scripted TV show in which the line between writing and performing is, by design, almost nonexistent. It's an improv-style approach that could yield some important lessons for those puzzled by the identity crisis and creative drift that generally seem to be afflicting the art of small-screen comedy these days.

A workplace mockumentary set in the Scranton, Pa., branch of fictional paper company Dunder-Mifflin Inc., "The Office" has had some of its most acclaimed episodes written by regular or recurring cast members, some of whom are barely out of college.

Mindy Kaling, who plays the show's "Indian Valley Girl" Kelly Kapoor, drew on her cultural heritage to write a script earlier this season that had the Dunder-Mifflin crew awkwardly celebrating the Hindu holiday Diwali. Another "Office" twentysomething, B.J. Novak, who plays the laconic young temp Ryan, is a stand-up comic with a Harvard education and writing credits on five episodes. Veteran comedy writer Paul Lieberstein became a performer entirely by accident, developing the bit part of the soft-spoken human-resources manager Toby into a wry portrait of a passive-aggressive player in corporate politics.

Even series star Steve Carell, who plays the endlessly embarrassing boss Michael Scott, has pitched in, writing last season's finale episode.

Executive producer Greg Daniels, formerly a writer-producer on "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill," said the double duty is intentional. He has clauses inserted in the writers' contracts to cover whatever acting chores may arise. Kaling remembers Daniels mulling over a bit character in one script before suddenly turning to staff writer Gene Stupnitsky and asking, "Have you ever acted before?"

This seat-of-the-pants method serves a creative purpose. "Partly I was just imitating things I loved, like 'Monty Python' or 'Fawlty Towers,' where the writers and performers are the same people," Daniels said.

Moreover, because "The Office" is supposed to be a documentary about mid- and low-level corporate grunts, it makes sense for the performances to lack a bit of polish and not to be too fussy.

"The concept of the show is that it's an ordinary workplace where the people are funny but not particularly glamorous," Daniels said. If their posture, gestures and speech seem "a little awkward," all the better.

Daniels is also in some respects following the path of the original BBC version of "The Office," which co-creator and star Ricky Gervais wrote with his creative partner Stephen Merchant.

The approach garners no complaints from NBC, which has watched ratings for "The Office" climb after a very slow start in March 2005. "It's definitely unique and advantageous to have so many artists serve in dual roles on one show," NBC Universal Television Studio President Angela Bromstad wrote in an e-mail. "Clearly, they inhabit these roles fully and completely."

The 11-member writing staff of NBC's "Office" gathers for the typical "writers' room" bull sessions, in which Daniels solicits ideas and assigns scripts to individual writers. Although the basic structure of every episode is mapped out in advance, Daniels leaves plenty of room for improvisation within each scene.

"The actors I hired, I tried to have them all have improvisational backgrounds," he said. "Improv is a good tool to make it seem more natural."

At this point, anything that can shake up comedy's creative formulas is probably a good thing. One of the complaints about sitcoms in general is that the traditional "multi-camera" method, as well as dividing the script into "acts" that depend heavily on a setup-joke-setup-joke pattern, has grown threadbare. But simply making "single-camera" comedies that look more like movies hasn't necessarily helped either. In addition to interesting characters, new ways of telling stories may help capture the attention of increasingly fickle viewers.

In the case of "The Office," now-familiar roles such as Kelly's and Toby's were originally meant to be bit parts. But the dual roles aren't always easy on the cast. Lieberstein admits that he still feels a lot more comfortable writing. The internal reaction to early episodes, however, guaranteed him more air time as Toby.

"Kevin Reilly, who's the president of NBC, was watching dailies and said, 'He's funny. More of him.' And that got around," said Lieberstein, sounding not entirely thrilled by the development.

People may lament that writing is a solitary pursuit, but Lieberstein has discovered a near-existential loneliness when it comes to acting. "The parts of it that have been hard are finding out what an incredible black hole acting can be. You're out there and nobody talks to you, and you have no idea how you're doing." When he watches himself in dailies, "everything I see, I want to cut in the editing room."

