I think my favorite was Michael’s “Surely I am serious. And don’t call me honey.” I love those little self-aware moments he has.
But I think the whole “Woof” scene was probably my favorite.
Did you notice that when Dwight asked his agent to make an offer on the building, he identified the address as 1975 Slough Ave? Slough is the city in which the original UK show was set.
Because that’s where the leak was.
Covered in other posts.
Such as…?
BTW…regarding this “documentary” format…am I the only one who considered the possibility that it’s actually a mock reality show?
YES! Great shout out!
Dunder Mifflin has always been on Slough Ave (I think you see it on letterhead early in the series) but this is the first time they’ve said it out loud. Fun!
Dude, he owns a beet farm.
I’ve mentioned this before, but the best explanation I’ve heard for the presence of the film crew at Dunder-Mifflin Scranton (and there have been several instances of the crew being acknowledged on the show) is that it’s not a professional crew at all but students from a video production class at a local community college. This explains why there’s never any reference to the “documentary” ever being shown, even potentially, on TV or in movie theaters, as well as the sometimes unprofessional behavior of the crew and the fact that they apparently aren’t shooting during the summer.
Even this explanation isn’t iron-clad, but I don’t think it’s a subject that merits a lot of scrutiny. It is largely just the presentation style of the show and you just have to either accept that or not watch it at all. It’s sort of like a novel that’s written in the form of the main character’s diary. These rarely seem like a real diary – even people’s LiveJournals, which are written to be read by others, leave out a lot of detail and exposition and rarely have scenes with complete dialogue – and often require the protagonist to be writing diary entries when if they had any sense they’d be doing something else.
The producers of **Modern Family **are on record as saying that there’s not actually a documentary being filmed. It’s just the style they’re using.
Better than average episode. Lots of funny bits.
Was I the only one who didn’t believe Darryl when he confessed about the girl in the bar? I assumed he was just screwing with Michael, like he always does.
You sure know your Dwight!
If Steve Carrell were to leave, bringing Holly back so they could go off together would be very sweet.
I really enjoyed this episode.
I think one thing that stuck with me that hasn’t been mentioned is that we really don’t know who the leak really was. We saw all the suspects, but we don’t know which one’s big mouth led to the story breaking. Andy and David tried to get it out there, but we don’t know that their efforts had the payout. (This is assuming they didn’t make it clear and I missed it)
Good question, and I can’t really give any specific examples. I think part of it was that we started by seeing Michael talking to the press, and then all of a sudden Jo is there asking who talked to the press, and I spent a few seconds thinking that it made no sense that she didn’t already know it was Michael. It took me long enough to figure out that the timeline was:
-Someone at Dunder Mifflin Scranton leaks to local Scranton press about the fires
-They come ask Michael for comment
-He comments
-Jo hears about all this, and comes to Scranton trying to figure out who did the initial leaking
-Does the national press care? We don’t know?
that I’d already watched several scenes without really grokking what was going on. And then the IT guy showed up and then vanished again in a way that just didn’t work for me. (It felt to me like he was someone who was in a lot of webisodes that I didn’t see, or something. Just jarring.)
I’d also entirely lost track of whether we’d actually scene Andy do the leaking or were just assuming he had because there was that (really quite clumsy) business with Daryl playing a prank on him.
The whole thing just felt contrived and improbable. And then, hey, Dwight is suddenly so rich that he’s buying an office building. Which seems to me like something that only super-duper-rich individual people do, and is usually done by investment groups of various sorts, although I may be wrong about that. I feel like it totally came out of nowhere… Sure, he owns a beet farm, but what with the Plight of the American Farmer ™ I would have thought that meant he was in debt.
How much do you think he’d need to buy the building? Dwight probably has very good credit, and could probably secure financing w/ 10% or so down. From browsing various commercial real estate website for the Scranton area - I’d guess a building like that one, in an industrial park, would run about $1.5M. I can easily fathom Dwight having $150-200k available to put towards it.
He’s making around $80k a year (maybe more some years, maybe less, depending on sales) w/ hardly any expenses and a very frugal lifestyle. He’s in a great position to buy that building.
Dwight got on this real estate kick to kiss up to Jo. Sure he wants to buy the building but he almost for sure won’t be able to do so.
Well correct me if I’m wrong, but has any character EVER used the word “documentary” on the show? Again, the documentary STYLE is a part of the show (which includes talking directly to the camera), but Jan is still the only one who actually said “hey, there are cameramen hanging around our office filming us” and “turn the camera off”. I’m pretty sure that Pam never said anything like that.
The first (and second) time Michael and Holly have sex they specificially ditch the camera crew and talk about how to turn off the microphones so no one can hear them. Michael being Michael, he turns the volume all the way up.
There have been a lot of instances of people acknowledging the cameras and I’m really confused as to where this idea that there’s not a documentary being filmed comes from.
One example I can think of is when Michael and Holly are fooling around in the stairwell after hours and Holly asks if anyone can hear them to which Michael replies (paraphrased) “All you have to do is turn this dial all the way down, now no one can hear us”.
Ignoring talking to the camera and times where they characters have tried to get away from them (a few times Michael closed the cameras out of his office), I’m thinking there have been one or two other instances where a character has specifically, verbally, referenced them, but the above example is the only thing coming to mind.
I remember at least one episode where Michael travelled to New York, and the folks at DM HQ were not happy that he “brought the cameras with him.”
Do you have any idea what beet-based absinthe & hallucinogenics go for on the street?
pam and jim’s combined incomes barely had enough for a 1-level house that has a clown picture as a structurally integral fixture. now dwight, after 8 months of souped up commissions (supplemented with sparse b&b money) has enough for beat farm operational costs, mose living expenses, and… an office park?
i doubt that david wallace, cfo could have afforded that. this is an odd and possibly series-ending twist. the rat race is over, pam and jim are together, michael scott is set up to finally find his special (albeit married?) someone, and it looks like the intern has risen, then fallen, and now poised to rise again (woofing could take off. i mean, blasting kinda did… right?). heck, even darryl made it up to the east side, to a deluxe apartment in the sky.
I don’t think the characters have ever said they’re going to be in a documentary, but as Justin says there have been many instances where it was clear there was a film crew present. At the beginning of season four the crew confronts Pam and Jim with video evidence that they’re dating. In the “Branch Wars” episode Jim, when hiding in the car, gestures for the cameraman to duck so they won’t be seen. Earlier, in season two, a crew member alerts Pam to some flirting behavior between Dwight and Angela.
I don’t think we can be certain the film crew is there to make a professional documentary that will be released to the public, like I said they might just be video production students, but I don’t see any room to deny that a crew is in fact present.