May 5, 2020
EP. 27 — Conflict Resolution
This week we’re breaking down Conflict Resolution from the comfort of our own closets. The baby poster returns, Jenna shares some amazing insights on the talking heads, both ladies talk about the magazine photoshoots with their cats, and we discover whose names are on those plaques hung all around Dunder Mifflin. Then the ladies wonder if ‘save the dates’ are worth the trouble, and we get into Michael’s conflict resolution style, and we get some major Pam sass. Finally, we talk about all the hilarious pranks Jim has played on Dwight, and discuss that office group photo. This episode is definitely a “win, win, win”!
Transcript
OFFICE-027 – Conflict Resolution
[00:00:04] JENNA FISCHER I’m Jenna Fischer.
[00:00:05] ANGELA KINSEY I’m Angela Kinsey.
[00:00:06] JENNA FISCHER We were on “The Office” together.
[00:00:07] ANGELA KINSEY And we’re best friends.
[00:00:08] JENNA FISCHER And now we’re doing the Ultimate Office re-watch podcast just for you.
[00:00:12] ANGELA KINSEY Each week we will break down an episode of the office and give exclusive behind the scenes stories that only two people who were there can tell you.
[00:00:19] JENNA FISCHER We’re the Office Ladies. Hello, everyone, and welcome to “Conflict Resolution”.
[00:00:27] ANGELA KINSEY I’m talking to you from my closet today.
[00:00:30] JENNA FISCHER I know we’re both in our closets today.
[00:00:32] ANGELA KINSEY What is happening? That we are both talking to each other from our closets. And Sam and Codi are watching. I’m looking at Codi’s cat. Love it. Sam’s dog is somewhere there. This is where we’re at now, folks.
[00:00:45] JENNA FISCHER Angela, your shirts are very well folded. Or are those Josh’s shirts?
[00:00:50] ANGELA KINSEY No, baby girl. Baby girl.
[00:00:52] JENNA FISCHER Are you doing that again this week?
[00:00:55] ANGELA KINSEY I think we are. Here’s the thing. I’ve started every morning by talking to my family in Texas and Louisiana, and then it just is kind of with me for the whole day. This is my closet, my own closet. I share it with no one. It is a personal life victory.
[00:01:11] JENNA FISCHER Oh, my gosh. I only get one side of a closet. We have one closet and I get one side and Lee gets the other. Although, to be honest, I think I have encroached on about a third of his side.
[00:01:24] ANGELA KINSEY Well, Josh has his own closet, but one wall of it is my shoes.
[00:01:30] JENNA FISCHER This is the riveting content that people tuned in for.
[00:01:32] ANGELA KINSEY I know. I know. Listen, but just bear with me one second. Here is a perk of not growing since like your junior year of high school.
[00:01:44] JENNA FISCHER Mmhmm.
[00:01:44] ANGELA KINSEY Maybe a little wider in some places, but I’ve had the same shoe size since I was-.
[00:01:50] JENNA FISCHER Angela, you’re describing most adults. I mean, most adults hit their peak height somewhere around their junior, senior year of high school. It’s not like, it’s not like other people are continuing to grow four or five inches in their 20s and 30s.
[00:02:04] ANGELA KINSEY Do you have the same size foot as like when you were a sophomore?
[00:02:07] JENNA FISCHER Yes. Of course.
[00:02:08] ANGELA KINSEY You do?
[00:02:08] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. I’ve been a seven and a half medium since like, you know, junior year of high school. I was fully grown when I went to college. I was fully grown. This is-.
[00:02:19] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, I unzipped my hoodie. Could you all hear that? Could you hear the zipper?
[00:02:21] JENNA FISCHER It sounded like a toot. It sounded like you tooted.
[00:02:24] ANGELA KINSEY What? It wasn’t a toot.
[00:02:24] JENNA FISCHER Well, it sounded like a toot.
[00:02:24] ANGELA KINSEY It was my zipper.
[00:02:26] JENNA FISCHER It’s good, that it’s good that you’re claiming that you unzipped your hoodie.
[00:02:31] ANGELA KINSEY I was. Oh, my gosh. I see how it is. So we’re here. It’s “Conflict Resolution” day. If you can’t tell.
[00:02:37] JENNA FISCHER It’s Season 2, Episode 21, written by Greg Daniels and directed by Charles McDougall.
[00:02:44] ANGELA KINSEY Action!
[00:02:44] JENNA FISCHER Action!
[00:02:45] ANGELA KINSEY This is a really, really fun one for me. And I, I love Charles. And he and I got to play a lot in this episode because guess what? Angela Martin has a lot of conflicts.
[00:02:54] JENNA FISCHER Should I give a summary?
[00:02:56] ANGELA KINSEY Yes.
[00:02:56] JENNA FISCHER All right. So there are two main things that happened in this episode. One, everyone at Dunder Mifflin is being issued an I.D. badge. So one by one, people go into the break room and have their photo taken for their badge. And then secondly, Michael takes this stack of employee complaints from Toby and starts trying to resolve them one by one by forcing people to confront one another at work.
[00:03:22] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah. So I have one little thing about this episode. So Dwight is like going on and on about how horrible the security is at the office, right? At Dunder Mifflin.
[00:03:32] JENNA FISCHER Yeah.
[00:03:33] ANGELA KINSEY We get these badges. We never wear them again.
[00:03:36] JENNA FISCHER No. Well, you know, there’s this deleted scene where it’s supposedly the next day and we’re all walking in, in the morning and we all have our badges on. And Hank is in the scene. And Hank keeps insisting that Dwight show his I.D. badge and he pretends like he can’t read it. And then Dwight misses the elevator. So I guess we wore them once for a tag that never aired.
[00:04:01] ANGELA KINSEY Right. But no, we don’t ever. It’s, you know, it’s sort of the Casual Friday of it all, right?
[00:04:06] JENNA FISCHER It is. It really is.
[00:04:07] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah.
[00:04:07] JENNA FISCHER It really is.
[00:04:08] ANGELA KINSEY It really, looked, Jenna, I brought it back to Casual Friday for her. Yay!
[00:04:11] JENNA FISCHER I appreciate that. I really appreciate that.
[00:04:13] ANGELA KINSEY Are you going to hit me with some Fast Facts?
[00:04:15] JENNA FISCHER You know I am. I going to hit you with some Fast Facts? Can I get my sting?
[00:04:18] STING Fast Facts!
[00:04:19] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. That’s very DDB, by the way. I did not give him a shout out last week, so I wanted to do that this week. He’s a sound engineer who sent us that sting.
[00:04:27] ANGELA KINSEY Thank you so much for that sting. It does make me feel like I’m like in a 1980s game show or something. “Fast Facts”!
[00:04:35] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. I love it. All right. Fast Fact Number One: we have a special guest star in this episode. Playing the I.D. badge photographer. It is Scott Adsit.
[00:04:45] ANGELA KINSEY Scott Adsit. I love this fella so much. I’ve known him a really long time. He is an improv but of mine back from the Improv Olympic days. And I was texting with him last night. I told him we were watching this episode and he had some fun things to say. Do you want to hear them?
[00:05:03] JENNA FISCHER You know I do.
[00:05:04] ANGELA KINSEY Scott Adsit is an amazing improviser, performer, comedian. You might know him from “30 Rock”. Also, your children know him as Baymax. He’s Baymax in “Big Hero 6”. “Ba da da da da da da”. Anyway, ok, that’s my Baymax, Scott. You do it much better. So here’s a little behind the scenes tidbit that he shared with me that he remembers from filming this episode. He said he remembers that Ricky Gervais came to visit set this week and everyone was a buzz. He said that Ricky seemed delighted and surprised by the scale of the production of our set and everything compared to maybe what his production of it had been like in the UK. And he said that Ricky was just very humble and sweet.
[00:05:45] JENNA FISCHER Oh, my gosh. I did not remember that Ricky visited during this episode.
[00:05:49] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah, I mean, he popped by in and out those first couple seasons, you know. But Scott remembered meeting him and he just said that he was just really nice.
[00:05:58] JENNA FISCHER Oh, my gosh. That’s like a Fast Fact within a Fast Fact.
[00:06:02] ANGELA KINSEY What?
[00:06:02] JENNA FISCHER That’s a double Fast Fact.