He also feels intimidated by his more experienced colleagues, including Carell and Rainn Wilson, who plays the nerdy crank Dwight, and John Krasinski, as the ambivalent regular guy Jim (Krasinski hasn't written — yet — but Wilson writes NBC's "Schrute-Space" blog in character as Dwight). "I still feel out of my element as an actor," Lieberstein said. "I feel like I can play Toby well, but Toby has a very small wheelhouse."

Kaling too confesses she'd rather write than act. But her personality and background have helped develop Kelly into a popular supporting character and the sometime love interest of a reluctant Ryan. Her quirks have quickly been injected into Kelly's persona. That includes "the online shopping, the talking really fast and the elements of boy craziness too, unfortunately," she said.

Last year, she and her friend Vali Chandrasekaran, who writes for NBC's "My Name Is Earl," held a Diwali party for the casts of both shows. That led directly to this season's "Diwali" episode, which ended with Michael singing a Hindu tribute to the tune of Adam Sandler's "The Chanukah Song." "The network was so excited," she said. "They were like, 'What the hell is this holiday? I've never heard of it.' "

Kaling said she understands what Daniels is after, even if his temptation to cast from the ranks of the writing staff has sometimes led to suspicion of "sheer laziness" on his part.

Then she checked herself in mid-interview, recalling the political expediencies of workplace hierarchy that are satirized so expertly on "The Office."

"Oh, God, now I'm on record as saying my boss is lazy," she said. "I meant lazy in the best possible way."

PARADE Magazine | PARADE's Easy Tech Guide: The Office on Technology

Now in its third season, NBC’s The Office continues to crack viewers up with its biting portrait of the pencil-pushers at a struggling paper company. Steve Carell (as the oily boss, Michael Scott) leads a talented cast of otherwise relative unknowns. For "PARADE’s Easy Tech Guide," we asked Carell and castmates Rainn Wilson, Jenna Fischer, John Krasinski and B.J. Novak to break down their own relationships to technology. Below are their exclusive—and very witty—comments:

PARADE Magazine | PARADE's Easy Tech Guide: The Office - Steve Carell
“I Run Screaming From Technology”

Steve Carell’s hysterical portrayal of Michael Scott, the self-absorbed boss of a paper company on NBC’s hit show “The Office,” earned him a Golden Globe as Best Actor this year. But Carell won’t be winning any awards in real life for his technical wizardry. Here’s what he had to say about his life with modern gadgets:

I dream about computers that turn into evil robots and eat my face. I’m not kidding. There’s no deep reason—no ticking toy ever harmed me in my youth. I never got a big electric shock. I just don’t have the aptitude for technology or even the inclination.

I do have a cell phone. I’m not that bad. I want you to know it’s not a very fancy model, but it’s not a rotary cell phone either.

I have figured out toasters and blenders and the television. I’ve got that down—the on/off button and the cable box. And I’m going to brag now: I can do everything with a microwave. But that pretty much covers it in terms of my technology acumen.

My 5-year-old daughter navigates the computer better than I do. It’s disheartening to watch her. I’m just grateful that I haven’t passed on my techno-dunce gene. And text messaging is completely foreign to me. As for the whole BlackBerry thing, I think they should be banished from the Earth. Everyone seems to be having a conversation with their thumbs with someone else in another part of the world. I thought technology was supposed to bring us all closer together.

Really, I don’t blame it on the machine. I know it’s me. Technology is not going to go away. But I’m going to embrace the simple way of life.

PARADE Magazine: PARADE's Easy Tech Guide: The Office - John Krasinski
“I’m Addicted to a Piece of Machinery”

I just got a BlackBerry. I used to make fun of my friends who had BlackBerries. And I know that the expression CrackBerry has been going around, but now I fully understand it. I’m actually addicted to a piece of machinery, and that’s really embarrassing.

I’m pretty tech-savvy. It’s one of the things I really enjoy most. I have gotten into the whole computer thing with Mac—editing my own videos and photos and all that stuff. I’m a huge iPod guy. I’ve been writing on my computer a lot.

