I just thought of another one instance of acknowledging the cameras. When Jim transferred to the other branch the camera crew was doing a one on one with Karen and they asked her about Jim. She mentioned that he keeps looking at the cameras and going like this [makes weird face] what’s that about?"
ETA
Here’s the youtube video of it
I’m only posting it because I couldn’t find the original version that aired, however, I did find this version where someone slowed it down to make her look drunk.
First of all, regarding Holly…this could actually be Steve Carell’s exit strategy. I could easily see Jo coming back to him saying sorry, for whatever reason we can’t move Holly back, etc., so Michael volunteers to go to Nashua, and Steve Carell exits the show.
Regarding the film crew…I will forever hold my theory that <I>The Office</i> is a fake reality show. I don’t buy the “local college TV production class” theory because 1) the quality of the filming and camera angles is too polished to be college-made, 2) why would a local college give the students funding to keep going to New York? That’s an expensive trip. Last time I drove into New York it literally cost $7 in tolls just to enter the city, and carrying camera equipment in a train wouldn’t be physically logistical. They’d have to park <I>somewhere</I>, and Manhattan is <I>very</i> expensive for parking, assuming you can find somewhere to park in the first place.
As for the camera crew’s presence being known, here’s what I can think of:
- Of course, as has been mentioned before, it was a pretty regular thing when Jan was put on speaker that she’d ask if the cameras were there.
- Michael had to remove his lavaliere to go into the room with the CAT scan/MRI/whatever with Dwight.
- Ditto Pam and Jim when they were in the hospital finding out that Pam was pregnant.
- The camera crew tipping off Pam about Dwangela
- The camera crew showing PB&J the tape of them secretly kissing
- The Holly and Michael scene
- Countless times when Jim would look directly into the camera with a silly face, usually in response to Dwight’s antics (and of course Dwight did the same thing once when mocking Jim)
- When Ryan was working in NYC and doing a talking head interview in a coworker’s office and he was scolded…something like, “I told you to do these things in your own office!”
I don’t know how anyone can doubt that the cameras are part of the show. Several times an episode, characters are alone in a reality-tv confessional, talking to the cameras alone about their thoughts. Do you think they are just sitting alone, talking to themselves? 
To add to that, they aren’t ‘alone with their thoughts,’ but someone off camera is interviewing them and they’re answering questions.
There isn’t really any explanation for the camera crew that makes perfect sense, but as for your first objection, this is a professionally-produced TV show. It’s not really shot by a bunch of college students, and even if that were explicitly the premise then I doubt anyone would want to watch something that looked like it was shot and edited by amateurs.
As for your second objection, when the crew goes to New York or elsewhere with the characters then there are usually scenes inside the car, and there have been instances of characters addressing the camera crew from inside their cars (Jim in “Branch Wars”, and Michael in the episode where he hit Meredith). This means the crew isn’t traveling separately and would have no tolls to pay, parking troubles, etc. The only time I can think of where the crew obviously did follow characters on a road trip in their own vehicle was in the scene where Jim proposed to Pam. There are still logical problems regarding traveling scenes, like how there’s room for a cameraman or where the cameraman could be sitting to get a particular angle, but like they said on MST3K “it’s just a show, you should really just relax.”
What is a “fake reality show” supposed to be, anyway?
He seemed like he was trying to get fingered as the leak so that he could collect on a lawsuit, for being fired as a whistleblower. Witness how he objects to the plan for everyone else to confess in the van.
I didn’t get that at all. It seemed obvious to me like he wanted Kelly to take the fall, and objected to the plan for everyone to confess because he didn’t want to deal with the repercussions.
Keeping Up with the Kardashians, The Hills, Hogan Knows Best…and so on…most celebrity reality shows on cable which have real people playing themselves, but the producers meet with the “actors” ahead of time and plan to put the stars in wacky situations each week, but the dialogue is mostly improvised so most viewers don’t notice how staged it is. This is as opposed to something like Deadlist Catch, where you’d expect the fisherman not to be doing anything different just because cameras are present.
I could see a production team learning that they could goad Michael to go along with do something crazy each week for drama’s sake. Other workers play it up for the camera too, which explains why some of the characters come off like parodys of themselves from season 1 and 2 now.
