Second Drink: Business Ethics with Amy Ryan

This week we’re breaking down Business Ethics. Jenna and Angela interview Amy Ryan on what it was like to play Holly Flax! Amy even shares her own Coopers Seafood House story. Angela shares about some very special DVD commentary guests who worked as craft services and caterers on The Office set. Jenna does a deep dive on how the Cookie Monster’s parody of Tay Zonday’s “Chocolate Rain” was made after this episode aired, and the ladies discover they both did the same deep dive on what people can do in, let’s say, 19 minutes. So let’s get ethical with this amazing Office Ladies episode! Office Ladies Website - Submit a fan question:https://officeladies.com/submitaquestion Follow Us on Instagram:OfficeLadiesPod https://www.instagram.com/officeladiespod/ Follow Us on YouTube https://youtube.com/@officeladiespod?si=D0oKJwFJuK9txzFM Follow Us on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@officeladiespod?_t=ZT-8y1gqTrJyOs&_r=1

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Welcome to our second week of Business Ethics. I loved this episode and we finally got to have Amy Ryan on the podcast. What a fun interview.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Yes. Oh, my gosh. She is just the best. She gave us such great behind the scenes details about her time playing Holly Flax, AKA Holly Flax. But that's not all. Listen, we put the word out and we asked you all, what were your favorite moments from the episode Business Ethics? And I just want to say thank you to everyone who responded. It was really fun to read your answers. And there was one particular scene that got a fan mail flurry. Tanish C. from India said, "So I basically love the opening scene where Michael and Holly are dancing with the headbands on and the binder book and they are singing, 'Let's Get Ethical, Ethical.'" I actually laughed so hard.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  And Karen Y. from Ecuador said, "It is also her favorite moment and she has a background catch." Karen says, "At 3 minutes 24 seconds, you can see two red marks on Michael's forehead from the headband he was wearing for the dance, but at 3 minutes 31 seconds, the red marks are completely gone."

• 1:15Speaker 00

  Hmm. We must have shot on two different days.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  I guess.

• 1:20Speaker 00

  Well, I loved this fan mail flurry and we thought this moment was adorable. We talk about it, but we didn't play it and I think we should hear it.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Let's hear it.

• 1:48Speaker 00

  Can we just say their idea of inserting like new lyrics and trying to make it fit is, "Let me hear your Dunder Mifflin talk, your Dunder Mifflin talk."

• 1:59Speaker 00

  It cracked me up.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  I also just love how Amy Ryan, as an actress, was just so up for this bit.

• 2:08Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  And just matched Steve Carell in his silliness. It was so fun to be on set and watch that.

• 2:16Speaker 00

  I mean, we got to be in the audience. And the thing when you re-watch it is, there's a good, I don't know, it feels like a few minutes where they're only dancing. They're not even singing yet. It's pretty great. All right, another fan favorite moment comes from Chantel E. She says, "My husband has asked me every week since I started listening to the podcast, if it was time for this episode. His favorite moment of the entire series is when Michael finds out that Jim and Pam are engaged. The question is, does Steve improvise tackling Jim, or was that scripted? I'm so excited that I am finally able to ask this question for my husband!" Exclamation point. There was also lots of all caps.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:59Speaker 00

  In there.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Yes, it's true.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  Um, so Chantel, we did talk about this moment when we first broke down the episode. And it was scripted, but we never described how it's read in the script.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Which is very funny.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  So, tell your hubby, I went to our shooting draft, and here is the original scripted scene. And the over-the-top commotion actually originally started with Kelly. Kelly comes into the bullpen and she says, "What's everyone talking about?" And Creed says, "The tall guy got engaged." And then here's the scene description. Kelly screams and falls to the ground uncontrollably. Michael comes in for the day and sees Kelly on the floor. He says, "What's going on?" Pam, quickly with a voiceover, jumping in, says, "Nothing, nothing, Michael, just saying hi." Kelly, barely able to get it out, says, "Jim and Pam are engaged." And Michael goes, "To be married?" Three question marks, three exclamation points.

• 3:55Speaker 00

  Michael tackles Jim.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  So funny.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Well, another fan favorite moment was Meredith's confession. You know, when she shares that she's been sleeping with a Hammermill paper rep for the last six years for lower prices on paper and Outback Steakhouse gift certificates. Sean C. from Maryland said, "I like when corporate just doesn't give a shit about what Meredith is doing." And Lindsay S. from Canada also loved that storyline and said, "I loved it when corporate said that as long as dendermiflin was getting a discount, they were fine with it." Also, when Meredith shares her barbecue with The Office is peak.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  I mean, that tag at the end, and everyone is eating Outback Steakhouse, and they're all so happy about it.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  It's pretty amazing.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  So, thanks for writing in, everyone, and sharing your favorite moments from this episode. We'll be doing Second Drinks every Monday, so write in your fan favorite moments over at office ladies dot com. And now, here is Business Ethics.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  I'm Jenna Fischer.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  And I'm Angela Kinsey.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  We were on The Office together.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  And we're best friends.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  And now, we're doing the ultimate Office rewatch podcast just for you.

• 5:04Speaker 00

  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.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  We're The Office Ladies.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Hi, everyone.

• 5:17Speaker 00

  Hey, guys.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  What's up, Ange?

• 5:19Speaker 00

  What's up with you and your cute pants?

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Thank you for saying that.

• 5:23Speaker 00

  I noticed them right away.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Here's the thing, I hit a wall with sweatpants.

• 5:27Speaker 00

  What?

• 5:28Speaker 01

  I know. Guys, one of the reasons we started this podcast was because I wanted a job I could do in sweatpants.

• 5:34Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  You know, we talked about that a lot early on.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Well, I counted, after 409 days of wearing sweatpants. I mean, not every single day, but for the most part, for the last 409 days, I would get out of bed and put on sweatpants.

• 5:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  I actually had several pairs of pants that were made of the same material as my sheets.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  Like a jersey.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  They're a bamboo.

• 6:01Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Made by the same company that makes my sheets.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  Listen, if I can have pants made by people that make bedding.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  That's what I thought. It's like I'm just wearing my bed around all day. I thought I'd hit the jackpot. Okay, so after 409 days of this, I hit a wall. And I was like, I need to wear pants, actual pants. So I went out and I bought a pair of pants, Angela. I'm gonna stand up and I'm gonna show you.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  I'm gonna describe them to you. I'm gonna take a picture. They kind of look like camouflage, but like very sassy cargo kind of pants.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I was going for.

• 6:34Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. Sassy cargo?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love a sassy cargo.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  All right, so here's the thing. I think I'm so used to wearing sweatpants. I'm in the dressing room and I don't know which size of pants to buy.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  Cause you've been wearing the baggy britches.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  That's right. I went back and forth and back and forth and I went with the bigger size.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  And now I've been wearing them for what? I don't know, an hour?

• 6:57Speaker 00

  Uh-huh.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Now they're all stretched out. They're too big. And look what happens now. They're falling down and I've got long crotch. Long crotch lady.

• 7:06Speaker 00

  You have long crotch. Gals, you know what we're talking about.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  What do I do?

