I doubt Gervais is going to commit to an American sitcom filming schedule, especially on a show he’s already collecting fat royalty checks from.
And why wouldn’t he? As far as I know the only other thing he’s doing with his career right now is the voiceover for his animated show. Sure he’s getting checks for his creator credit on The Office, but the checks would be a lot fatter still if he got star + creator credit. Plus actors like to work well past the point where they have more money than they’ll ever need. It’s also about the fame, respect, and just plain enjoying what they do. I’m sure NBC execs have been wining and dining him for a while now and it seems like a real possibility. How else would you interpret the line about him asking if there are any job openings?
An in-joke to Michael Scott’s eventual departure?
Besides that, Gervais is a movie star now and has always maintained that he would never take the Office job.
I didn’t know he said that. Ah well, wishful thinking.
To help the poor guy out.
Michael does all kinds of things that have nothing to do with running the business many of which are even detrimental or at least wasteful.
They never explain the contents of the package, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that it was printers/paper products because 1) that’s what Dunder-Mifflin sells and 2) Andy specifically said he needed to get his sales figures up or he’d lose his job. Making money on the side wasn’t going to help him keep his regular job. The fact that Jim says the seminar is “a good idea – we all win!” also suggests that it did involve selling Dunder-Mifflin products.
I don’t think he does. I was just watching the episode online and went back and checked the scene where Pam gets Jim to tell the story. He doesn’t say how long it’s been since he saw Tom. The reading group incident happened in the third grade, but Jim doesn’t claim that he never saw Tom again. When he does encounter Tom in the break room he agrees that “it’s been a while”, but I don’t believe there was ever anything more specific than that.
If Jim and Tom were in elementary school together then they probably lived in the same part of town and went to the same middle and high schools as well. It’s likely they saw each other fairly regularly for at least the next nine years or so even if they were no longer friends.
I sure as hell hope Ricky isn’t joining the show. That’s the one thing which will absolutely make me stop watching it, especially if he keeps using that incomprehensible accent.
I spent most of the episode bored, including the opening. This episode is yet another example of what a douche Jim is. I wish I could get away with hiding in my car all day while at work.
Erin did help the show a bit. And Kelly too, what was up with THAT?
Get away with it? He’s a salesman. Hiding in his car all day doesn’t hurt anyone but himself.
The chart also showed that he’s the best salesman at the company. If you were the best salesman at your company, you absolutely could get away with hiding in your car all day.
You mean The Etiquette Bitch?
I liked seeing him on the show, but it quickly reminded me why I only watched the first three episodes of the British office. His accent was so think I had to have the subtitles on. I typically don’t mind subtitles, but with a show that seemed to rely so heavily on puns and delivery* I felt I was losing a lot of the humor.
*In the first first episode I couldn’t figure out what the hell was supposed to be so funny/awkward about the line “I suspect everyone has woken up at the crack of dawn” had to rewind it three times…go back farther…rewatch it…finally turned on the subtitles to find out Pam is Dawn…ahhh, got it, crack of Dawn…yup, this isn’t going to work for me.
I didn’t think the opening was anything special. A couple of guys telling lame jokes to each other. It was only slightly more relevant to the show (and the series in general) as the time Billy Crystal and Robin Williams showed up in Central Perk on Friends to blather on about nothing particularly interesting because they had a new movie coming out that week. It wasn’t horrible, it didn’t ruin the show, but it wasn’t anything worth raving about, and if they’d cut it out, it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference to anything.
I disagree.
Especially with the joke about there not being any jobs yet.
Didn’t he mention a couple episodes ago that Sabre went from having an unlimited commission cap, to having a cap which he already exceeded, and thus wouldn’t be getting paid for the rest of the fiscal year? How was that resolved?
I think it was for the rest of the calendar year, which might be the same as Sabre’s fiscal year. In any case, I think the cap was supposed to be in place until the end of 2010.
Jim slacked off the rest of the year.
Except that Billy and Robin have nothing whatsoever to do with Friends (as far as I know).
Ricky has everything to do with The Office. As for the rest of what you said, it could be said about virtually all the other Office cold openings. Of the entire series, I’d guess that maybe 3 or 4 actually had anything to do with the rest of the episode. You could randomly assign cold openings to other episodes without anyone noticing (ignoring things like hair styles, aging etc).
Already answered, but also I never got the impression this was a one-time thing. It seemed to me to be a Sabre policy, so the best salesmen will get the shaft at the end of every year.
Hence “slightly more”. 