[00:06:03] ANGELA KINSEY Did I help you get a double Fast Fact?
[00:06:06] JENNA FISCHER You did. You did.
[00:06:08] ANGELA KINSEY Alright.
[00:06:08] JENNA FISCHER Angela, I have a Fun Fact within this Fast Fact. Both you and Scott have appeared in two episodes of the TV show, “Monk”.
[00:06:16] ANGELA KINSEY I was in one episode. Yes. And I played the murderer.
[00:06:20] JENNA FISCHER Well Scott was on Seasons three and four. So between the two of you, you cover four Seasons of “Monk”. Congratulations.
[00:06:29] ANGELA KINSEY Yes.
[00:06:29] JENNA FISCHER That’s my Fun Fact.
[00:06:31] ANGELA KINSEY “Monk” was so much fun to shoot. And Tony Shalhoub was the nicest. We sat on like a little bench in between scenes and he was throwing something to try to get it in the trash can. And when it hit the trashcan, it made like a ping. And I started laughing and he started laughing. And I said, “I mean, that was kind of a funny noise”. And then the two of us sat there and did our impressions of the noises of things going in the trashcan like “parinobong”, “bingrinbo”, “paoooooo”. Like we were such dorks. And we cracked up. I don’t know. He’s just so fun. I just adored him.
[00:07:10] JENNA FISCHER That Fast Fact was just chock full of fun and fast facts.
[00:07:14] ANGELA KINSEY That was a very full, Fast Fact.
[00:07:16] JENNA FISCHER It was a full, Fast Fact. It was a full fun, double Fast Fact.
[00:07:22] ANGELA KINSEY Fantastically fun, full Fast Fact.
[00:07:25] JENNA FISCHER Oh, my gosh. Fast Fact Number Two: oK. Fast Fact Number Two is a fan question from Zach Akers. And here’s what he wrote in to say. “Why does Jim do his talking heads in front of the outside facing window while everyone else is talking heads are inside of the window that faces the bullpen of the office”? He says, “In ‘Booze Cruise’ and some later episodes, there are joint Jim Pam talking heads in front of the outside window. But neither Pam nor anyone else normally sits in front of that outside window”. And then he noticed, because Jim has several talking heads in this one, he was like, “It, it’s really prominent in this episode that Jim is there”. So I thought that was a great question and such a wise observation. I had to investigate.
[00:08:17] ANGELA KINSEY No, that is a great catch. It really is.
[00:08:20] JENNA FISCHER So I emailed Greg Daniels and I asked him, was this deliberate? Was this an accident? What does he have to say? And he said that it was something that Randall Einhorn, our cinematographer, suggested to Greg, starting with the pilot. And Greg absolutely loved it. He said Randall’s intention here was that it didn’t necessarily have to be only Jim. But the idea was that any character that had a future outside of Dunder Mifflin or held some sort of internal optimism would sit in front of a window leading out into the world. But characters who didn’t want to leave Dunder Mifflin or who maybe were in more of a position of being trapped, would do their talking heads facing into the office.
[00:09:11] ANGELA KINSEY Wow.
[00:09:12] JENNA FISCHER That’s so deep.
[00:09:13] ANGELA KINSEY That’s really deep.
[00:09:15] JENNA FISCHER Yeah.
[00:09:16] ANGELA KINSEY I’m sitting here racking my brain to think if my character ever sat on that other wall with the window facing out behind her and the one that comes to my mind and I think it might be the only one I’m trying to think if there’s any other one. It was when you and I did “Big Pregs, Little Pregs”.
[00:09:33] JENNA FISCHER Yeah, we did.
[00:09:35] ANGELA KINSEY I think it’s the only time I ever sat there.
[00:09:38] JENNA FISCHER Well, for a very long time. I only sat there if I was with Jim.
[00:09:45] ANGELA KINSEY Wow.
[00:09:45] JENNA FISCHER Which was really the only possible future for Pam outside of the office.
[00:09:50] ANGELA KINSEY Wow. That’s so deep.
[00:09:51] JENNA FISCHER I think, you know? Isn’t that crazy? But otherwise, she was rather trapped in her, you know, bad decision of being with Roy.
[00:09:59] ANGELA KINSEY Trapped or content, you know?
[00:10:01] JENNA FISCHER Yeah.
[00:10:01] ANGELA KINSEY I mean, some of us were just happy with our lot in life.
[00:10:04] JENNA FISCHER Yes. Yes.
[00:10:05] ANGELA KINSEY Well, that is fascinating. And I like it.
[00:10:09] JENNA FISCHER Yeah, I thought that was a good one. So thank you so much, Zack, for pointing that out and writing in. Now, finally, Fast Fact Number Three, Angela, it’s a Fast Fact Flashback.
[00:10:20] ANGELA KINSEY What are you doing? What is up? Are you drunk?
[00:10:23] JENNA FISCHER So here is this Fast Fact. This episode was filmed during May 2006. And so, Angela, my question for both of us is, what were you doing? Flashback now to May 2006 and what were you up to?
[00:10:39] ANGELA KINSEY Well, I had a journal entry from May 3rd, 2006. This is what I wrote. I wrote that I was doing a photo shoot with my cat Lucy for “Cat Fancy” magazine.
[00:10:55] JENNA FISCHER Angela Kinsey.
[00:10:57] ANGELA KINSEY What?
[00:10:57] JENNA FISCHER Shut the front door right now. Do you know what I wrote in my journal?
[00:11:00] ANGELA KINSEY No.
[00:11:00] JENNA FISCHER For this week of May of 2006, I did a photo shoot with my cat Andy for “People” magazine. I’m not joking, lady. Lady, how did we not know that we did photo shoots with our cats at the same time? What is happening in the world?
[00:11:19] ANGELA KINSEY I feel like we’re probably at the time knew, but it’s hilarious to me for us to both share our journal entries from early May 2006. And we were both so tickled that we were taking photos with our cats. Oh, my gosh.
[00:11:34] JENNA FISCHER First of all, this is why we’re BFFs. All right? This is why. Our life has very strange ways that it is parallel. So was Lucy on the cover of “Cat Fancy”?
[00:11:44] ANGELA KINSEY No. Lucy was not on the cover because she was a rescue. She was not a purebred cat, but also Jenna. “Cat Fancy” doesn’t let humans on the cover. So that’s like, it’s only cats on the cover.
[00:11:58] JENNA FISCHER OK.
[00:11:58] ANGELA KINSEY But the cool thing was that Lucy and I got like I think I mean, I saved the magazine. I think we got like four pages. So Lucy and I are in the center, I guess, for the centerfold.
[00:12:09] JENNA FISCHER Oh, you are the centerfold of “Cat Fancy” magazine.
[00:12:12] ANGELA KINSEY So Lucy and I look amazing. They’re some of the best pictures I feel like I have.
[00:12:16] JENNA FISCHER How was she during the photo shoot?
[00:12:18] ANGELA KINSEY Well, yeah, I should probably give you some backstory about Lucy. Lucy loved to sleep.
[00:12:21] JENNA FISCHER Oh.
[00:12:22] ANGELA KINSEY So Lucy did nothing.
[00:12:23] JENNA FISCHER OK.
[00:12:24] ANGELA KINSEY Lucy just laid there. And I mean Lucy. I love her. She R.I.P. Lucy. She had a great long life, but she really just loved to lounge. She was a lounger. So I. In many shots, I’m just laying next to her because that’s like her favorite thing to do. But what about you? What was your “People” magazine shoot like with Andy?
[00:12:46] JENNA FISCHER OK. Well, Andy was also a rescue, but he was a semi feral cat. I had found him. He was eating out of a dumpster back in Kirksville, Missouri, where I went to college. I think he was about like five or six months old when I got him. And he was just always a little, we say he was always a little wild. And he loved me and he snuggled me. And he was so gentle and sweet, but he didn’t love strangers in the house. And so when the “People” magazine guys came over, not only were they all there kind of causing a ruckus, you know, and Andy was a little bit like, “I’m out of here”. They wanted to do the photo shoot outside and they wanted me to hold him.
[00:13:30] ANGELA KINSEY Forget it. Mine was inside.
[00:13:31] JENNA FISCHER Oh.
[00:13:32] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, my gosh. Forget it.