• 7:10Speaker 00

  When like the seam of your pants is like halfway between your thigh and your knees, that's long crotch.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  So what do I do? I've worn them. I can't take them back and get the smaller size. I think I could get someone to alter it in the back.

• 7:22Speaker 00

  You know, I like the sassy cargo minus the long crotch. What are we doing today?

• 7:27Speaker 01

  All right, let me tell you.

• 7:28Speaker 00

  For those of you guys wanting to know what we're doing today.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  It is Business Ethics, Season 5, Episode 3.

• 7:36Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. It is written by Ryan Ko and directed by Jeffrey Blitz.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  Love it.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Here is a summary. Jim reluctantly reveals him and Pam's engagement to the office.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  We'll discuss. Following Ryan's recent actions, corporate has required Holly to conduct a seminar on business ethics. Michael offers immunity to anyone willing to confess to dishonesty at work.

• 8:04Speaker 00

  What are we, like an episode of Survivor?

• 8:06Speaker 01

  I know, you get immunity. Everything you say.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  And then we're gonna light the torch for you.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Well, some things are revealed. Again, we will discuss. And it's gonna cause a rift between Michael and Holly.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Meanwhile, Jim makes Dwight observe the company's time theft policy and Meredith provides Outback Steakhouse takeout to the entire office. So that's our summary.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Would you like fast fact number one?

• 8:34Speaker 00

  I really would.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  All right. New writer alert. Writer Ryan Ko has joined the staff for season five. Hello, Ryan.

• 8:41Speaker 00

  Hello, Ryan.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  He was only with us for one season as he left to work on Cougar Town.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  Oh, we knew lots of folks on Cougar Town.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  We sure did. Busy Philip.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  He is also a writer and co-executive producer of The Simpsons. Welcome, Ryan.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  Welcome.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Fast fact number two. No Pam. Outside of the cold open where you hear Pam's voice, there is no Pam in this episode.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  But there was Pam.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  There was, you guys. There was. I filmed a bunch of scenes at art school and they all got cut out.

• 9:14Speaker 00

  I know. I saw in the deleted scenes. There's like three.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Well, I'm going to talk about them as we break down this episode. On Office Ladies, Pam will be inserted into this episode again. She will live again.

• 9:26Speaker 00

  She will. And also, Jenna, there was an amazing Ryan Kevin runner that got deleted for time and it's great. And I'm going to bring that up.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  You guys, we're bringing it all back today in business ethics. Fast fact number three, Amy Ryan.

• 9:43Speaker 00

  Holly is here today.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  We interviewed Amy Ryan all about this episode and her time on The Office. Let's hear it.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Amy Ryan, welcome to Office Ladies.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Hi, Office Ladies. I'm so glad to be here and to see your beautiful faces and the interior of your closets.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was going to say, welcome to our closets.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Amy, it's so good to see you. Holly Flax. Oh, my gosh.

• 10:16Speaker 00

  Hollis. We found out your name is Hollis.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Is that right?

• 10:19Speaker 00

  Because it's on your little name placard. Yes.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  I don't know if I ever knew that. That's a really good tip.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Would you have played the character differently?

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Totally. I would have been much more, you know, refined. I feel like Hollis is a much more refined, or maybe I would have had an accent.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  I think if your character had been a Supreme Court judge, you might have gone by Hollis.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  But you ended up in HR and so you went with the less formal Holly, maybe.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  That's correct. You, yeah, when you run HR, you really want to be more approachable. You know, kind of a, you know, warm, fuzzy character.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  That makes sense.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  Holly was a warm, fuzzy character and we're in love with her. I am so enamored by Holly and Michael. Jenna and I have cried because Michael is like finally with someone that cares about him.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  She does.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Well, in watching it, episode by episode, and just four years of Michael not having a partner, to suddenly see a woman partner with him and joke with him and like his jokes, I did, I cried.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Oh, I, you know, in preparation for meeting you both today, I rewatched the episode. I hadn't watched the show in a long time, save for like popping in the room when my daughter was on her third pass of the series. But it is so moving. I think all the characters are so moving. There's, I know everyone's talked about this before, but that element of the family. You know, it's not a workplace, it's actually a family. And that really comes through so beautifully. But Holly and Michael, I mean, I've always said, you know, there's a lid for every pot. So they finally found each other, but she has a high tolerance, I suppose, for, for that kind of guy.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Well, we always like to ask people, Amy, how did you come to be on the show? And we did a little research. Paul Lieberstein told us that they came to you. They were huge fans. But that you had simultaneously mentioned to your agent, you might like to do our show.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  So what was? That process.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. How did it go down?

• 12:34Speaker 02

  That is true. And the timing was eerie because I did say that to my agent. It was it was soon after the Oscars. And I was like, you know, I'm doing a lot of dramas. And if I have any kind of cachet right now at this moment, I want to do a comedy and I want to do a comedy like The Office. Because I was never good at the four camera sitcom. I just felt too much pressure and it wasn't like I always feel like characters weren't really rooted in a reality the way The Office was. And that goes back to how I met Paul Lieberstein. We were both employed on The Naked Truth. And he was a writer. My agent had kind of reached out and at the same time, Paul had reached out, I guess, to him.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  I don't know who got there first, but it was, I really think it was like about the same week. And Paul had mentioned that he was also a fan of The Wire, as were some of the other writers. So it was kind of a culmination of all those worlds coming together.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  And did they pitch the character of Holly to you? Or did you like have a script to read or anything?

• 13:41Speaker 02

  I don't remember reading a script. I remember saying, hearing it was a one episode only and potential love interest, which obviously I knew was code for we'll see how you do, kid. If we have you back. I remember also, because I was a big fan of the British series, David finally gets a woman who likes him too. So it was loosely based, I think, on her for the first episode. And then our group took it to a different level. So there was no script that I was privy to, but I knew the I knew the kind of general idea of it.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  What was it like to walk onto the set for the first time?

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Really weird.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  It was really weird. It's because also then I now I'm a fan of the American version. And you start to know the set, obviously, from the comfort of your couch or your tablet or whatever it is. You know, when you get there, it's like, oh, everything's smaller. And then there you all were so warm and welcoming. You know, there's always an element of being the new kid in school and how's that gonna go down. But and also you guys at this point are on a really massive, you know, big hit show. And it was the most down to earth, welcoming, warm group of people, like true ensemble that I met. And even to the end,

• 15:05Speaker 02

  I feel like, you know, you hear all those stories of shows that become so successful, the bad behavior starts coming out and, you know, but at least I didn't see any of that. And I just thought it was always about the work. And you guys really set such a beautiful tone there.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Well, you said you rewatched Business Ethics. And one of my favorite parts is when you and Michael do the let's get physical.

• 15:31Speaker 00

  Yes, that's so funny. I watched that with my daughter and we watched that scene like two times in a row, just him reaching in, trying to hit the play button. And then the two of you running in with those headbands and your dance number. How did you guys come up with all that?

