Question: Are there any finale spoilers that you might be able to tell us about. I know it’s a one-hour one this year.
Greg Daniels: Yeah, it may be even bigger than the one-hour one. We’re trying to get more time and the network’s being very creative about scraping some more time together for us without having us start the finale in a weird time that will cause half the audience to miss the first ten minutes or something. So, we’ll see how we’re doing, but we’re still hopeful to get slightly more than an hour too.
Question: Going back to the Jim and Pam stuff, the last scene of last week’s episode seemed to hint at, they’re going to be okay. Can you talk a little bit about how things play out over the last few episodes for them?
John Krasinski: Yeah. I think the last episode for me, the one that just aired, I remember Greg saying very smartly, we have to give the audience something, as far as trying to see light at the end of the tunnel, but I don’t think it necessarily answers all the questions as to how they’ll solve it. I think that, as always with Jim and Pam, there’s a romantic hope that everything will be okay at the end of that episode.
And now, there’s going to have to be a little bit more brass tacks, if you will, as far as getting to understand how this will work, because Jim needs to figure out what he wants to do with Philly and Pam needs to figure out how she feels about Jim doing this for her. And so, it’s an interesting thing that I think Greg was really smart to say, like we can’t just hold this out to the last episode and have people almost getting terrified to the point where they wouldn’t enjoy the finale.
Greg Daniels: Yeah, we’re going to end up with 203 or 204 episodes, and my hope is that people will treat the last several episodes as the finale and not force us to do everything in the last episode. We didn’t want there to be such anxiety over Jim and Pam that you could think of nothing else during the last episode.
John Krasinski: I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t laugh though, thinking about people being so terrified that they just sort of blacked out for the first part of the finale.
Question: Greg, the finale takes place a few months after the documentary has aired, was that idea influenced at all by Ricky’s office Christmas special where it sort of looked at David Brent and what he was trying to do afterward?
Greg Daniels: Well, probably. We didn’t start off with that as the finale. This year, the plan was to air the documentary in Episode 17, and as we got closer and closer to that point, writers and I would have furious debates and we ended up having promos air for the documentary at that point. And we got the best of what we were looking for, in terms of the characters seeing old footage and everything.
But, we thought it would be difficult to have a bunch of episodes after it had aired, and so we ended up pushing it off and off, and then it ended up being more close to the British show, in a much more compressed time period, and after attempting to beat that ending a number of different ways. I think we kind of ended up very similarly.
This was great. Thank you! Going home to watch some old eps after work now!
Awesome! Thanks!
Ah, that 27 seconds of silence felt ground-breaking to me. Too much good stuff from this show.
Great great stuff! I feel however that I should curl into the fetal position on the floor imagining the empty office! :(
[from tanster: yeah. that was heartbreaking to hear.]
Great stuff! I always love cast/writer/director interviews! I’ve blocked out my entire day on May 16th! ;) haha!
Seeing their favorite episodes mentioned you can tell how magical Season 2 was. To this day I go back and watch chunks of it at a time.
The show had such a great knack for laugh-out-loud silliness grounded with legitimate drama – which it sorely misses these days.
One of the greatest seasons of scripted comedy tv ever.
Any hope for audio?
What a bummer to think the office is now empty :(
They should totally auction off some of the set props like they did after Seinfeld ended!!
I don’t know how to describe this feeling. Many shows of GREAT quality, greater quality, have come and gone with sadness at the departure.
This however, is truly a hollow feeling. I feel like the beat of my heart is echoing inside me because truly the one thing that my wife and I have shared from our first date till now, is over.
I feel the loss so potently. I’m your average white collar corporate type. 28yrs old. Would never know me as some kind of TV guy. Not like Stanley and his “mystery stories” or Kelly and her “Glee”
The office wasn’t my Seinfeld or sopranos, it was my date night. My dinner infront of the TV night. My cuddle with my wife and laugh night. The office is my funny bone and much like a funny bone, when it hurts, it’s not funny. I’m pained by the loss but appreciative. I only wish NBC would have given the office the lifespan of Law and Order SVU. Alas, I guess America likes Rape and pedophiles more than Oscar and the Senator or Angela and her Cats.
Goodbye my lover, goodbye my friend, you have been the one, you have been the one for me..
Oh gosh. Yeah, that last part was heartbreaking.
I realize this is an entirely unrelated thing to post, but now that I know Greg is so fond of lurking and reading the comments, I’m going for it:
Mr. Daniels, I was going through a box of old college paperwork a couple weeks ago and found one of my annual financial aid statements from a certain women’s college in the Pioneer Valley. I noticed a line item I’d never seen before and did some research on the name. And long story short, tell your parents thanks from a random fangirl for helping to make me the first out of seven kids to go to college. I’ll try to keep repaying the debt by buying DVD sets or something. :)
Now, the relevant stuff:
I really want to know where the Homer doll and Pam’s drawing of the building went! When I watch re-runs now, I keep finding myself wondering where certain things ended up. Like, there’s this sad little part of me that really wants Brian Baumgartner to have that blown-up photo of Michael and Jan at Sandals in a basement rec room.
See you all in Scranton this weekend. :)
I think a small piece of me died when I read that the set is already torn down. :(
The Office and its fantastic characters will live forever in my heart (and on my dvd shelf).
Nicely said gentleman.