[00:13:32] JENNA FISCHER Angela, I’m in like full hair and makeup with this dress on. They were like, “OK, we’re ready for you, will you come out with Andy”? So I’m holding Andy. And I think if you look in the photo, you can see that he and I are both a little tense, but I’m smiling super big, as if I’m not tense. And I wrote in my journal, Angela I wrote in my journal that he clawed my stomach and I had like like bloody claw marks in my stomach from the photo shoot because he wanted to get away.
[00:14:07] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, lady.
[00:14:09] JENNA FISCHER I can’t believe that we both did cat photoshoots in May of 2006. And also that we both wrote about it in our journals and also that our experiences were so vastly different.
[00:14:21] ANGELA KINSEY I, I do remember like calling my mom and I was so excited because I hadn’t really been in any magazines ever, obviously, in my whole life. And I was like, “Mom, I’m going to be in ‘Cat Fancy’”! And my mom was like, “What”? I was like, “Me and Lucy, Mom”. Anyway, that is so cute. I love that. Now I really want to see. I remember you doing that, but now I need to see the picture.
[00:14:44] JENNA FISCHER OK, well, I have a ton of makeup on, just a ton of makeup. And I’m smiling in a really weird, maniacal way. And I called my mom after that photo shoot, Angela, and my mom was so sweet. She was like, “Oh, I am just so proud of you both. Just so proud of you both”. She’s like, “Just think about that little kitten that you found in that dumpster in Kirksville, Missouri. He drove all the way to Los Angeles with you on onto the pages of ‘People’ magazine. What a life you’ve given him”.
[00:15:18] ANGELA KINSEY That is so adorable. That is such a mom moment. Oh my lord.
[00:15:23] JENNA FISCHER I know, I know. Well, that’s it. That’s the end. That was my third Fast Fact. Fast Fact Flashback.
[00:15:28] ANGELA KINSEY I like it. Those were really fun.
[00:15:30] JENNA FISCHER All right, guys. Well, maybe we should take a break and then we’ll come back to break down this episode of “Conflict Resolution”.
[00:15:36] ANGELA KINSEY Let’s get into it. Angela Martin, I have a card for this episode and it’s called “The Whole Office Sass”.
[00:15:44] JENNA FISCHER Oh, I think I know the scene you’re talking about. I can’t wait. And we’re back. Angela, you open up this episode.
[00:15:54] ANGELA KINSEY I do. This, I mean, I don’t think this happens very often with my character, but it starts with me very quickly at like one second in, I’m making copies on that copier and then the camera pans over to you and Kevin at reception.
[00:16:10] JENNA FISCHER Angela, why didn’t you close the top of the copier when you’re making the copy? I’m not the only person who noticed this because Molly Net also would like to know Angela.
[00:16:22] ANGELA KINSEY Probably because that copier didn’t work, really. There was always a catch to that copier. One time I made copies and I had to hold the side of it, like shut. I think that they didn’t want me to shut it. That would have been specific. That would have been Charles Mc, McDougall as a director, he really had his eye on everything. So there was definitely a reason to that. Either A, if I shut it, it wouldn’t work because the copier was a hundred years old or they wanted that light that’s like pans across the copier. Maybe they liked the effect it.
[00:16:57] JENNA FISCHER Ok.
[00:16:57] ANGELA KINSEY It was a thought out thing. I’m sure of that.
[00:17:00] JENNA FISCHER All right.
[00:17:01] ANGELA KINSEY But it wasn’t like Angela Martin’s like character’s choice.
[00:17:04] JENNA FISCHER That’s not her way.
[00:17:05] ANGELA KINSEY “I only photocopy with a blinding light in my face”.
[00:17:09] JENNA FISCHER Exactly. So after you copy it with the copier open, Pam is over at her desk and she’s doing her wedding planning. And Kevin asked if his band can play in the wedding.
[00:17:24] ANGELA KINSEY But Kevin is doing something that is such a pet peeve of mine, like anyone that walks up and starts tapping a table or thumping on something. I want to like break their fingers. It makes me crazy.
[00:17:39] JENNA FISCHER You don’t like that.
[00:17:39] ANGELA KINSEY Do you like? I, I can’t take it.
[00:17:41] JENNA FISCHER Who like that? Who likes that?
[00:17:41] ANGELA KINSEY Some people. Some people are like oblivious. Oblivious, like you can like walk by and be like [thump thump thump]. And they’re like, “Whatever”. But you do that around me and I’m like, “What is your problem”?
[00:17:52] JENNA FISCHER You know what I don’t love?
[00:17:54] ANGELA KINSEY What?
[00:17:55] JENNA FISCHER Whistling. People who walk around just [whistles].
[00:18:00] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah, yeah.
[00:18:01] JENNA FISCHER I, I can’t.
[00:18:03] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah.
[00:18:04] JENNA FISCHER Sorry, whistlers.
[00:18:04] ANGELA KINSEY We’re gonna have a problem. Sorry, whistlers.
[00:18:07] JENNA FISCHER Sorry, whistlers. All right. So we find out that Pam did not invite Angela to her wedding. And this is because she doesn’t want anyone there who’s called her a hussy. Angela, in the background of my talking head where I’m talking about you calling me a hussy, you’re eating in the kitchen.
[00:18:23] ANGELA KINSEY Mmhmm.
[00:18:24] JENNA FISCHER At 45 seconds, you seem like you are really eating. Were you hungry?
[00:18:32] ANGELA KINSEY I remember.
[00:18:34] JENNA FISCHER Guys, check it out 45 seconds. Angela is scarfing down whatever her food is in the background.
[00:18:38] ANGELA KINSEY In the scene, they let me eat a bagel. I was really excited. Whenever I got to eat something like that I was like, “Yeah, I’ll eat that whole bagel. Get me some cream cheese, butter. I’m here”.
[00:18:47] JENNA FISCHER That’s the cold open. Right? We come back. The episode opens with a Michael talking head and Phyllis getting her photo taken. And this is the scene where we find out that everyone’s being photographed for their new I.D. badge.
[00:19:03] ANGELA KINSEY Yes. And in the deleted scenes, if you get the DVD for this, this is a particularly great DVD. So Disc 4 in the DVD set. Disc 4 has commentary, it has deleted scenes, it has a blooper reel, it has fake PSAs we did, it has Olympic promos we did.
[00:19:24] JENNA FISCHER Yeah.
[00:19:24] ANGELA KINSEY It has “The Accountants”, the webisode series which won an Emmy.
[00:19:29] JENNA FISCHER Yeah.
[00:19:29] ANGELA KINSEY So it’s got, this is a very good disc. Jenna and I make no money off this. I’m just telling you, if you’re an office fan, this is a great disc. But there was a deleted scene that I thought was really interesting. It was a Michael talking head and it kind of sets up the whole episode.
[00:19:46] JENNA FISCHER Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. In fact, I also just want to say before you explain this, I thought that the deleted scenes from this episode played like a mini episode.
[00:19:56] ANGELA KINSEY Yeah.
[00:19:56] JENNA FISCHER Did you find that? Because they start with this, like what you’re talking about, they start with this amazing talking head from Michael.
[00:20:02] ANGELA KINSEY Exactly. So Michael is talking about how well, one of the things is he hates it when people have something wrong and they won’t tell you what’s wrong. And he says, my dad would do that all the time. And I would look at him and I’d say, “Dad, what’s wrong? Dad, what’s wrong. Dad, what’s wrong? Dad, what’s wrong? I would do it over and over. And he would just look at me like I was an idiot”. That’s what he says. Poor Michael. And then he also has a scene with Ryan where he’s saying that it’s just another kind of boring day. Nothing’s gonna happen. And he’s talking about how on “Big Brother” they tackle really important things, you know, every week. But I guess that’s not real life. And he, you can tell that Michael wants to feel accomplished in this day. He wants to feel like he made a difference.
[00:20:49] JENNA FISCHER Well, I think that deleted scene is a great way that we motivate Michael’s whole desire to take over the conflict resolution in the office for the day, because now in the next scene, Ryan is in Michael’s office and he hears Oscar yelling from the conference room.
[00:21:08] ANGELA KINSEY Oscar is going off. I know the beginning of that scene. The stuff that they’re overhearing Oscar saying, Oscar is improvising because they were like, “Ok, just make a big fuss. They’ll overhear it and it will cause them to leave Michael’s office”. Right? Go see what the hubbub is about.