• 15:46Speaker 02

  What do we do? Well, the headbands, I have to give credit for wardrobe. I mean, that was pretty wonderful and ridiculous. Just that having that visual. The dance, honestly, that's me just following Steve. Anything, you know, I always, anything that I was lucky enough to be partnered, paired with Steve, I was smart enough to get in the sidecar of that motorcycle ride. Like, I'm not gonna lead this here. He's gonna have a better idea. So that was, that was just me kinda, you know, yeah, literally following his choreography.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Well, I wasn't there because my character was at art school. So I am super bummed that I did not get to see that done live. Did you guys do like tons of takes of it? You were there, Anne. Do you guys remember?

• 16:36Speaker 00

  It was so hard not to laugh. Like, from the minute it started. And when I was rewatching it, Oscar's face says it all. He's in the front. And I was like, I don't want to be in the front. Please don't put me in the front. Because I knew I was gonna get so tickled. And Oscar does this thing when he's trying not to break. You know, we know each other's tales after all those years, where he kinda does this mouth open thing. And that's him trying not to laugh. So you go back and watch. Oscar's like,

• 17:02Speaker 02

  I'm going to.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  It was so funny.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  First of all, being in that conference, you know, that that's kind of the most famous part of the set, right? And here we go, and someone gets to present something and it's it's better when, again, you're paired with someone next to you. But those scenes where I'm alone giving the conference, my hands are like white knuckled. I'm like trying to be like, you know, very casual, holding my hands. But if you look closely, my hands are just like two iron fists of nerves. That's the other thing, like the everyone always asks me, is The Office, was that a lot of improv? And I said, no, it was re- I remember Scripty coming up to me, you know, correcting me for like of instead of at, like something really tiny.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  And I tell people and tell me if I'm wrong, I was like, it was heavily scripted. And then maybe by the third take, Steve would go off script first and then everyone would follow suit. That's my recollection of it. Do you is, would you say that's right?

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then, and in that, I just think it was, again, like, you guys are so in tune with each other and no one trying to beat anyone to the punchline. It was just a constant setup and it was, I thought it was just so perfect. And I think that's why people can't really tell between the scripted and when it goes to improv. It was just a, just so perfectly done.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  I wanted to ask you about those restaurant scenes.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. The, um. Coopers?

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Coopers. There's that whole runner about the chastity belt where he's trying to explain what a chastity belt is.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  And you're like, a chastity belt?

• 18:53Speaker 02

  I think like the really fun part of their relationship is that it's always a surprise when like Holly's on board with him with some joke and then those moments like the chastity belt where she's so horrified. And yet so forgiving, you know, here she is, this, you know, she's still flirty with this guy and she likes him and not sure where it's going to go. But she's going to give that a pass.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  You know, always with Steve, it was so hard not to laugh. It was also like a thrill that sets in. Look, I remember when I was 25, I went skydiving and. I did it where you're strapped to the other instructor and just as the airplane door opened up and he made me look out, we were about, I guess, thirteen thousand feet in the air. And I remember the thought in my head is, okay, I'm gonna die or I'm gonna have the time of my life. Pick one. And I remember picking, I'm gonna have fun. And as nervous as I was, you know, being like in those scenes with Steve, I remember that moment too, like, oh, just pick one. Why don't you have fun instead, you know?

• 20:04Speaker 02

  And certainly with with him at the lead, like, we're all gonna look good. You know, he's gonna take us along for the ride, I feel, but um, but it was so hard not to laugh, like painfully hard not to laugh.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  But I felt like we're dropped into another place of concentration that um, that kind of pulled pulled it all along, if that makes sense.

• 20:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, did you know Steve before?

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, in a in a very, I had this miniscule part in Dan in Real Life that Steve starred in, this is a big extended family comedy. We all, there's a whole group of us there on location in Rhode Island, and so we all became friends. And then I think it was about like six months after that film is when The Office came up. And I I believe they ran the idea by Steve of casting me and I guess it helped. Knew him from Rhode Island for that little bit.

• 21:04Speaker 00

  Well, we always ask everyone if they have any like favorite memories from their time on the show, like any kind of behind the scenes moment or just something that you remember that stood out to you during your time on The Office.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh, there's so so much. I mean, just

• 21:20Speaker 02

  just in a general note, I would honestly, no exaggeration, I would go home feeling like I worked out a series of sit-ups because my stomach muscles were always in play for laughing so hard. And I just go home exhausted but happy and that was a nice feeling. But there's, and speaking of that, like kind of the uncontrollable laughter, there's the episode where Daryl helps me move and he comes in the the car ride, the truck ride.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Me, Steve and Craig, like, holed up in that truck all day, kind of.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Probably we had a little bit of lack of oxygen, but we couldn't, we, we just, we were in hysterics and could barely get through the scenes. And it was, that, that was like one of the highlights of, of my time there was just spending the day with those two guys, um, just laughing. I mean, I say that, but I'd also be on set and laughing all the time too. It was just very new to me. Usually I end up in these dramas where I'm crying all day. So this is a much better way to spend your day.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  I remember that too. And I remember my agents asking me if I wanted to do dramas in my downtime. You mentioned you were like, I've done a lot of dramas. I want to do a comedy. They're like, do you want to take a stab at some drama? And I was like, I don't think so. I think I'm really liking the jobs where I just laugh all day. Cause I'm like in a good mood a lot. So let's just, let's keep doing the comedies. It was, it was like, um, it was a happy place to work.

• 23:07Speaker 00

  My only request was if I could ever have a scene where I didn't frown.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  That's true. You had to frown your way through this comedy.

• 23:16Speaker 00

  Well, do you get recognized as Holly Flax? Like when you're out and about?

• 23:21Speaker 02

  Oh, I do. I do. And it's interesting. Uh, I'm sure, I'm sure you guys have noticed there's been, uh, being recognized when the show was on the air and then the whole streaming,

• 23:38Speaker 02

  version of the show that has kind of taken it to a whole new level and everyone's getting younger. My daughter's friends and, um, um, so yeah, I do. I still get.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  I still get recognized. You know, years ago, not that long ago, a few years ago, my family and our really good friends, we went to Scranton, cause there's this amazing um antique store called Old Good Things and it's just a warehouse, a giant warehouse of just every old antique knob, hinge, dresser, door, toilet.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Sign me up.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  It goes on, it goes on forever. It's really cool.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  And so we, we, we go there. And then we're looking for something to eat and we're hungry and they pull in and I was kind of behind the eight ball on this and we we pull into Coopers.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  And I go, and I go, oh, no, no, no, you guys, no, cause I, I'm pretty. I, I mean, I don't get harassed being, you know, but I, I'm pretty shy. If someone comes up to me on the street, I say hello and thank you, but, but I also have a lot of privacy. People don't always recognize me, but I was like, hell, no, I, we are not going into Coopers. I, I am Polly from the office. I cannot walk into Coopers. I cannot, I cannot, I cannot. And they're like, and my one friend Anne was there, she's kind of naughty. She's like, oh, it'll be so good. We have to, we have to. So they talked me into it, but I go in and I've got my head down and I'm just like waiting. I'm waiting to be treated, you know, like the Beatles here or something.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  And we, we sit in a booth and this old tired waitress comes up and she takes our order and my friend Anne right away, she's like, this is amazing. You know, what, what's the story here? She's like, oh, well, we've been here for X amount of years and it was also used in the set of the office. But, you know, I mean, people, people used to be excited about that, but they're not anymore. Uh, what can I get you?