What I couldn’t live without, which is really ridiculous, is the tape deck in my car. And that tape-recorder extension that goes into your iPod or CD player, I remember I used those in high school, and I’m still using it now. And I could not live without it. All these people have really high-tech ways of listening to their music, and I still go the old tape-extension cassette thing.

John’s Perfect Gadget: The perfect gadget would somehow allow me to fly. Isn’t that what everybody wants? It would also cook a damn good microwave pizza. So while in flight you had something to eat—an in-flight meal. Where would I go? Well, nowadays, it would probably just take me to work a lot quicker.

PARADE Magazine | PARADE's Easy Tech Guide: The Office - Jenna Fischer
“I’d Give Up My Microwave Before I Gave Up TiVo”

I have a MySpace page. So maybe people think that I’m a techie because of that. But I haven’t decorated it in any way. You can go in and write computer code so your page can be colorful or have streaming video. I don’t know how to do that.

I have a BlackBerry. People always see me typing with my thumbs. Definitely an addict of the BlackBerry. You can’t always take a phone call when you’re on the set, but you can look down and read a little message. [But] you can’t write anything too intimate when you have to type with your thumbs, I find.

My new favorite gadget is my portable DVD player. I’ll take that on planes with me, and I watch it.

We watch The Office every week together. We have viewing parties at different cast members’ homes. I would the say the biggest difference in our viewing parties from season one to this season is the quality of the television sets that we watch them on. Speaking of technology, I think over the summer something like five of us upgraded to the flat-screen TV.

I was a secretary for many years while I was a struggling actress. I really know Microsoft Office, Word and PowerPoint. Outside of word processing, the most complicated thing I do is download pictures from my digital camera and send them to people.

Jenna’s Favorite Gadget: I would pick TiVo over everything. I would give up my microwave before I gave up my TiVo.

PARADE Magazine | PARADE's Easy Tech Guide: The Office - B.J. Novak
“I Talk Back to My Computer”

Here’s my [tech] learning curve: I complain a lot. I always think everything is broken as soon as I get it, and I talk about how overrated it is and how much the company stinks. And then someone shows me how to [use] it, and then I’m in love with it. It’s my curve with every gadget.

I talk back to my computer, but I always know it’s really my fault. I say, “Dammit!” But I say it in a very soft whine. It’s sort of a, “We’re both at fault here, computer. You’re a bit mean. And I’m a bit of an idiot. Let’s figure this out together.” That’s what I mean my “dammit“ to sound like.

I’m addicted to my BlackBerry. I get made fun of a lot in the writer’s room for being on it constantly. I’m a writer for the show too, so that’s where I spend a lot of my time. But Rainn [Wilson] makes fun of me a lot. Rainn makes fun of me for never talking to anyone, for just always being connected somehow. I pick up my phone after every take, and then I log onto e-mail at the same time and I’m on IM at the same time. Just today Rainn and I texted each other back and forth —How is it going?”—while we were sitting next to each other, ’cause he has that running joke with me.

Steve [Carell] is such a non-tech person. He actually communicates with people. He actually asks people how they’re doing and makes friends and learns names and makes small talk while the rest of us retreat into our own little worlds in between each take. Steve is the only true gentleman on the set. Steve is old-fashioned, and it works.

iPod helped make this show. That’s how people in my age group watch television. It’s not really about what was on last night. It’s what they recorded. It’s what they downloaded. My best friend is in Japan and he IM’s me after he sees every episode. He downloads them the minute after they air and then IM’s me. That I would do a TV show in Hollywood and my friend in Japan, would tell me within the hour what he thought is exciting.

PARADE Magazine | PARADE's Easy Tech Guide: The Office - Rainn Wilson
”I’m King Techie”

I’m fully wired just with one device—the Treo. People carry around two or three different devices. I want everything in one. And I want it as small as possible. So I’m always going to be chasing the most-convenient, smallest gadgets. I’m King Techie!

I Google myself hourly. That’s why I love the Treo so much, because I’m continuously Googling myself. And I Google myself in different languages too. I see what the Romanians are saying about me, or the Finns. Apparently I’m very popular, especially in Finland.

The first cell phone I ever had was the size of a toaster oven. This was 1998. But it lasted like three or four years. It was very good to me.