[00:21:25] JENNA FISCHER Yes.
[00:21:25] ANGELA KINSEY And Oscar’s a very funny improviser and he got, he got to have some fun in this episode.
[00:21:30] JENNA FISCHER Oh, all those lines are amazing. Michael goes into the conference room and he sees Oscar is with Toby and he is ranting about Angela’s baby jazz poster that Toby gave her in the Secret Santa exchange at Christmas.
[00:21:47] ANGELA KINSEY Yes.
[00:21:47] JENNA FISCHER She has hung it in accounting and Oscar doesn’t want to look at it anymore.
[00:21:53] ANGELA KINSEY And he’s furious. And Toby’s like, listen, you normally wouldn’t hear this ranting. Normally we do it in the break room, but they’re doing the security badge photos in there. So we’re doing it in here instead. And this is Michael’s opportunity. He has found his purpose and this is it.
[00:22:11] JENNA FISCHER He’s so excited. He decides he’s going to resolve this conflict. So he calls Angela and Oscar into the conference room and Pam. Apparently, Pam had to attend.
[00:22:21] ANGELA KINSEY Pam gets pulled into so many things with Michael.
[00:22:25] JENNA FISCHER I love it.
[00:22:25] ANGELA KINSEY It’s like he needs her to document it in some way. I don’t know.
[00:22:28] JENNA FISCHER But I’m not writing anything down.
[00:22:29] ANGELA KINSEY No. And you hardly ever are.
[00:22:32] JENNA FISCHER No. It’s so true. He just likes to feel important. He likes to feel like he has a personal assistant.
[00:22:38] ANGELA KINSEY Yes. I like how quickly he produced this poster board that says “Communicate”. This binder. He’s had this. He has been waiting. He has had this. He’s ready to go.
[00:22:50] JENNA FISCHER But you know what I think, Angela? I think corporate gave him this binder a long time ago to look through and study and he’s never cracked it open until now.
[00:23:00] ANGELA KINSEY Oh, yeah.
[00:23:01] JENNA FISCHER He he was like, “I can’t be bothered with this binder”. And now suddenly he’s ripped it off the shelf. We had a fan question from Aiden Majia. You know, we go through the different styles of conflict resolution. And Aiden wanted to know, “Did it ever mentioned in the script what the number two and number three resolutions were in the five different styles of conflict”? I don’t know, but I know what the five are.
[00:23:29] ANGELA KINSEY The only one that’s referred to in the script that isn’t listed in this scene is “compromise”.
[00:23:35] JENNA FISCHER So the five types of conflict resolution are “lose, lose”, “win, lose”, “compromise”, “win, win”, and “win, win, win”. So they’re really, Micheal’s really keyed in on a “win, win, win”. Because then even he wins.
[00:23:53] ANGELA KINSEY Yes, we know “lose, lose” is number one. And then Angela just wants him to just skip to “win, win”. And he goes, “That’s number four”. But then I love Steve’s performance so much when he starts to read number five. And here’s the thing that Steve is doing. He’s reading something and making it look like he’s never read it before and that he’s getting surprised as he reads it.
[00:24:13] JENNA FISCHER Yes.
[00:24:14] ANGELA KINSEY Even though you and I both know he knew those lines backwards and forwards. So he’s like, “Oh, number five. ‘Win, win, win’. Oh, I win. I win too. Because I resolved it”. And it’s just, he’s so good. Just in that very like small moment you see how great he is at finessing all of these, these little moments.
[00:24:35] JENNA FISCHER I love it. They should play that in acting schools as an example of moment of discovery.
[00:24:40] ANGELA KINSEY All right. So at 4 minutes, 32 seconds, they go over to, quote, look at the disputed poster. Michael wants them to express their feelings. And I say that the poster makes me happy because it makes me feel like the the babies are the real artists, that God has a funny sense of humor. And Oscar at 5 minutes, 2 seconds just goes off and he has this rant. It was so fun to do this with Oscar. I have known him for so long. We performed together in sketch comedy, so I knew when they told him he could uncork what that meant. And it was just a, it was a delight for me when he was like, “You know what? It’s, it’s kitsch. It’s the opposite of art. It destroys art, it destroys souls”. Like he just goes off.
[00:25:29] JENNA FISCHER Was that improvised or scripted, Angela, or a mixture?
[00:25:33] ANGELA KINSEY It was a mixture. It was a mixture. And I think that was mostly scripted. But his stuff with Paul, with Toby in the conference room at the top of that scene was improvised. But, but Oscar is just so funny in this. And I just remember it was hard to keep a straight face. I remember that.
[00:25:50] JENNA FISCHER Yeah.
[00:25:51] ANGELA KINSEY I had you to my right and Oscar to my left. It was very hard.
[00:25:54] JENNA FISCHER It was very hard for me because Pam doesn’t have any lines. And my direction was that I was not to react. I was to remain very neutral as possible. And so that was difficult to be neutral. All right. Well, we had a fan question from Zoe Kennedy. “What do you guys think? A ‘win, win, win’ solution to Oscar and Angela’s dispute with the baby poster would be”? Because, you know, Michael’s “win, win, win” solution is that Oscar will turn the baby poster into a t-shirt.
[00:26:29] ANGELA KINSEY T-shirt.
[00:26:29] JENNA FISCHER That he has to wear because then he won’t see it, but Angela, we’ll see it all the time.
[00:26:36] ANGELA KINSEY Yes. And neither of them like that.
[00:26:38] JENNA FISCHER No.
[00:26:38] ANGELA KINSEY They’re like “eh”.
[00:26:39] JENNA FISCHER Neither of them like that. So what would you make it be, Ang? What’s your “win, win, win”?
[00:26:43] ANGELA KINSEY I would say that you could have personal items that could fit on your desk. And as long as they weren’t offensive, they could stay on your desk.
[00:26:49] JENNA FISCHER I like that you shrink it down to like no bigger than an 8 by 10.
[00:26:53] ANGELA KINSEY And then she could put it on her desk. And that would be my “win, win, win”.
[00:26:58] JENNA FISCHER Angela, that is a great solution. You-.
[00:27:03] ANGELA KINSEY Thank you.
[00:27:03] JENNA FISCHER Yeah. You set a new rule that personal items can be no larger than 8 by 10. Just that’s it, everyone. You heard it here first.
[00:27:12] ANGELA KINSEY You’re welcome, Corporate America.
[00:27:12] Jenna You heard it here. All right. So moving on, what is next? So, Angela, we got a really cool fan question about this scene from Marisela Cabuto. And I loved it so much. I reached out and I asked her if she would send me a recording of her asking the question. So here it goes.
[00:27:29] Marisela When Michael is trying to solve the Angela Oscar dispute, they are all standing in the accounting area. On a column behind Michael, there is a certificate of participation for a Mark Christy, who is that?
[00:27:43] Jenna I was so excited to get this question, Angela. So this moment happens at four minutes, thirty two seconds. And right next to Steve’s head on this pillar, reception is behind the pillar, you can see this plaque. It’s exactly what Marisela described. It is a certificate of participation for Mark Christy. This is one of my favorite things about our set.
[00:28:08] Angela OK, so Mark was the best boy grip and the key grip for seasons one through three on “The Office”.
[00:28:14] Jenna And it’s the art department that is ultimately responsible for any kind of card, sign, certificate or logo that’s created specifically for the show. So our art department created the Dunder Mifflin logo and they created all of the little plaques and signs and certificates that hang around the office. And in an effort to give just like a fun personal touch, they would include the names of real crew members.
[00:28:42] Angela Yes. So, for example, we also had a Salesman of the Year and a Humanitarian of the Year plaque. And those plaques featured our crew member names as well. But really, you can see them everywhere. You’ll start to notice them as you watch episodes. I do now. I look for them.
[00:28:57] Jenna Yeah.
[00:28:58] Angela There are tons that are just sprinkled throughout the whole office.
[00:29:00] Jenna Well, let me tell you what my favorite one is.
[00:29:02] Angela OK.
[00:29:03] Jenna OK, so my favorite one involves our first A.D., Kelly Cantley. You guys might remember her. Kelly. Her job is keeping all of the actors on schedule. She makes sure that we arrive for our scenes when we’re supposed to. And she is also the one who would run our safety meetings.