• 25:35Speaker 02

  So offended. Not one person recognized me. I know, not one, not one.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  And we left, we gave her a good tip and we left and I was like so so bummed. But um, anyway, that's my Cooper story. It's pretty cool inside though. I think our, our set decoration did a pretty great job. The real Coopers is pretty cool. Yeah.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Well, when people hear this podcast and they realize they might've been at Coopers with Holly Flax and didn't know it.

• 26:13Speaker 00

  They're gonna be like, what day, what day?

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  It's part of like a whole Scranton, The Office fan tour now. You know, they have, they have like a whole tour and you can go around Scranton and go to all the spots. So maybe, maybe don't go back because maybe it will be the Beatles experience.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Amy, before you were gonna come on the podcast, I admit, um, I Googled you, which is a weird thing to do. It's weird to Google someone you know.

• 26:40Speaker 00

  It is so weird.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  It's so weird and I, you know, had never done that before, Googled you. But I did and I saw all of your stage work and stage experience, which I, I knew that you did theater, but I didn't know that you got your first touring job right out of school, that you toured with Biloxi Blues.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  Right out of high school.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  So did you ever have like that day job? Did you ever have, or, or were you able to work pretty consistently as an actress right out of school?

• 27:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I went to a performing arts high school in New York and then, um, a month or so after graduation, I was cast in the touring company Biloxi Blues. And I toured for nine months and thought, well, that's easy. I'll work all the time, I guess. I didn't work for a long time afterwards, but, but I, after the tour, you know, I was still only like 18, 19. So, you know, I went back home, so I didn't have rent. I was still, you know, my family, we lived in New York. So I was able to afford, uh, a life in New York by just being an actor and doing, um, acting jobs. Till I moved out of the house in my mid 30s. I know.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  But I. Um, no, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm very, I'm very lucky. I had, uh, I've only ever been an actor. Save before high school graduation, I worked in my aunt and uncle's ice cream shop in Vermont. Uh, when I was sixteen, but, um, yeah, acting's been my only job.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  That's amazing.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  It's kind of weird, but I, you know, I, I do think of how any young actor, artist moves to LA, moves to New York from other places or, you know, to Chicago. With, I always think of that person like suitcase in hand and, you know, room share. Less like, uh, my hat go, take, just goes off to them because it's so hard. It's so hard. I don't know how people do it. Um, you know, I was lucky that I already lived in New York and could go home for home cooked meals and all that kind of stuff. But, um, but I'm glad they're doing it somehow.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  Are you working on anything now, Amy?

• 28:59Speaker 02

  I just finished this new first season of this Hulu series called Only Murders in the Building with Steve Martin and Martin Short. And, um, Selena Gomez, and it was again, like, it was, it was a throwback to like, again, Jenna, like you say, like doing the comedies, like, oh, this feels fun. I'm in a good mood and certainly shooting through a pandemic, you know, it was, I wouldn't want to be on a heavy drama right now. It's just too intense, but it was, uh, it was a joy to be around those people, um, during this time and so, but that's it. And, um, I don't know, I don't know what I'll do next that, you know,

• 29:40Speaker 02

  even after thirty three years, like I never know what's next. So let's see what happens.

• 29:46Speaker 00

  Well, Amy, thank you so much for coming on Office Ladies and sharing your memories of being on the show. It was so cool to be back in touch with you and see you again.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Oh, same here. I really miss you guys and I, I hope, uh, all's well with your families and, um, I hope to see you in person.

• 30:04Speaker 00

  Yes, that would be amazing. Jenna and I have said we want to do like a, like an Office Ladies lunch, like call up all the gals.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  That would be amazing.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Have a lunch. Wouldn't that be so fun?

• 30:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh gosh. Well, let's do it.

• 30:16Speaker 00

  Let's do it. Thank you so much, Amy.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me on your show. I miss you all and, um, I just hope to see you soon.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  That was so great.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  I love her.

• 30:36Speaker 00

  I love her.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  You know, when we got finished with that interview, you guys, I asked her, what color were her walls? Because her room, it was like painted all this like kind of dark blue gray color.

• 30:48Speaker 00

  Kind of a navy blue.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Very cozy looking.

• 30:50Speaker 00

  I know. And she was in a red dress and her hair was perfect. I kind of want to get that bob. I don't know if I can pull it off.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  It was such a cute bob.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  It was. Well, you know, obviously, we're going to put the photos from our zoomy zoom in the Instagram.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you can see it all. The wall, the bob, it's coming at you.

• 31:06Speaker 00

  Okay, before we get into this episode, I need to share with you who was on the DVD commentary.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 31:14Speaker 00

  But I'm going to let BJ tell you.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  What?

• 31:18Speaker 03

  Welcome to the commentary on business ethics. This is BJ Novak speaking, and this is a very special commentary because I have with me here four of the most beloved crew members on the office to give us a behind the scenes look at how things go, not just with this episode, but every day for the past 100 episodes. So seated with me, why don't we make introductions from my left?

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Vartan Chikilian.

• 31:42Speaker 03

  Peter Evangelotis. Sergio Jacoman. Alan Moore. And here's how it works. There are.

• 31:50Speaker 00

  I know.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 31:51Speaker 00

  I know. I know. I had the same reaction.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  And their voices are on the whole thing.

• 31:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness. I did not.

• 32:00Speaker 00

  I know. I know. I texted BJ. I said, BJ, I have teared up. I have laughed. I have had every emotion.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Oh, guys. Okay, we should say who they are.

• 32:12Speaker 00

  Okay, so Peter and Vartan, they did our craft services. They provided the cast and crew with stacks, drinks, meals, anything that you could want, and fed us an overtime. We called them the snack masters. Peter was so beloved to us. He was like our grandpa.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  And he took such good care of us. He passed away a few years ago. Our cast and crew were heartbroken. We loved this man. And it was a delight to get to hear his voice in this DVD commentary. I felt like I spent, you know, an evening with him when I rewatched it and I texted BJ immediately. And he said, oh, my God, Angela, where is this? Where can I hear it? Where does it live? He said, I'm so happy it made you happy. He said, I'm so happy it exists. And he said that he pitched that Peter and Vartan and Sergio and Alan do this commentary. And people were like, what? No, you're crazy. But he was like, you know, like they are like our sustenance. They took such good care of us.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  We should say Sergio and Alan.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  They were big time catering and they fed us lunch and breakfast.

• 33:20Speaker 00

  They did our big main meals.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:22Speaker 00

  Breakfast and lunch. And Peter and Vartan did everything in between.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:27Speaker 00

  And I really want to share with you what all they talked about on the DVD commentary.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:32Speaker 00

  They talked about food the whole entire episode.