Now, because I am such a huge minor television celebrity, people have a tendency to give me things like cell phones and gadgets, which is pretty cool. So now I don’t have to worry about that. I don’t go for the Bluetooth. My parents were actually slain by Bluetooth when I was 5 years old, and it kind of scarred me against Bluetooth. So I don’t use it. I just hold up the phone like a brick to my ear as I drive down the highway. Just the old-fashioned way—drive with one hand.

I’m a little bit of a gamer. I’m, like, five years behind. I’m playing Splinter Cell, where you go around stealthily killing people in Azerbaijan. There are, like, five different [versions of] Splinter Cell out, but I’m still on number one. I’m really bad at it. I just die over and over and over again. They say you can tell a lot about people by the games they pick and the way they play them. So, if you watch me play, you can tell that I am not stealthy and I am prone to accidents.

Rainn Wilson’s Perfect Gadget: It would convert corn into little robots. They would wreak havoc on my enemies.

Strange Love
By David Hochman
TV Guide
November 27 – December 3, 2006 Issue

Odd couple Dwight and Angela open up about their secret Office romance:

“I bet Angela wears a cheerleader’s outfit under her austere raincoat” – Rainn Wilson

“Dwight would get Angela hot by making her watch Star Trek” – Angela Kinsey

So how did this bobble-headed romance first ignite between Dwight and Angela?

Rainn Wilson: They both have an obsession for structure and discipline, and I imagine there was some incident at the copy machine that first brought their eyes together, like someone putting legal-size paper in the letter-size drawer.

How long can they keep their boss, Michael Scott (Steve Carell), out of their business?

Angela Kinsey: There are going to some real pressure moments coming up, especially for Angela. She thinks Michael’s an idiot, but Dwight respects the guy, which means Michael’s the biggest challenge to the relationship. I like to think of him as the other woman.

How do you picture them spending a romantic night out in Scranton?

Kinsey: I have a feeling they’d go to Dwight’s place since Angela’s apartment is probably full of cats. Then Dwight would get her hot by making her watch Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica.

Wilson: I imagine Angela watching Dwight from the shadows as he plays paintball.

What sort of sex life do you think they have?

Wilson: Way hot! I bet Angela wears a cheerleader’s outfit under her austere raincoat. Because of her over-the-top sense of morality, they probably do not have actual sex, but I’m guessing they do everything but. I bet those two are just noshing on each other all the time.

Kinsey: I imagine they have a bit of a kinky thing going on since they both enjoy being yelled at. Angela loves that her man is a baron with a clipboard.

How on earth can you play these characters without cracking up all the time?

Kinsey: I collapse into laughter at least once a day, and I’m talking about the ugly laugh where you’re laughing so hard you start snorting. Usually it’s when we’re doing the conference room scenes and we’re all wedged into the room together. After 12 hours of shooting in a tiny space, you just lose it completely.

Wilson: There was this scene where Dwight was injured and lost his marbles. He came in and patted Angela on the butt. The whole thing just cracked us up because every take Dwight would pat her butt in some sort of way, and it all just seemed so…weird.

Where’s this relationship headed? Will they ever come out of the cubicle with this affair?

Kinsey: I’d love to see them keep it secret as long as possible. The longer it goes, the more delicious it gets and the more stupid it makes Michael look.

Wilson: I’d like them to have a shot at a breakup. Perhaps there’d be some misunderstanding over a stapler or something. They’d both play the field for a while only to discover they were made for each other. In the end, they’d come running back to each other in slow motion with that Peaches and Herb song “Reunited” playing in the background.

'Office' Worker Turns Ninja - Reitman will direct
Zap2it.com
November 20, 2006

Rainn Wilson, co-star of NBC's "The Office," is working on a script titled "Bonzai Shadowhands" as a probable starring vehicle.

The comedy is set up at Fox Searchlight with Jason Reitman ("Thank You For Smoking") hoping to direct.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the plot revolves around a legendary ninja who has allowed himself to go to seed. The trade paper reports that Wilson, whose show is on a production break, is currently working on the script, his first.