[00:29:21] Angela Yes.
[00:29:22] Jenna So Kelly Cantlay was “Safety meeting, lit candle on set”. That’s Kelly Cantley.
[00:29:28] Angela “We have a pair of scissors in someone’s hand. Safety meeting”.
[00:29:32] Jenna Yes, exactly. Exactly.
[00:29:34] Angela But Kelly really had to keep the whole production on time.
[00:29:39] Jenna Yes.
[00:29:39] Angela Everything happening on the set, all of us working together and and getting our day done, making our day.
[00:29:45] Jenna She’s by far one of the most important elements to running the show. For sure. Well, I guess that Kelly had gone around and looked at all the plaques and she noticed that her name was not on any of them.
[00:30:02] Angela This, I could kind of picture Kelly doing that actually.
[00:30:05] Jenna She spent a couple of days sort of doing this bit or she was all like, “Oh, I see. No, no, Kelly, Cantely. There’s, my name is not on any plaque.” It was very funny. And then all of a sudden one day a new plaque showed up. It’s on the pole over by Stanley’s desk. And here’s what it said. It said, “Whereas it came to our attention that Kelly Cantley was whining that a lowly second assistant director had a plaque with her name on it, and whereas Kelly Cantley made a comment on the air regarding that fact, we have decided to give her this certificate because we love her”.
[00:30:51] Angela Aw.
[00:30:52] Jenna Isn’t so fun? And so and then they just waited for her to notice it.
[00:30:56] Angela And then it stayed there for the rest of the run of the show.
[00:30:58] Jenna So, guys, something fun to do. You can go through, try to hit pause whenever you see these certificates and you can see some names of our crew members. I think it’s just a really, really great way to honor them. And this is actually a very popular thing that happens on sets.
[00:31:16] Angela Yes. All right. I love that question. I love hearing the behind the scenes of our crew. But Jenna, it’s time to get into the save the date.
[00:31:28] Jenna Yes.
[00:31:28] Angela Six minutes, twenty eight seconds. So we get a real bird’s eye view of this.
[00:31:33] Jenna Well, Pam has broken down and is giving Angela a save the date, hand delivered. We have a fan question from Miss Lavender Darling. She said, “Pam’s save the date invitations say place TBA. Why did she bother making a save the date with a location, TB-“?
[00:31:54] Angela TBD. When I looked at the save the date, OK, first of all, Angela’s throwing shade. She’s like, it’s hand delivered, but it’s OK. But it’s also not my taste. So she’s throwing a lot of shade. But I screengrab the save the date and it says, “Save the date”, and then written in hand. So, you know it’s printed but then you’ve got to fill in everything by hand. It says, “For the wedding. Pam Beasley to Roy Andersson Date, June 10th. Place to be determined”. This save the date gives us nothing. Everyone in the office knew it was going to be June 10th because Roy announced it drunkenly on “Booze Cruise”. We know it’s between the two of you. This save the date is pointless.
[00:32:37] Jenna Yeah.
[00:32:38] Angela It’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of money. Kind of like their wedding. Oh no.
[00:32:42] Jenna Oh, my God. Can I get an Angela Sass please? Sam?
[00:32:47] Sting Angela Sass.
[00:32:48] Angela There it is.
[00:32:49] Jenna I agree with you, Angela. I think that these rather lame handwritten save the dates are a waste of time. Did you do save the dates for your wedding or did you just send an invitation?
[00:33:03] Angela Well, you know, I did just an email save the date.
[00:33:07] Jenna Yeah.
[00:33:08] Angela I did an email.
[00:33:09] Jenna Yeah. That’s a little bit where we are now, I think. I’ll say I did a save the date, a hard copy, save the date thing, I think. Why? It’s a waste of time.
[00:33:22] Angela I don’t know. It’s-.
[00:33:23] Jenna It’s a waste of space.
[00:33:24] Angela It was like etiquette back then. Back then, way back then.
[00:33:29] Jenna No, but it’s true. I think there’s a lot that has changed. I remember getting in a huge argument with my mom about wedding planning because in her generation, the bride planned the wedding with her parents because her parents paid for the wedding. And it was like a party they threw for the bride and groom. And I said, I want to plan my wedding with my husband, the person who’s going to be my husband. Like my mom wanted to pick out our registry items with me and I was like, this feels so weird to me that I would go with my mom to pick out my dishes. Wouldn’t I go with the person who’s going to eat off the plates with me to pick them out? But there was like a generational divide in like how these things are done. And I feel like this is going to point to like another generational divide. Like, remember when you used to send these paper save the date or even these paper wedding invitations? Nowadays, I get invited to weddings all the time where it’s all online. I get an email and then I click on this website and the registry links are there and the RSVP is there. And it’s like all there. And it’s actually kind of awesome.
[00:34:49] Angela I like a lot of it that’s online now. It makes it very easy to find information, but I still like getting a hand proper invitation. I don’t need a save the date. I don’t need a little card with directions. I don’t need a little special card that lets you know if I want to eat chicken or the pasta. But I like getting the paper invitation for some of my dearest friends I’ve saved them. I don’t know. I also am a little bit of a pack rat as we know I scrapbook. So I like getting the actual paper invitation myself.
[00:35:21] Jenna I can be with you on that. I really like getting a paper thank you.
[00:35:27] Angela Mm. Yeah.
[00:35:29] Jenna Like a thank you card in the mail.
[00:35:31] Angela Yeah. That’s nice.
[00:35:32] Jenna As opposed to for, for a big event like a wedding. I don’t need like a paper thank you if I gave you a birthday present or something, but if it’s a big event like a wedding, I think the process of a couple sitting down and writing out their thank you cards is a really nice tradition. And I think it is, what’s the word I’m looking for?
[00:35:54] Angela Proper?
[00:35:55] Jenna I feel like you’re if you’re giving like. Yeah, like the significance of a wedding gift deserves the significance of a handwritten thank you card. I think.
[00:36:03] Angela I can, I can go with that. I can go with that.
[00:36:06] Jenna Well, I have to say that for being an episode about conflict resolution. We just did not have a conflict about that. We were in total agreement. We talked that out and we agree.
[00:36:16] Angela You also liked my resolution for the jazz poster. So we’re, we’re finding some common ground here.
[00:36:21] Jenna Yeah, we’re really resolving things. So there you go. We’re on, we’re on Brand.
[00:36:26] Angela All right. Let’s take a break. I’m going to get a snack.
[00:36:28] Jenna All right. We’re going to take a break and we will be back.
[00:36:33] Angela OK, we’re back from break. We have discussed Pam’s very lame save the date.
[00:36:39] Jenna Yeah. And now, Michael, fresh off his I guess his win win win with Oscar and Angela decides he’s going to demand from Toby that he be given all of the unresolved complaints.
[00:36:56] Angela All of them.
[00:36:56] Jenna And he takes them from Toby forcibly. He says, quote, I had to use win lose on that. It was not pretty. But now he’s got them and he is going to start resolving conflict. He’s on a mission.
[00:37:07] Angela He’s just going to stir the pot. That’s what he’s going to do.
[00:37:11] Jenna At seven minutes and 40 seconds. Pam is in the conference room with Michael and they’re going through all the complaints. And I have to say, Ange, in this scene, I really liked the callback for Stanley with Miracle Whip. Did you hear that one?
[00:37:26] Angela Yes.
[00:37:27] Jenna The complaint that is from Kevin that Stanley keeps using his miracle whip without asking, which is a callback from when Jim was doing that Stanley impression during “Drug Testing”. And he, his bit was I like the tangy zip of Miracle Whip.
[00:37:43] Angela Yeah.
[00:37:44] Jenna Yeah.
[00:37:44] Angela I love that. So also, there’s something else that I think was pretty fantastic. If you love a really good eye roll, you need to go to eight minutes. Thirty five seconds.
[00:37:57] Jenna Angela, I wrote it down too.
[00:37:59] Angela There is a Pam eye roll to end all eye roles. It is substantial.
[00:38:05] Jenna It is. Well, Michael has gone into the bullpen to ask people if they feel like Toby really solved their complaints or if they were merely listened to and forgot about. And he starts reading all the complaints out loud. And that’s when I wrote down Major Pam eye roll sass.
