When The Office returns from winter break in January for the final time, the show will have 15 more episodes, or less than eight hours, before its series finale in May. Is that enough time to answer such important questions as, Is Andy dead? What the hell happened to Gabe? Erin, will you marry me? Will Pam leave Jim and run off Dwight? When will Michael return? Remember Charles Miner? Seriously, what the hell happened to Gabe? Does Nellie know how to eat a burrito? Time is not on their side, but in an interview with the Huffington Post, Rainn Wilson discussed what the last six episodes or so of the show might look like.
Part of the ending is going to be not only resolving the characters and what’s happening in their lives, but the showing of the airing of the documentary on The Office, and showing what effect that has on the characters. That’s going to happen over the course of the last six or eight episodes. The Office characters get to watch themselves in the documentary. I think they’re probably being documented as they’re watching themselves in the documentary. (Via)
In the original BBC series, the documentary crew wasn’t acknowledged until the Christmas special, which takes place three years after the documentary that made the employees of Wernham Hogg famous. It’s pretty goddamn devastating, until the end, when a certain someone is flown from Florida back to Slough. Something tells me this same storyline won’t happen on the American version.
Florida Stanley is the best. My prediction: the documentary is just the foreplay in Creed’s sex tape, and in the series finale, everyone’s DTF. That would explain Meredith.
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I’m pretty sure they’ll bring Carell back for the last episode
Of course this show won’t do the “shipping a certain someone in from Florida to Slough” storyline. Because they’ll do the “shipping a certain someone in from Colorado to Scranton” storyline.
As long as Michael Scott shows up. The show hasn’t deserved to be on a Thursday night line up since he left although Darryl falling through the table was a great moment
They watch themselves in the documentary? They haven’t seen this yet? I was thinking it was some reality show, and each episode we saw was one episode of that reality show. And then they could, like, go home and watch it. But no, I guess there was a documentary film crew following the employees of this one office for nine years to put together one documentary. For what?
The most obvious premise for a clip show, that’s what.
I think Pam or Jim brings it up to them in the first episode of this season. They say, “Don’t you have enough footage for your documentary?” and they reply, “Oh, yeah, we finished that a while ago. Now we’re more interested in you guys.” So… yeah, clip show.
Even if it is a clip show they’ll show the characters watching the footage. I can’t think of another sitcom that has done this, it’s usually “hey, remember when…” [cut to previously aired footage of what's being remembered]. If they only do that, yeah, that would be like the Banker episode and it’ll suck. But this factor adds a new dimension and could be really interesting. They could go the Community route and show clips that the viewer has never seen before, they could whittle down 9 seasons to a 1 hour “documentary” and just show them all watching it, who knows. All I’m saying is it could suck, but it has the potential to not suck like a typical clip show.
Well, remember Community’s fake clip show? Where they showed a bunch of clips under the pretense that they were from previous episodes but they were all from stuff we haven’t seen?
No way that’s happening here.
What’ll happen is we get a clip, cut to them watching it, laughing and reminiscing about that moment, maybe one or two people has an embarrassed look on their face because they were the one that comes off badly in the clip, and then they briefly talk about it. Maybe there’s a B-plot going on in the background, where New Jim flirts with Erin by having her explain everything to him.
Well yeah, that would suck. I’m just saying it has the potential for them to not do that, and I’m cautiously optimistic they’ll give us something better.
@Mulligan- That’s not exactly what happens. Pam points out that it seems like they should have more than enough footage for a documentary about a paper company, and then they say that the documentary is more about the staff.
Hoop Dreams followed two families for four years.
Would be a great twist if the documentary was cut to portray them in a light much different than we know the characters from the show. Michael Scott as a consummate professional who commands the respect of his employees, Dwight as fun loving, Jim as a complete bore and so on.
Or just Jim in a completely negative light. As the guy who breaks up an engagement, as the guy who endlessly torments Dwight, as the guy who gave himself an “employee of the month” award, etc.
But seriously, they won’t do that. It’ll just be “Remember when ________ did ______?” “Remember him?” “Remember her?” “Weren’t we so funny back then?” etc.
Exactly. Play it that way instead of a basic boring ass clip show. Make Jim a complete ass and Dwight a sympathetic character. Great way to wink at the whole genre of ‘reality programming’ and how it can be manipulated by the producers.
I’m pretty sure in the BBC version you actually see a cameraman at some point in the series before the xmas special. It’s been a couple years so I could be wrong but I’m all but certain it was clear to the staff and viewer they were making a “documentary” throughout the show.
For all the bad you can throw at the Office, at least it stuck to the style of the documentary/mockumentary in terms of shooting rather than just assimilating the convenient aspects like talking heads while forgetting where cameramen would be in reverse shots (looking at you Modern Family and, to a lesser extent, post first season P&R). The cameramen have been present as off screen characters the whole time so it makes sense to me they’d eventually show or “air” the footage, likely in a different manner than we got week by week, at some point. Filming how this affects the lives of the characters just makes sense in that regard – not just because it’s what the British version did but because it would be a good way to close the series with a “and here’s where they are now” moment for everyone. The only reason this doesn’t excite me is if they do just use it for a clip show, but I’m holding out hope they don’t waste any of the last 8 hours that way.
Also, Gabe is back in Tallahassee and I’m 90% sure he’s the Scranton Strangler.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure in the pilot for the British show they explicitly state they are being filmed for a documentary.
Someone actually cares what happened to Gabe?
Didn’t Michael hire Timothy Olyphant as a salesman who then went on the road, only to never be seen again?????
Didn’t Will Ferrel hire an assistant named Kathy, who was used as a brief foil in Jim and Pam’s marriage never to be heard of or seen again?
Kathy was the temp hired for when Pam was out on maternity for her 2nd kid. Pam trained her before going on leave. Pam came back to work, her temp replacement went away (after hitting on Jim in FL).
Will Ferrel’s character hired Jordan. But yeah, she was only in the 3 final episodes of season 7 and then disappeared over the summer without a word.
The thing with Olyphant was worse. Though he did have 2 episodes – the one where he was hired and the one after where the focus was on how he and Pam dated a long time ago. The only other mention of his name was in Michael’s last Dundies (he got the hottest in the office award instead of Ryan). No word on him since then and no clue how he fit in with anything that’s happened since.
I have found this season to be rather funny overall. Not perfect, but resembling what the show used to be.