• 33:37Speaker 00

  I learned nothing about the actual episode. But I learned what everyone has for breakfast and people's particular like request. And it was so delightful. And I think the Office fans are going to love this.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  You gotta say, you have to share.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  Okay, okay, here we go. And then I promise we will get to business ethics, you guys. Okay. First of all, we love people's process. How is their day started? What do they do? Sergio and Alan shared that they got to set very, very early. Well, we knew this. I looked up our call sheets. You guys know I have digital clutter. I have all of our call sheets for years.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  Average cast call time started at 5:00 a.m. That meant hair and makeup had to be there at 4:00 a.m. That meant that Sergio and Alan had to have a full breakfast ready at 4:00 a.m.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  So they would go to bed at 7:00 p.m. and get up between midnight and 1:00 a.m. To be at work at 2:00 a.m. to start cooking. Alan said, "Every morning I was cooking bacon at 3 a.m." And they kind of joked that he was like Michael Scott. He like woke up and had to start cooking bacon. But you know, they fed breakfast to around 150 people.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Yep, because the crew got a hot breakfast.

• 34:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, everybody, everybody, cast and crew. Sergio and Alan, like BJ would just mention someone's name and they knew their breakfast order.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Oh, say.

• 34:59Speaker 00

  Okay, ready?

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:01Speaker 00

  Steve would have mushrooms, ground turkey, egg white scramble with a side of ketchup.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 35:08Speaker 00

  Rain would have a veggie scramble with egg whites and one piece of wheat toast.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Mmm.

• 35:13Speaker 00

  Jenna

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:15Speaker 00

  would have two egg whites scrambled with a little bit of cheese.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 35:20Speaker 00

  Paul Lieberstein would have an egg white scramble with onions and peppers with Sergio's famous homemade salsa on the side.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  We weren't very into egg whites as a cast. I'm discovering.

• 35:31Speaker 00

  Keep it coming. Kate had egg white scramble with turkey bacon. Oscar, curveball, grilled cheese with tomato. Amy Ryan, who's our guest this week, spinach and egg scramble. Now, some cast members had their breakfast order become classics because they became so popular.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 35:51Speaker 00

  Okay, so you could order these three. We've already discussed the Rashida special.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:57Speaker 00

  Remember, invented by Rashida, black beans, turkey bacon, avocado, egg whites, Sergio salsa, two corn tortillas on the side.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  All right, that's a Rashida.

• 36:07Speaker 00

  It was the most popular.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 36:09Speaker 00

  Okay, the Rashida special.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  Rashida inventing the most popular breakfast.

• 36:12Speaker 00

  In fact, it was like one of Mindy's regular orders was the Rashida. Okay? The Johnny K, invented by John Krasinski, tomatoes and broccoli with egg whites and a little cheddar cheese.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Hmm, sounds

• 36:26Speaker 00

  Right, I know.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Kind of gross. I don't want to eat broccoli the first thing in the morning. I don't know.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  I'm not gonna lie, there were, you know, a few times I would cross over here in makeup with John. It didn't smell good.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  It's coming back to me now.

• 36:40Speaker 00

  It didn't smell good. Okay, the Creed special. I learned something. Creed is apparently a big goat cheese fan. He loves goat cheese.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  In the morning?

• 36:51Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. So they said that he would have goat cheese, spinach, onions and egg whites with green tea.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. They also shared the two cast members who were always there the earliest.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Oh, let me guess.

• 37:03Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Kate and Phyllis.

• 37:06Speaker 00

  Leslie and Phyllis.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 37:10Speaker 00

  And, you know, I looked at the call sheets. Leslie, Phyllis, me and Kate were always called in at 5:00 a.m.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:15Speaker 00

  Okay, the four of us. I clearly didn't make the early list. But Leslie would order his breakfast at 4:45.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 37:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. Sergio and Alan also did a huge lunch with multiple meat, fish, veggie choices, salad bar, dessert bar. But they said there was one item they featured just on a whim at the dessert table and it became incredibly popular. And if they wouldn't have it, people would like, get like annoyed. They'd be like, where is it?

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Can I guess?

• 37:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  Was it the warm chocolate chip cookie bar?

• 37:45Speaker 00

  Yes! Yes! It was the chocolate chip cookie cake. And they served it like hot and melted and kind of gooey.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  It was so good.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  You guys, the chocolate chip cookie cake was Steve Carell's, like, kryptonite? I don't know. This guy would eat so healthy, but he had to eat this chocolate chip cookie cake.

• 38:06Speaker 00

  This is one treat. But literally, they said they didn't think much about it. They made it one time. And then everyone was like, where is it? Where is it? They had to make it like every day.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:13Speaker 00

  So now I have to talk about Peter and Vartan. They were the snack masters. They had kind of like a full kitchen right on the set, right outside the Nunder Mifflin bullpen.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 38:23Speaker 00

  You know, they had a fridge. You could have cereal. They had milk. You could make your own sandwich. But they would also have a little food bar. And here's what they had to share. Peter talked about how he had been in the business forever. He also said, I thought this was kind of funny, that our cast, we were tea obsessed. He had hundreds of different types of teas. And you might have noticed that I didn't make Sergio and Alan's breakfast list.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Because you would never eat an egg in the morning.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  Because Peter and Vartan got donuts every morning. So I would go get a donut from Peter and Vartan. Also BJ liked the Porto's coffee cake. And then Peter said, sometimes he would make you and I sandwiches.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  He would.

• 39:07Speaker 00

  And he said he loved doing it and he would put them on a porcelain plate and bring them to us.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  I'm crying again.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  I know, I know. He took such good care of us.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  I can't explain to you, like the care with which he would make us a sandwich. It's so silly and simple, but he would, he'd put it on a porcelain plate and he'd always like garnish it with some cute little like fruit or like a little.

• 39:34Speaker 00

  Like he'd cut fruit into a shape.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. It really was. It was like your grandpa made you a sandwich.

• 39:40Speaker 00

  It really was.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  You felt so loved.

• 39:42Speaker 00

  He was so happy to do it.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:44Speaker 00

  He said that he would make you a tuna fish sandwich and he'd make me ham and cheese. I cried through this commentary Jenna. I laughed so hard because Peter and Vartan give each other like such a hard time lovingly and they're so funny. Alan called them the Middle Eastern odd couple because Peter is from Greece and Vartan is from Iraq. They had a hilarious banter, the two of them. They also talked about their infamous 10 a.m. hot snack.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Hot snack.

• 40:14Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh. Peter said they like to mix it up every day. He said on Mondays, for example, there'd be tacos and burritos. One of the most popular hot snack items was.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Albondaga soup?

• 40:25Speaker 00

  Well, they talked about that, but they said their turkey chili.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 40:29Speaker 00

  They said their turkey chili, they had to serve twice a week. People wanted it. They loved it. Ed Helms in particular loved the turkey chili and he came up with a little tip.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  What is it?

• 40:40Speaker 00

  Ed, you know, they had garnishes on the side for the chili. They had shredded cheese and they had onions. Ed would put the raw onions at the bottom of his bowl, add the hot turkey chili on top and the heat from the chili would caramelize the onions at the bottom.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 40:54Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. It became a thing.