[00:38:23] Angela Some major Pam sass right there. And so then there’s this thing, I remember laughing. I remember like breaking in this at eight minutes, 53 seconds, Michael says, Oh, and there’s a Phyllis Angela dispute. And I say, You already did me. And he goes, That’s what she said. And Jim mouthes it, as Michael says it.
[00:38:44] Jenna Yeah. That was scripted.
[00:38:47] Angela That was not John improvising. That was a scripted moment.
[00:38:50] Jenna And the camera sort of pretends like it’s going to find John doing that. It’s really great. I think that’s a great example of the choreography with the camera.
[00:38:59] Angela The discovery moment.
[00:39:00] Jenna Yeah, exactly.
[00:39:01] Angela We also find out some interesting information about Dwight and Angela.
[00:39:05] Jenna Yes.
[00:39:05] Angela Which is we now have a time stamp because for six months Angela has been complaining about Dwight and that, that was all redacted for the last six months.
[00:39:17] Jenna Yes. All of Angela’s complaints about Dwight were redacted six months ago.
[00:39:22] Angela Six months.
[00:39:23] Jenna I’d love to read what some of those complaints were. Well, we know we know one of them. One of them has to do with safety officer.
[00:39:30] Angela Well yeah, of course.
[00:39:30] Jenna I’m sure she filed a complaint about that. I’m sure all of her complaints are just based on who is really in charge of this or that.
[00:39:38] Angela But now Michael just starts listing things off and he’s one by one getting everyone pissed off at each other. Everyone is getting angry with each other.
[00:39:47] Jenna Pam first volunteers to save Angela because it seems like it’s going to be revealed to the office if anyone thinks real hard on.
[00:39:55] Angela Right.
[00:39:55] Jenna This, that. Hmm. Why did Angela redact all of her complaints?
[00:40:00] Angela Only Dwight.
[00:40:01] Jenna Yeah, against only Dwight.
[00:40:02] Angela Only Dwight.
[00:40:03] Jenna So Pam volunteers. But there’s only one complaint against Pam and it’s been withdrawn. And this was the complaint. Does she have to plan her wedding on office time? Can’t she do that from home? And Pam assumes that it was Angela who complained about her.
[00:40:21] Angela Pam totally glares at Angela. And Angela’s like, what? What? Like and I believe her. I believe her.
[00:40:28] Jenna Well, yeah. She didn’t complain about her.
[00:40:30] Angela No.
[00:40:31] Jenna Yeah. But I think it’s reasonable for Pam to assume that she did.
[00:40:36] Angela Well, true. Because Angela, I think has the most complaints of anyone else.
[00:40:40] Jenna Yes.
[00:40:40] Angela In the complaint box thing.
[00:40:41] Jenna This is true. But you’re right. Then Michael goes around and just starts throwing out all, everybody’s complaints.
[00:40:49] Angela We have to point out that at ten minutes, fifty three seconds, we have an Angela Pam partition scene.
[00:40:56] Jenna I love it.
[00:40:57] Angela These were some of my favorites. And we, we didn’t get to do very many of them because we would laugh and we would ruin take after take. But here it is, you and I, over the partition having a heated conversation.
[00:41:10] Jenna Yes. Pam goes right up to Angela and says, thanks for ratting me out.
[00:41:15] Angela I know you’re so ticked off.
[00:41:17] Jenna Oh, I’m mad. Fan question from Colleen Keenan and Brittany Megart. They both asked, was Pam calling Dwight bobblehead Joe scripted? Because I say, you and Bobblehead Joe.
[00:41:31] Angela I know.
[00:41:32] Jenna They want to know if that was scripted. It was scripted.
[00:41:35] Angela It was scripted, but guess what? Here’s a little window into Pam. When she gets mad, she starts name calling.
[00:41:41] Jenna I guess so. Can I get Sam? Could I get a little Pam Sass here?
[00:41:46] Sting Pam Sass.
[00:41:47] Jenna Thank you. Yeah, that’s appropriate.
[00:41:51] Angela Pam sass.
[00:41:52] Jenna Because Pam keeps sassing. She sasses right into the kitchen and is complaining to Jim about Angela. And Jim’s kind of like, oh, I don’t, he doesn’t know.
[00:42:03] Angela You know what I wish? I wish we had a sting that said Jim Shade because he gives you some shade. He’s like, oh, and what does Roy think about that? And she’s like, Well, I don’t really talk to Roy about this. And he’s like, about your feelings and stuff.
[00:42:20] Jenna Yeah.
[00:42:20] Angela Jim Shade.
[00:42:21] Jenna I like it, Ange. I like it. Well, now we move into the conference room. Angela, can you tell us about this scene with you and Phyllis with Michael?
[00:42:32] Angela This scene was really hard because Phyllis and I got tickled. We got tickled. But yeah. So, you know, here Angela and Phyllis are at it again. Now in the bullpen, when Michael calls out Phyllis for having a complaint on Angela, she’s like, I don’t know what you’re talking about, I, Angela and I are friends. But then Phyllis is just starts turning on everyone. There’s a deleted scene that’s also pretty great. So, yeah. So Phyllis clearly, I guess, has been parking in the parking spot where Angela likes to park, even though they’re not named parking spots. We don’t have individual spots, but clearly my character likes to park in the same spot every day and Phyllis has been parking in it and I’m ticked off. So I complained and Phyllis is like, I’m sorry, I guess I forgot I parked in the spot you liked, even though we don’t have assigned parking. But then at the very end she goes, I don’t like you.
[00:43:28] Jenna I know.
[00:43:29] Angela Phyllis.
[00:43:31] Jenna I know.
[00:43:32] Angela And in the deleted scene she tells Dwight she doesn’t like him.
[00:43:35] Jenna Hmm.
[00:43:35] Angela I think that’s some Phyllis sass.
[00:43:38] Jenna Phyllis sass.
[00:43:39] Angela That one’s hard. It’s a lot, it’s like an s to an s.
[00:43:41] Jenna S to an s. This is when we’re going to find out that Ryan thinks Creed has an old man smell and Creed is like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I know what he’s talking about, I grow mung beans in my desk, they’re really nutritious, but they smell like death.
[00:44:00] Jenna I texted Creed last night about it.
[00:44:03] Jenna And?
[00:44:03] Angela I said, Creed.
[00:44:04] Jenna Does he eat them in real life?
[00:44:05] Angela I said, Creed, you’re on my TV right now talking about the mung beans in your drawer. And he said, I still talk to my mung beans.
[00:44:14] Jenna Oh, Creed.
[00:44:15] Angela And he said, yeah, he said I was eating mung beans exactly. That’s exactly what it was.
[00:44:24] Jenna Wow.
[00:44:24] Angela I said, how do they taste? And he said, they tastes like grass and air mostly.
[00:44:31] Jenna Grass and air.
[00:44:31] Angela Not really like death.
[00:44:33] Jenna Well Angela, I looked up mung beans and it turns out that they are really good for you, especially the sprouted ones.
[00:44:41] Angela Oh.
[00:44:41] Jenna The sprouted ones have fewer calories and more amino acids and antioxidants than unsprouted ones. Let me tell you some benefits to eating mung beans because I know you’re curious.
[00:44:55] Angela I can’t wait.
[00:44:56] Jenna So they’ve done some studies in animals that have shown that mung beans help to reduce cholesterol.
[00:45:01] Angela OK.
[00:45:01] Jenna We’re not doctors. I’m just a woman on the Internet. So anything I say here, guys.
[00:45:06] Angela In here closet right now.
[00:45:07] Jenna Yeah.
[00:45:07] Angela She’s just a woman talking to you from her closet.
[00:45:10] Jenna Little disclaimer, but they also seem to be a good source of potassium, magnesium, protein and fiber. But here’s the catch. If you are sprouting mung beans properly and you let them drain and then you rinse them off after you’ve let them soak, they won’t smell. Only neglected mung beans stink. So-.
[00:45:35] Angela Creed was neglecting his mung beans.
[00:45:36] Jenna Creed had some neglected mung beans in his desk.
[00:45:41] Angela Oh my god.
[00:45:41] Jenna And that’s why they smelled so badly. So anyway, I guess I just want people to know that if you’ve ever been curious about sprouting and eating some mung beans, they won’t be stinky if you just care for them properly. According to the Internet. I’m not an expert.
