With just two Office episodes left to air, cast and crew commiserate
-
- November
- 8
The Office’s days are numbered. Tonight’s episode looks like the second to last before they run out of finished scripts.
That is a miserably depressing thought for this Office-obsessed fan. It’s safe to say the cast and crew feel the same way.
Jenna Fischer, once the most prolific cast blogger but who posts less frequently these days, put up a strike explainer for the fans at her myspace blog yesterday. She puts a real and personal spin on the issues and jargon floating about the media and blogosphere since the strike began. She puts lie to the preconception that this is a fight between the rich and richer.
We all count on the extra income that residuals provide as it can help us through a slump in our career when we aren’t working as regularly. It is our safety net. In 10 years I may need those residual checks to cover my electric bill. You never know. Hollywood is a fickle town. If in 10 years, everything is rerun on the internet, the current union contracts say the studios don’t have to pay us a dime. And, I’ll be sitting in the dark.
That may be hard for her fans to imagine, but clearly she’s imagined it and isn’t taking anything for granted.
Fischer also mentions that her trailer was cleaned out and packed up for her, and that they were just about to shoot the funniest episode of the year, a story idea that’s been pitched for two years. Even taking such boasts with a grain of salt, that still hurts to hear.
At any rate, NBC seems torn on whether to call tonight’s episode “Survivorman” or “Into the Woods” because both are listed. Here’s the undisputed episode summary…
After Ryan excludes Michael from a corporate wilderness retreat, Michael heads into the woods for his own survival adventure with nothing but the suit on his back. Back at work, Jim tries to revolutionize the office birthday party.
According to Kate Flannery, who plays Meredith, Steve Carell himself wrote this one, his first episode since “Casino Night”, the Season 2 finale. At her TVGuide.com celebrity blog, Flannery expresses solidarity with the writers and praises Carell for his brave stance in not showing up for work since Monday. (Actors who are Writer’s Guild members are expected to uphold their contractual obligations and face repercussions if they honor the strike.)
Says Flannery,
If you don’t pray, maybe you should start. If you don’t drink, maybe you should start.
Office writers Jennifer Celotta and Mike “Mose Schrute” Schur wanted to give fans a chance to vent and to ask any questions the might have. So, in an impressive display of outreach, the pair logged on to the OfficeTally.com chatroom last night around 7 and spent the better part of the next two hours fielding any and all queries from the lucky folks who happened to be there.
Alas, I was not, and you probably weren’t either. No worries, though. Tanster, who runs the site, has posted the entire transcript. It’s a long and funny read. It’s also probably the last bit of original material we’ll see from the writers for a while, as one chatter remarked.
Meanwhile, get your course catalogues out, because Greg Daniels is threatening to go back to teaching is the strike goes very long, or so he tells Watch With Kristin’s Korbi Gosh.
As for why he’s on the line, Daniels said: “The Office is a perfect example of a show that has a vested interest in the issues on the table. We’re one of the highest downloads on iTunes. We made a lot of money there, and the creative people didn’t see any of it. And this is the future of the television business. People are going to sit in front of a box that has computer guts inside and watch their shows, and just because it’s not called a TV, it doesn’t apply to our contract. All we’re saying is that it’s the same thing.”
This entry was posted
on Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 3:38 pm by Brian Howard.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Print
| 
Email