• 40:57Speaker 00

  So, and much like our Dunder Mifflin counterparts, they said the cast and crew had their favorite pizza places to order from if we went into overtime and we got second meal. Steve loved Mulberry's Pizza and we all love Baroni's Pizza.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  It was a delight, you guys. I just have to tell you, we loved these men so much. I was lucky enough to work with Sergio again when I guest starred on Mindy's show, Never Have I Ever. She still wants Sergio on her projects. It was so awesome. These guys were our family.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:29Speaker 00

  And they took such good care of us. And if you have ever wondered why the only thing my dad talked about was the food when he visited set, listen to this commentary.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  I loved that.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  I loved it too. And I know I went on and on, but I had to share it.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  I hope everyone else found it interesting because I loved that trip down memory lane. Thank you, Angela.

• 41:48Speaker 00

  You're welcome. All right. Shall we get into this episode?

• 41:52Speaker 01

  I guess we can. I will pull myself together.

• 41:55Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  This episode starts with Jim and Pam on the phone. Pam is kind of mad because nobody congratulated her on her engagement. And Jim says, yeah, I didn't tell anyone.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  And then he's like, let's tell them. And he puts Pam on speakerphone and it goes, I think exactly how Jim thought it would go.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. It ends with Michael arriving and hearing the news and tackling Jim to the floor. We got a fan question from Kyle T. and Peyton M. How was the stunt done where Michael knocks Jim over with a hug?

• 42:29Speaker 00

  Also, John's face is just amazing.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  You know, that is a really hard thing to do, to know you're going to be tackled, but keep your body relaxed.

• 42:40Speaker 00

  And not like wits.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:42Speaker 00

  Not expect the tackle.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Well, I wasn't there. I was backstage on a phone, so I didn't see it go down. Angela, do you remember, was there like a mattress or something that they landed on?

• 42:53Speaker 00

  There is a big blue squishy thing. You know what I mean? A big blue square. It looked like a gymnastics kind of mat, right?

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:59Speaker 00

  But it was so funny.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  I have to imagine John lost it because John did not do well in scenes like that, especially with Steve, like.

• 43:07Speaker 00

  I don't, my memory of it is they didn't do it very many times.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 43:12Speaker 00

  Well, now we're into the episode. It's Ethics Day. Holly has passed out a form everyone has to fill out. She's gonna be taking this seriously.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  She is. She explains that she is going to be running her first meeting.

• 43:24Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  But don't worry, we talked about this with Amy Ryan. Michael's gonna help her out and they're gonna start it off with their version of "Let's Get Physical."

• 43:36Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. With headbands and dancing and a boombox. Jenna, I worked in corporate America. I have been in human resources seminars.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:47Speaker 00

  That we had to go to.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 43:49Speaker 00

  I'm telling you, they had skits.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  What?

• 43:52Speaker 00

  When I watched this, I had such a flood of memories coming back of sitting in a tiny little conference room when I worked at this company and our human resources department, there were two people. They would come in and act out skits of what's inappropriate. We had one guy, his name was Tom, and we had a gal, her name was Susan, and he'd be like, "Susan, that skirt looks really nice on you today. Hey, time to party." And then Susan would do a face like, "Huh?" And then they'd freeze. And then Tom would say, "What was inappropriate in this moment?" And we'd all have to raise our hands and be like, "Um, he was kinda gross about her skirt."

• 44:31Speaker 01

  I only had to watch, like, produced videos of weird things. I've never seen a live presentation.

• 44:38Speaker 00

  Oh, no. I watched skits.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  We had a fan question about this scene.

• 44:42Speaker 00

  We did.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  From Patricia B. She said, "I'm wondering if some of the younger Office fans even know the song that Holly and Michael are performing." She wants to know, "Angela, did your kids watch this one with you? Did you have to explain the song parody?"

• 44:58Speaker 00

  Isabel watched it with me. She didn't ask about the song. She just thought it was funny. She probably thinks we made it up.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, this was, I guess, for our younger listeners, a very famous song by Olivia Newton-John, "Let's Get Physical."

• 45:12Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  And the music video was like her in like an aerobics class.

• 45:18Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Singing and dancing with a headband. Jane Fonda had like these workout videos at the time, too. This was like a little trend.

• 45:26Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Sexy working out.

• 45:28Speaker 00

  But your sexy workout included tights, leg warmers.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  Uh-huh.

• 45:32Speaker 00

  High tops, leotard.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  Headband, wristband.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:37Speaker 00

  It was a whole thing.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  It was.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  I remember it well. Well, Holly begins her ethics meeting by explaining that there's been some misconduct. She's clearly talking about Ryan.

• 45:49Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. Who's been hired again? It's so hilarious to me.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. And then she starts going through the results of the quiz.

• 45:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, pretty much. She's got this binder.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:02Speaker 00

  And she's got to go through the binder.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  The HR binder.

• 46:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  We had a fan question from Peyton M. "In the conference room scene, did Creed and Meredith actually break when Stanley said the meeting was a waste of time, or was it scripted for them to laugh? Well, I looked at the script. It was scripted. The script said, 'People laugh a lot.'" That was the direction in the script.

• 46:29Speaker 00

  So the meeting isn't going so great. And Michael's like, "You're losing them."

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  So he pulls Holly aside. "You are losing them. They expect a lot."

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really sweet. He's trying to help her in this meeting because he really wants her to succeed. So he says, "Let's get rid of the binder. This is your opportunity to speak up without any repercussions." He's like, "Guys, what are some things maybe you've done at work to waste time? What have you done? Anything or anything you want to share?"

• 46:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, you have immunity. Go for it.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Well, during this time, Michael confesses that he didn't work for five days when he discovered YouTube.

• 47:10Speaker 00

  It made me laugh so hard.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  He said he watched Cookie Monster sings "Chocolate Rain" about 1,000 times.

• 47:17Speaker 00

  Did you go watch it?

• 47:18Speaker 01

  I had to know.

• 47:19Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Here's the thing.

• 47:21Speaker 00

  What?

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Chocolate Rain, according to its Wikipedia page, was a song by American singer Tay Zondé.

• 47:29Speaker 00

  I went and watched Tay's last night.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Oh, you did?

• 47:32Speaker 00

  I did.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  You watched it as well?

• 47:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Yes. So he wrote this song and he uploaded a video to YouTube. It was four minutes, 52 seconds long. He uploaded it, everyone, because I know you want to know, April 22nd, 2007.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  I remember. It went viral.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  Viral.

• 47:49Speaker 00

  Like before things went viral.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  It was ranked the hottest viral video of summer 2007, and it was awarded the 2008 YouTube Award in the category of music. So this song then became the subject of like parodies, remixes, tributes. It was everywhere.

• 48:07Speaker 00

  Even Cookie Monster.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Not Cookie Monster. We made that up. There was no Cookie Monster sings Chocolate Rain. They wrote that, and after the episode aired, people made them.

• 48:21Speaker 00

  Ah, no way.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Yes. Isn't that crazy?

• 48:26Speaker 00

  That is crazy. You know, I did go to every version you could imagine of the song. I looked it up. And I did notice the one where Cookie Monster is singing it. The first comment said, who else is here because of Michael Scott?