[00:45:55] Angela And according to Creed, they taste like grass and air.
[00:45:57] Jenna So there you go. All right. Kevin has been making sexually suggestive comments to Angela that make her uncomfortable. So Michael suggests that the solution is for Angela to make sexual comments about Kevin. That will make him uncomfortable.
[00:46:10] Angela First of all, Kevin, gross. Once again.
[00:46:13] Jenna Yeah.
[00:46:14] Angela We have been tracking Kevin’s perviness.
[00:46:19] Jenna Ooh. Is that a sting? Kevin Perv.
[00:46:21] Angela Our whole podcast is just going to be stings. Is it going to be like Angela Sass. Kevin Perv. Pam Shade.
[00:46:29] Jenna Exactly.
[00:46:29] Angela OK, now we’re back in the break room. We’re back to making our IDs and our badges. Right? And at 13 minutes, 11 seconds, my stepson Jack, it’s one of his favorite talking heads, where Dwight said he would never smile in a photo because-.
[00:46:44] Jenna Yeah.
[00:46:44] Angela That’s a sign of weakness. And so he’s never going to smile in a photo, which just cracked us up. Jim is making this oversize ID badge for Dwight. He’s playing a prank on him, you guys, this is classic Jim, right?
[00:46:57] Jenna Yeah.
[00:46:58] Angela He put Dwight’s middle name is Fart.
[00:47:00] Jenna Yeah. And he says he’s a security threat.
[00:47:03] Angela Mm hmm. Yeah.
[00:47:04] Jenna Well, we had a fan catch by Molly Torez. She says at 14 minutes, 42 seconds, there is a close up shot of the prank ID badge that Jim made for Dwight. And his title is assistant to the regional manager. But he had been promoted to assistant regional manager in Season 2, Episode 6, this is another layer to Jim’s prank. Yes. So it goes unmentioned in the episode. But yes, another layer to the prank badge is that he gives him his improper title
[00:47:40] Angela that he loves to do.
[00:47:42] Jenna Yes, that’s right. Well, it’s at this point that Dwight storms over to Toby. He’s had enough. And. He finds out that Toby has just been putting his complaints about Jim in a box, he’s not been registering them with corporate the way he said.
[00:48:01] Angela Now Dwight is furious and he goes marching in to find Michael and he says a line that I love. Four years of malfeasances.
[00:48:10] Jenna Yes. Yes. And he says, I cannot work with Jim anymore. One of them has to go. Michael has to pick by the end of the day.
[00:48:19] Angela Yeah, he’s, he is officially furious. And you know what? This is all coming back to bite Michael in the butt because Toby said, just let him vent and then I file it and I never do anything about it. And they, they got to vent and that’s that.
[00:48:33] Jenna Yeah.
[00:48:34] Angela And now it’s all catching up with Michael. He realizes that Toby probably had the right idea.
[00:48:39] Jenna Yes. Well, Dwight goes online and starts looking up jobs at other branches. And Dunderpedia had a really great list of all the jobs that are available. At 14 minutes, 56 seconds. If you pause on the screen, here are the jobs that are available within Dunder Mifflin. Are you ready?
[00:48:59] Angela Mm hmm.
[00:49:00] Jenna At Stanford, there is a plant manager and a sales manager position. The sales manager position requires three to five years of experience and a bachelor’s degree. And there is an I.T. manager position available at Stanford. Here’s my question. Is it Josh Porter? The, oh, is he the branch manager?
[00:49:23] Angela He’s the branch manager.
[00:49:25] Jenna Well, within our office, I guess Michael is the branch manager. Who’s the sales manager of Scranton?
[00:49:34] Angela Probably. I mean, I don’t know.
[00:49:37] Jenna Like Stanley?
[00:49:38] Angela I would think Stanley, because he’s a senior.
[00:49:40] Jenna Yeah.
[00:49:40] Angela Remember?
[00:49:41] Jenna He’s been there a while.
[00:49:43] Angela Yeah.
[00:49:43] Jenna But that’s a job we don’t ever really talk about.
[00:49:47] Angela We never discuss.
[00:49:47] Jenna Yeah. So I just thought that was interesting. Well, in New York, Dunder Mifflin, they’ve got a position for maintenance engineer. In Albany, they need a controller and two regional managers. And in Buffalo, you can’t read what it is, but they need someone and Scranton has two positions available.
[00:50:05] Angela Well, here’s the thing. For a company that’s downsizing and on the verge of collapse, why are all of these job openings?
[00:50:12] Jenna Thank you.
[00:50:13] Angela What’s up?
[00:50:14] Jenna Thank you. That, too. But listen to the jobs that are available in Scranton, warehouse staff and warehouse manager. But isn’t Darryl the warehouse manager? Is he looking to leave? What’s happening there? What’s the story?
[00:50:29] Angela I don’t know. I don’t know because he is the manager.
[00:50:32] Jenna After this, Michael calls Dwight and Jim into the conference room and he goes through a list of Dwight’s complaints. And this is my favorite part of the episode.
[00:50:43] Angela This is, it’s so good and one of them made me laugh so hard. All right. Here are the list of pranks that Jim has pulled on Dwight that Dwight has reported. Ready?
[00:50:54] Jenna OK, yes.
[00:50:55] Angela Ready, jenna? Go, number one.
[00:50:57] Jenna Number one, he replaced all of Dwight’s pens and pencils with crayons.
[00:51:02] Angela Number two, he had everyone call him Dwayne all day, which, by the way, Jenna, by the way, guess who would sometimes call him Dwayne in a scene?
[00:51:15] Jenna Who?
[00:51:16] Angela Oscar.
[00:51:17] Jenna He did?
[00:51:18] Angela For real. For real. There were scenes where I’d be like, listen, Dwayne. I’d be like, Dwight, it’s Dwight. And he’d be like, ah crap.
[00:51:25] Jenna That is so funny.
[00:51:26] Angela Somehow it went into Oscar’s brain in real life. OK.
[00:51:29] Jenna Well, Jim also placed a bloody glove in Dwight’s desk drawer and tried to convince him that he had committed murder.
[00:51:36] Angela Yes. Number four, Jim told Dwight there was an abandoned infant in the women’s room. He went in to save the child and saw Meredith on the can.
[00:51:47] Jenna Yes, this one is my favorite of all time of any prank ever written about on “The Office”. It’s just a sentence. We never see this play out, but my imagination of it is so rich. Dwight says he hit himself in the head with his phone and Michael is like, what? How could that have been Jim’s fault? And then Jim in his talking head.
[00:52:10] Angela It cuts to Jim. Yeah.
[00:52:11] Jenna He, and John’s reaction, he laughs. He says that he put nickels in Dwight’s headset over the course of a long time so that it got heavier and heavier. And then one day he took them all out so that when Dwight answer the phone, it would be super light. And I just that’s that is brilliant. That is brilliant. Greg Daniels.
[00:52:34] Angela Yeah. Clap. That is brilliant. And that’s Jim.
[00:52:37] Jenna That’s the greatest.
[00:52:38] Angela That is Jim doing the slow play.
[00:52:40] Jenna That is, that’s I think why I like it is the patience required for that prank. All right. There’s more, go.
[00:52:47] Angela The next one is that every time Dwight typed his name, it would just say diaper. Diapers. Yeah.
[00:52:53] Jenna And then the last one is that by the end of the day, Dwight complains that his desk was moved two feet closer to the copier. And Jim admits that, yes, every time Jim got up from his desk, he moved it a little closer to the copier.
[00:53:06] Angela But then Jim was like, well, when you, when you put them all together like that, it doesn’t sound really cool.
[00:53:11] Jenna Yeah, he’s like, oh, that sounds like maybe my life is kind of sad.
[00:53:14] Angela Yeah, maybe I suck.
[00:53:15] Jenna That’s what I spent my time doing.
[00:53:17] Angela At sixteen minutes, thirty nine seconds. I have a card that just says a montage of sass.
[00:53:24] Jenna Oh it’s your montage of sass.