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Toby’s hair is darker
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Why do they NEVER close the door when they are in Michael’s office talking about a private matter?
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Who buys or sells printers over the telephone?
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They should have had Jo and Michael get a little drunk on the private jet and do the dirty. Imagine the future show possibilities.
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As I asked last week, what does the new Corporate guy do? What is his function at that branch?
Large businesses have contracts with office suppliers and do most of their ordering through a sales rep, either on the phone or online.
Thirty years ago, there were lots of independent resellers of office equipment and supplies like Dunder Mifflin. The overriding joke of the show, which bubbles to the level of explicit statement about once per season, is that these places don’t exist anymore because they can’t compete financially with the big three nationwide chains (who do at least $2 in business behind-the-scenes on corporate contracts for every $1 they do at a retail store that you can see). The only reason DM/Sabre exists is because of personal contacts built up by its sales staff and because The Office is a work of fiction.
Well yeah it was made up but not to “screw with Michael”. The whole point of that was that they had previously shown Darryl observing Andy potentially getting into trouble - and knew that it was because of his goading him, so he felt bad and tried to do the right thing by taking the blame.
I think you’re confusing bad acting for dramatic subtlety. I love Darryl, but the guy who plays him is a comedian, not an actor.
There have been several instances of the camera crew being in NYC with no obvious explanation as to how they got there (i.e., with no accompanying Scranton folk).
The Office. It’s a sitcom posing as a reality show.
Wow, you mean The Office is a scripted situation comedy presented in a mock documentary format? Thanks for that insight!
“Airplane 2.” 
I was all “there’s still a Nashua branch???” I had been under the impression that Scranton was all that was left of Dunder Mifflin, as they were the only branch making a profit, and thus the only part of the company worth buying for Sabre.
Yeah, totally fake. I remember once on Hogan Knows Best where Hulk and Linda were freaking out because they lost track of Brooke at the beach, meanwhile she’s out there walking around with a friggin camera crew following her. Uh, if they were really that worried about her, why didn’t they call (or have someone else call) the cameraman?
That’s what I thought too. Does Dunder-Mifflin even exist anymore (as a subsidary of Sabre) or do is everything just Sabre now? Do they still sell paper products or just printers?
Ok, I just watched it…and I’m a little confused. When Dwight looked up at the sign and told the realtor to make an offer on that address, there was no For Sale sign on that sign. So why does he think they would sell? And at the end he’s still waiting for a call back from the realtor…there is only his megalomania speaking about buying the building…he hasn’t even heard that it’s available. And I thought Bob Vance (of Vance Refrigeration) owned the building, or am I remembering that wrong from the pre-Phyllis wedding episodes? I went back and looked at the sign…did I miss something?
I loved the otter story thing, and how Michael got charmed by it over his own video.
IIRC Bob either bought the building* when they were planning to close the Scranton branch OR he was going to lease the warehouse, either way if Scranton closed the warehouse guys would still have a job.
Also, you can make an offer on a building that’s not for sale. The current owners would probably not be as receptive to it or would probably asking for a higher amount.
*I don’t know what happened with that after they decided not to close Scranton, also I don’t know if DM owned the building. DM owning the building is the only reason it would make sense for Bob to buy it so maybe he was just planning to lease the warehouse portion.
As for the documentary format, I figured that in The Office universe, that it was being filmed for some other country, or for some small channel where very few Americans would end up seeing it.
Like if it was being filmed by a Japanese crew to be shown in Japan, there would be little chance that many people would have seen the show in the US. I know I would watch a documentary series about office life in Japan, I can imagine some Japanese people might watch a documentary series about office life in America.
And also I have hundreds of channels on my digital cable and I’ve only watched stuff on a small fraction of them. If the documentary was being shown on small cable channel that not many people get and that fewer people watch, it would make sense that there wouldn’t be any fame that would affect the daily life of the characters. Either way, the documentary format doesn’t really bother me.
As for the episode, I really liked it. Ryan’s Woof idea and how proud he was of it really made me laugh. And then it made me wonder how long until someone makes a real life version.