• 48:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 48:43Speaker 00

  Well, Michael has opened the door to confession time, and people are just letting it fly.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, the big confession comes from Meredith, who says that she has been having a six-year affair with the Hammer Mill rep in exchange for discounts on our supplies and also Outback Steakhouse gift certificates.

• 49:09Speaker 00

  Bruce Myers. Bruce Myers and Meredith, six years.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Now, here's something. Wasn't there in that previous episode, we finally landed the Hammer Mill rep? When they went to that big conference and it was only a few, remember? I think there's a little continuity catch here.

• 49:28Speaker 00

  Continuity error.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. So she's been sleeping with him for six years, but we only just landed him like two years ago. I don't know, Meredith.

• 49:39Speaker 00

  Show Bible.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  Show Bible.

• 49:41Speaker 00

  Sort it out, guys.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Holly is troubled.

• 49:45Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  Holly is like, this is a serious ethics violation. I have to report this.

• 49:51Speaker 00

  Jenna, there was one other confession that rattled someone else.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  What?

• 49:56Speaker 00

  Ryan made a confession and Kevin is like, what? This is the beginning of the runner. Sam, can you play it?

• 50:04Speaker 03

  Last year, you guys were riding me really hard for the website and I just peeled out my Z3 and I knocked the mirror off somebody's car. I never said a thing.

• 50:11Speaker 04

  Wait, what?

• 50:15Speaker 00

  What? Kevin's like, what? And then immediately after this conference room scene, Kevin approaches Ryan in the kitchen and confronts him.

• 50:23Speaker 04

  You knocked the mirror off of my car.

• 50:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. Isn't that messed up?

• 50:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:30Speaker 03

  That guy did a lot of things I'm not proud of.

• 50:33Speaker 04

  Wait, when you say that guy, do you mean you?

• 50:39Speaker 03

  I mean, the guy I used to be. I'm Ryan 2.0. And if it makes you feel any better, that guy did a lot of messed up stuff to me, too.

• 50:48Speaker 04

  No, you mean that you did a lot of messed up stuff to you.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  Look, I feel you.

• 50:53Speaker 04

  To?

• 50:54Speaker 03

  Okay. That guy took no responsibility for his actions.

• 50:57Speaker 04

  But are you gonna pay for my mirror?

• 51:00Speaker 03

  If I have to answer for everything that guy did, I'm never gonna move on.

• 51:07Speaker 04

  It was like $200.

• 51:09Speaker 03

  We're never gonna get what we need from that guy.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  You know my love of Ryan.

• 51:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  In this rewatch, and I am so sad that did not make it in the episode, but I am so glad it exists.

• 51:20Speaker 00

  I know. I showed it to Sam and Sam was like, I know these people. I know these people.

• 51:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's a good example of Los Angeles.

• 51:30Speaker 00

  But yeah, so Kevin gets Ryan back by putting his sunglasses, his really nice sunglasses in the toaster oven.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  Melt them. But that was Kevin 1.0.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, he can't be responsible for what that guy did.

• 51:44Speaker 00

  That's right. So that was the Ryan Kevin runner that got deleted because we just ran out of time, but I thought it was so great.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  It's so good. So now we have the scene where Michael and Holly are going to meet privately with Meredith to discuss her liaison.

• 51:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  You know, Michael is trying very hard to help Meredith say the things she needs to say to get out of trouble.

• 52:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  Meredith is not getting it.

• 52:09Speaker 00

  She's not getting it.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  At all.

• 52:11Speaker 00

  And Kate is so funny in this scene.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  So funny.

• 52:14Speaker 00

  Well, we do have a classic Jim prank.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  We get a Jim prank.

• 52:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's been a bit, and I thought it was so funny. And I can tell that John and Rain were having such a good time, just because we know them.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:27Speaker 00

  Like, you gave John that prop, that stopwatch.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  He's loving that stopwatch.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  He's loving it. Yeah, Dwight had said in the conference room that he doesn't do anything personal at work.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  He wastes no time.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  Wastes no time. And so Jim's going to show him. He's going to like time every single thing he does.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Well, right about now is when we would have gone to see Pam at art school.

• 52:47Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  And I'm going to tell you about it.

• 52:49Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  So Pam and her classmates, they get to class, and there's a note on the door, "No class today."

• 52:57Speaker 00

  It's canceled.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Canceled. So her friends are like, "Let's go get drinks." And Pam's like, "I can't." And her friend Alex, who was played by Rich Summer, says, "What do you have to do? You're supposed to be in class right now. We know you don't have plans." So they get her to go to this tiki bar for a little day drinking. And I totally remember shooting this, Angela. We're all drinking out of this big, giant volcano bowl. There's a flame. It's on fire.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  We had to have a safety meeting about it. And in the scene, two of the other art students... They're trying to decode this text message. They're wondering what to text back.

• 53:40Speaker 00

  Well, it's like a guy, right? So she's like wanting to text a guy back, but not seem like too into him. You know how you have to write the perfect text back.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 53:50Speaker 00

  To someone you're into, but you don't want to seem too desperate.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Well, Pam is spiraling. Remember I said in the other episode that we purposely cast people who would seem younger and hipper than Pam? So she would be this fish out of water in art school?

• 54:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  Well, she's kind of spiraling about that. And she has this great crazy monologue that she blurts out. Sam, will you play the Pam tiki bar scene for me?

• 54:16Speaker 06

  You put a wink at the end. Does that mean something?

• 54:18Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. Means he's a dork.

• 54:20Speaker 06

  So how do I write back, you know, showing him that I'm also a dork?

• 54:24Speaker 04

  Oh, he knows.

• 54:25Speaker 06

  Don't ask me. I don't even know what I'm doing here. I'm like way older than you guys. I mean, like I have a fiance and I had like a 10-year plan and like is graphic design even art? At this point, I thought that I would be married and running my own art company.

• 54:45Speaker 06

  But I would just put like big LOL, little LOL, winky face. Oh, okay.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  Okay. I thought that was so interesting. We just got a window into what Pam thought her life would be. She says at this point, she thought she would be married and running her own art company.

• 55:06Speaker 00

  What does she mean by art company?

• 55:08Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 55:08Speaker 00

  It sounds like something like.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  Like a kid would say.

• 55:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, like someday I'm going to own an art company.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Does that mean she sells art supplies?

• 55:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  What does she mean by that? I don't know. I thought it was so, it was such a window into Pam, I thought.

• 55:23Speaker 00

  I did too. And, you know, it goes on to show that she drank the whole volcano herself, basically.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. There are more scenes at this bar. She gets really tipsy.

• 55:34Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  But then she has this really peppy talking head where she says, if she were in Scranton right now, she'd be an alcoholic, but she's not. She's in New York, so she's a moody artist. She loves New York.

• 55:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  Well, I was really bummed that these scenes got cut because one. One of the art students, the guy who you hear trying to help the girl with her text message, was played by one of my very good friends in real life, John Cabrera. You might know him because he was a longtime cast member on Gilmore Girls. He played Brian Fuller. He was the bass player in Lane's Band. So we filmed all of these scenes at Pam's art school. They never made it into an episode. He doesn't even have a credit on IMDb for being on the office. Because all his scenes got cut, but we had the best time.

