The creative team of the office had a written episode for emergencies.

The successful NBC situation comedy “The Office” goes in many directions in the course of his nine -season career. Michael Scott ends up in a koi pond. Dwight shoots a weapon in the office. Meredith is attacked very realistically by a bat. Despite the litany of comic gold, some funny scenes of the program never saw daylight until they were included in eliminated scenes and superfan episodes. At other times, writing ideas were revealed from the cast and crew. For example, we learned the names of the children of Michael Scott when a scene eliminated in the “Office Ladies” podcast was revealed.

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And then there are really deep things: the things with which the writers room dreamed and never had the guts (or approval) to put on the screen. Most of this was lost in television production ethers, that is, until several of the writers offered some juicy “could have been” in the book “The office: the story not told of the best situation comedy of the 2000s.” In that Sacred Scranton volume, we get a lot of scenarios of what happened, some of which attacked the mind. In its environment there is a wild story about a complete episode that was written and never filmed as a “breaking glass in case of emergency” backup plan.

This is what the writer Justin Spitzer had to say (through EW) about the waiting delivery that writers were ready to go in case of emergencies:

There was a complete episode in the first season that Greg (Daniels) wrote that they never filmed. We always talk about that as our “Break the Glass episode” we would do if we were ever totally in trouble.

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Spitzer remembered some details on the issue of episode and why he never saw daylight too:

It was called “Pet Day”, where everyone took their pets to the office. I don’t remember much about it, but it was fun. I think Michael had a parrot called Jim Carrey. There was a moment at some point in the race where we realized: “Okay, the characters and their situations have changed so much now that we can never do the ‘pet day’. The program has changed too much now.

Despite the eventual inability to use the script of the “Pet Day”, the writers were comforted for a long time in the fact that they had an emergency episode under the sleeves if they needed it. Spitzer said it so much, ending his summary saying:

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There were some seasons in which we think, “there are always ‘Pet Day’!” Whenever we got into trouble.

While the “Pet Day” episode is a great idea that never took off, there were many smaller ideas (often more wild) that did not get traction either. The writer Halsted Sullivan talked about trying to integrate a high -end stationery company “Rebelde” in the five families of the Scranton Business Park. Aaron Shure shared a scene on which Michael is trapped on her opening garage and ends up looking crucified (complete with a basketball ring like a crown of thorns).

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The writer and brother of the Toby Flenderson actor, Paul Liedein, Warren Lieberstein, also shared about an undeveloped idea for an episode called “Premonition” where someone has a dream that someone in the office died on the way home, and then nobody wants to leave work that day. Other ideas cover the entire range, from Phyllis through menopause (and freezing the office in the process) to Michael that approaches with a bad case of Ennui and even reveals that Andy was part of a pact of silence of murder in relation to a deceased member of his cappella troop “here is the treble”.

While every idea has its merits and it would have been fun to see, there is no doubt that the editorial team did their job well. The final cut of most episodes (even less popular entries, such as “Get the Girl” of season 8) clearly contain the strongest concepts, edited to size and presented in a simulated format, quick header and head, which has maintained this iconic show in repetition for a television and count generation.

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