[00:53:27] Angela It’s a montage of sass. We see Phyllis. She slams the fridge door on Angela. Pam is glaring, eating yogurt, angry eating yogurt and then you have like Creed and he’s looking crazy and he’s holding a pencil like it’s a knife. And I mean, then it just goes all through, Stanley and Kevin and Kelly and Toby. Everyone is ticked off.
[00:53:49] Jenna Yeah, everyone’s just mad. It’s a mad montage. It’s a sass montage, really.
[00:53:56] Angela It’s a montage of sass.
[00:53:58] Jenna It is. Well, at eighteen minutes, we have a fan catch from George Felton.
[00:54:04] Angela OK.
[00:54:04] Jenna Dwight’s ID badge has been redone. His middle name is correct. It says Kurt. But you know what? If you look closely, he’s still listed as a security threat. He didn’t get that removed. Good catch, George. I liked that.
[00:54:21] Angela There is a deleted scene where Pam shows Jim her ID badge and her clearance level is red.
[00:54:27] Jenna Yeah.
[00:54:28] Angela And Jim’s like, what does that mean? And Dwight’s like, I’m not going to tell you.
[00:54:33] Jenna Also, Pam doesn’t seem to know what it means either, which I thought was very funny. All right. So, guys, it’s the end of the day. And Michael thinks that the way he could really boost everyone’s morale after this hard day of resolving conflicts is to get a group photo. He wants a group photo.
[00:54:51] Angela Stanley’s like, are you kidding me? Seriously?
[00:54:55] Jenna So he gets everybody to stand. But a lot’s happening. Like no one’s smiling. This is when Jim tells Pam that he’s the one who made the complaint against her about the wedding thing.
[00:55:08] Angela And how awkward?
[00:55:08] Jenna But he said he was just venting. Oh, my God, so awkward.
[00:55:12] Angela How awkward? He’s having this conversation during a group photo of his coworkers. And you’re like sandwiched between Phyllis and Stanley. And Phyllis is listening to everything.
[00:55:24] Jenna Her reactions are amazing.
[00:55:26] Angela So good, she literally says, oh, dear,
[00:55:29] Jenna Yes, yes, I have a fan catch, another fan catch from Carly Mitchell. You know how earlier you were mentioning how your stepson Jack loves that talking head where Dwight says he doesn’t smile because it’s a sign of weakness in primates?
[00:55:47] Angela Yeah.
[00:55:48] Jenna Guess who’s smiling in the group photo?
[00:55:50] Angela Who?
[00:55:50] Jenna Dwight.
[00:55:51] Angela Dwight?
[00:55:51] Jenna Yeah.
[00:55:52] Angela Oh, Dwight, what are you doing?
[00:55:55] Jenna Fan catch by Carly Mitchell. 18 minutes, 50 seconds. He’s smiling.
[00:55:59] Angela You know what? I feel like this is like layered like emotionally for Dwight because he would not smile on his own, but he will smile for Michael. And that is his weakness. Michael is his weakness.
[00:56:12] Jenna Oh, yeah. Well, I have a Jenna catch,
[00:56:17] Angela OK.
[00:56:18] Jenna for this group photo moment. You know, Michael says it’s really hard to get a photo of fifteen people.
[00:56:25] Angela Yeah.
[00:56:26] Jenna He says that’s really hard. Guess what? There’s only 14 people in the photo. Jenna catch.
[00:56:34] Angela Jenna catch.
[00:56:37] Jenna There you go.
[00:56:37] Angela I love it.
[00:56:38] Jenna And it’s true. He never does get a photo. So he photo shops that group photo. He says it’s amazing what you can do with Photoshop and that’s how he gets his group photo.
[00:56:51] Angela And as you guys know, because we’ve shared with you, Greg then gave that photo to us all as a gift. And I have it. I will, I will put it, I will hold up the photo of it next to me and put it on the website.
[00:57:02] Jenna So then this episode ends. It’s kind of sad. Pam is checking her voice mail and she gets this voice mail from Jim saying, you know what, I’m not going to be in until the afternoon tomorrow because I have a doctor’s appointment in the city. But then we see what he’s really doing, he’s meeting with Jan at Corporate.
[00:57:24] Angela Yeah. And, you know, he’s probably going to apply for that job at the Stamford branch. He’s, he can’t take it anymore. He can’t.
[00:57:34] Jenna I think he’s, yeah.
[00:57:34] Angela Yeah. He can’t watch her plan her wedding anymore. It’s getting to be too much and it’s heartbreaking.
[00:57:40] Jenna Yeah. He’s, he’s going to move on.
[00:57:42] Angela The very end of this episode is an amazing little tribute to “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.
[00:57:48] Jenna It is.
[00:57:49] Angela Where we see Toby putting this box of complaints and a wall of complaints like with the forklift and the whole thing. It’s very “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.
[00:57:59] Jenna Yes. We had a fan ask, Cole Edwards wanted to know at the end of the episode, when we see Toby put that box of complaints in the warehouse, was it an homage to the end of Indiana Jones? It was.
[00:58:12] Angela Yes, it was. And you guys, just for fun, if you’re out there and you’re going to rewatch it, go to eleven minutes, forty three seconds. Toby’s company ID photo is my favorite.
[00:58:26] Jenna What is it?
[00:58:28] Angela He sits down and he just says, just take the picture and he gets up and walks away.
[00:58:33] Jenna Oh yes.
[00:58:33] Angela And he takes it right as he walks away.
[00:58:36] Jenna Yes. Yes. It’s pretty amazing. Angela, before we wrap up, we had a fan question from Devin Couch. Was there ever a baby poster shirt? And did Oscar ever wear it? I went through all the deleted scenes and didn’t see one, but do you know?
[00:58:58] Angela No, I don’t believe there was. I don’t believe it. And I would have loved it. That would have been a fantastic callback years later if we had just seen him in that shirt one time. Or maybe like when Angela had to move in with Oscar, maybe she found the shirt in his closet.
[00:59:13] Jenna Ah.
[00:59:13] Angela Something. But no, I don’t have a memory of that. But that would have been fantastic.
[00:59:20] Jenna I agree. I wish that we owned the rights to that picture because I would buy that shirt.
[00:59:26] Angela Would you buy it and wear it?
[00:59:28] Jenna Maybe. Why not?
[00:59:31] Angela Oh man.
[00:59:31] Jenna Why not?
[00:59:34] Angela Why not?
[00:59:34] Jenna It would be such a fun inside joke, I think.
[00:59:36] Angela You are wearing a hoodie right now with your own image on it. So.
[00:59:39] Jenna “Office Ladies”.
[00:59:42] Angela It’s “Office Ladies”.
[00:59:44] Jenna You know it. I always wear my “Office Ladies” hoodie when we record “Office Ladies”. It’s like a uniform. It’s my little uniform. I like a uniform. I went to a Catholic girls high school.
[00:59:55] Angela Do you?
[00:59:56] Jenna Yes. You know.
[00:59:56] Angela I am kidding. Of course, you like structure, you like uniform, you like order. How about that?
[01:00:02] Jenna Yes.
[01:00:03] Angela You like order.
[01:00:03] Jenna Love order.
[01:00:05] Angela Yeah.
[01:00:06] Jenna Feel very safe in order.
[01:00:08] Angela There you go.
[01:00:09] Jenna Chaos. Terrifying to me. Terrifying.
[01:00:13] Angela All right, you guys, this has been “Conflict Resolution”. We hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for listening in to us on our closets. We hope you’re staying safe. And you know, we’re sending you our love.
[01:00:25] Jenna We’re sending you our love. Thanks, guys. Next week, we are going to be back with oh, Ange.
[01:00:31] Angela Oh, lady.
[01:00:33] Jenna “Casino Night”.
[01:00:34] Angela Lady, lady, lady.
[01:00:36] Jenna And a special guest. So tune in for that.
[01:00:39] Angela OK, bye.
[01:00:40] Jenna Bye. Thank you for listening to “Office Ladies”. “Office Ladies” is produced by Earwolf, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. Our show is executive produced by Codi Fischer. Our producer is Cassi Jerkins, our sound engineer is Sam Kieffer, and our associate producer is Aynsley Bubbico.
[01:01:00] Angela Our theme song is “Rubber Tree” by Creed Bratton.
[01:01:03] Jenna For Ad free versions of “Office Ladies”, go to StitcherPremium.com for a free one month trial of Stitcher Premium, use code “Office”.
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