Reitman and Wilson met while the actor was working on the superhero dud "My Super Ex-Girlfriend," which was directed by Reitman's father Ivan. Jason Reitman is expected to begin production on "Juno," his "Smoking" follow-up, in January.

Wilson plays assistant to the regional manager Dwight Schrute on "The Office." His feature credits include "House of 1000 Corpses," "Sahara" and the upcoming "Mimzy."

'OFFICE' SPACE
New York Post Online Edition: Seven
By Adam Buckman
November 16, 2006

Greg Daniels has something in common with Michael Scott.

As executive producer of "The Office" on NBC, Daniels faces the challenge of integrating five new characters into an already crowded ensemble.

On the show, Scott (Steve Carell) has the same problem: How to absorb five new employees from the Stamford, Conn., office of Dunder Mifflin, the fictitious paper-supply company he works for.

Both men succeed at their tasks, although Daniels, predictably, does it a lot more smoothly than Scott, whose efforts at welcoming his new employees to the Scranton, Pa., office are well-meaning but utterly (and typically) thoughtless.

You can see for yourself in an expanded, 40-minute episode of "The Office" that serves as the centerpiece of NBC's new Thursday-night comedy lineup which starts tonight.

In the episode - which runs from 8:40 p.m. to 9:20 p.m., between a 40-minute "My Name is Earl" and a 40-minute "30 Rock" - producer Daniels is attempting the rare feat of adding five new characters to "The Office" in one fell swoop (although one of them will likely not be returning after tonight, as you'll see).

Why is he adding so many new Dunder Mifflin-ites at one time?

"I think part of the reason they're there is to provide a management challenge for Michael, to see how he's going to integrate people who have never spent a lot of time with him before, and we'll see how he rises to that challenge," Daniels explained on the phone from Los Angeles yesterday.

The episode is titled "The Merger" and it is a worthy addition to the already legendary collection of "Office" episodes that have aired so far this season. In fact, of the three "super-sized" (NBC's term, not mine) sitcoms on the network tonight, "The Office" is the only one that justifies its extra length. A 40-minute "Office" is particularly welcome since this is a show that is normally over much too quickly when it runs for a half-hour (really 22 minutes).

As fans of the show are well aware, tonight's episode reunites genial Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) with sweetheart receptionist Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer), with whom he flirted incessantly up until he transferred to Stamford at the end of last season.

Now, though, Jim and Pam's relationship might be derailed by Jim's increasing interest in a comely Stamford co-worker who's also transferring, Karen Filipelli (Rashida Jones).

Where's this potential love triangle headed? Even Daniels doesn't know yet.

"I'm about five episodes ahead from where we are now," he said, referring to the outlining and writing of future episodes. "And it's certainly not over. And I don't know the outcome or the end of it. We're discussing that right now."

Gervais-Penned 'Office' Ready to Go - NBC schedules episode for Nov. 30
Zap2it
November 10, 2006

LOS ANGELES -- "The Office" will go back to its British roots, at least behind the camera, with an episode set for the end of November.

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, who created the BBC series on which the NBC Emmy winner is based, wrote the episode scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 30. It's their first original script for the series, although the pilot was based on the first episode of the British version.

The episode, titled "The Convict," has Michael (Steve Carell) trying to be supportive when he finds out one of his new employees -- presumably someone from the Stamford branch -- has a prison record. Given the way Michael's attempts at empathy usually work out, we're guessing the results are less than ideal.

The newly returned Jim (John Krasinski) also gives Andy (Ed Helms) some dubious coaching when Andy decides to make a move on Pam (Jenna Fischer).

NBC announced early this year that Gervais and Merchant, who are also behind the BBC/HBO series "Extras," would be writing an episode of "The Office." Speaking to reporters in late February, Gervais said he and his partner were nearly finished with the script.

"It was remarkably fast," he said then. "I suppose that's because we'd been away from those characters for two or three years. It's one of our favorite shows, the American 'Office.'"

The Gervais and Merchant episode of "The Office" will be the show's 38th -- which is nearly three times as many as the duo produced for the Beeb. The British "Office" ran for two six-episode seasons and wrapped things up with a two-part Christmas special in December 2003.