• 56:27Speaker 00

  Jenna, have you ever had a volcano?

• 56:29Speaker 01

  No. Have you?

• 56:31Speaker 00

  Once.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  What?

• 56:33Speaker 00

  Once.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  I thought we made that up. That's a real thing? Is it on fire?

• 56:36Speaker 00

  Yes, it's served-

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Sam is nodding like, how many have you had, Sam?

• 56:40Speaker 05

  So that was the most aggressive I've ever-

• 56:41Speaker 01

  You are like-

• 56:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a staple of the tiki bar community.

• 56:45Speaker 00

  I've had one. That's all you'll ever need to have. I had one at a bar in Manhattan Beach for a friend's birthday. We got the volcano because my friend's birthday, you know, we were like 25 years old. It's a huge, huge bowl.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 57:01Speaker 00

  It comes on fire.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 57:02Speaker 00

  All these different straws in it. It's usually a mixture of like pineapple or grapefruit or lime juice, maple syrup, several different types of rums.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 57:11Speaker 00

  I felt real gross the next day. And what's so funny is I had Pam's experience. Like, you're just all drinking it. You can't tell who's had more or what because there's all these straws flopping out of it. And the photos from this evening are real special. We all decided to see if we could do the splits.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 57:29Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. It was one of those nights. I didn't do the splits. No, you do it. I do it.

• 57:35Speaker 00

  So volcano guys, tread lightly.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Am I too old to have this experience?

• 57:40Speaker 00

  I think so.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Damn it.

• 57:42Speaker 00

  You won't feel good the next day.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  I missed my chance. I started drinking late in life.

• 57:47Speaker 00

  I know.

• 57:48Speaker 01

  I really did.

• 57:49Speaker 00

  I think it's okay that you navigated your life without having the volcano experience.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  I don't know. I'm having some FOMO.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  Well, now, Michael is going to invite Holly to lunch. Because it's okay if like two attractive people go to lunch. You know, they work together, they're attractive. They can eat lunch.

• 58:09Speaker 00

  They can eat lunch. It's not an official date. And there was a deleted Michael Talking Head that if it was an official date, Holly would know because it would go like this.

• 58:19Speaker 05

  No, this is not an official date. When it is an official date, she will be aware of it. There will be a rose. There will be music and dancing. Bottle of red, bottle of white. Bottle of water. I have to drink more water. Some whispered conversation. Some giggling. Little wine. We head back to her place. I will skip ahead to protect her dignity. But we make hardcore love.

• 58:59Speaker 05

  And then we fall asleep on her one high to the sound of the full moon. And then chocolate chip pancakes.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  Okay, I haven't had a volcano, but I've had that date.

• 59:17Speaker 00

  You've had that date?

• 59:17Speaker 01

  I've had that date.

• 59:18Speaker 00

  That's a good date. I just want a shirt that says hardcore love. And you know what? You got to fall asleep to the sound of the moon.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  You do. You do. Oh, well, he suggests that they go to Cooper's Restaurant, and I've got some good information to share about that. So why don't we take a break and we'll come back.

• 59:41Speaker 00

  Great.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  All right, we are back. Michael and Holly have gone to lunch. We got fan questions from Kelly W., Sammy B., and Carolyn P. What is the restaurant that Holly and Michael went to? Angela, you saw the outside shot of this restaurant.

• 1:00:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've been there in real life.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  It is a real restaurant in Scranton called Cooper's Seafood House.

• 1:00:15Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  And we did not go to Cooper's, so we used a shot of the outside. The interior, I got all the scoop from Jamesapedia.

• 1:00:25Speaker 00

  Jamesapedia is back. And Amy Ryan said they did an amazing job.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  Amazing, right? I looked at pictures online of the real Coopers and I compared them to screenshots because that's what I do now, I guess.

• 1:00:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  Is that.

• 1:00:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  And we really, congratulations to our set designers. They did a great job redressing this.

• 1:00:46Speaker 00

  What did Jamesapedia have?

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Jamesapedia said that we shot the interior at Clancy's Crab Broiler in Glendale, California. That we started shooting at 8:00 a.m. that day, and there was a note on the call sheet that said, "The restaurant will be open for business at 11:00 a.m." So they had three hours.

• 1:01:07Speaker 00

  Woo!

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  To film all of those restaurant scenes.

• 1:01:10Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  And I asked him, I said, "Now, when it says they're going to open back up at 11:00 a.m., does that mean we have to be done filming and get all our stuff out because we changed the look of the restaurant?" And he said, "What we would normally do is we would get in there really, really early and dress it, do our scenes, and get out as much as we can by 11 o'clock, but they would go back the next day to like do a full cleanup." So the patrons that day ate in a kind of hybrid restaurant of Clancy's Crab Broiler slash Cooper's Seafood.

• 1:01:43Speaker 00

  Say that 10 times fast.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  I could barely say it.

• 1:01:46Speaker 00

  Clancy's Crab Broiler.

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  Clancy's Crab Broiler.

• 1:01:50Speaker 00

  Oof. Well, here's a little something about Cooper's.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:01:54Speaker 00

  Brian Baumgartner and I went there in 2007 in Scranton. If you go to Cooper's Seafood House website online, there are a bunch of photos in their gallery section of Brian and I.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  I saw them.

• 1:02:09Speaker 00

  One in particular, I am barefoot and standing on top of a table.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  Oh, I missed that one.

• 1:02:15Speaker 00

  It's a good one. I'll put it, I'll put it in our stories. Clearly, Brian and I were there to have a good time. And we did. We had a blast.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  Well, this scene originally started with Michael ordering for he and Holly.

• 1:02:29Speaker 00

  Yes, he was gonna be fancy man on a date. He said this restaurant was business romantic.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Here's what he ordered. We'll have the chowders to start, then the lobster feast for two, and do you have a house red? And then he wants you to know, house makes a great red.

• 1:02:48Speaker 00

  Yes, I feel like, where did he, where did he come up with that? He heard that somewhere. Someone was like, the house wine is very good. The house makes a great red. And now he's like, he thinks the house is the winery.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, Holly says she just wants a chef salad, no dressing.

• 1:03:03Speaker 00

  With an iced tea.

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's not gonna have any house red. And then the waitress says to Michael, do you still want the two lobsters? And Michael says, yes, yes, I do.

• 1:03:13Speaker 00

  Because now he's a little embarrassed.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  So later in the scene, when you see Michael, and he's got two lobsters and a big bowl of soup and a red wine, this is why.

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  Yes, it's at 13 minutes, 44 seconds, you'll see how he ordered double.

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  Incidentally, on the Coopers menu, there is a recurring Tuesday special called Twin Tails in a Cup of Soup. And it is two lobster tails and a bread bowl of soup. And I am dying to know if this Tuesday special predated this episode of The Office, or if they created this as a special after Michael ordered two lobster tails and a bowl of soup. I don't know how to find out.

• 1:03:54Speaker 00

  Well, we'll have to go.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  Anyone, Coopers, anyone?

• 1:03:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, here's the thing. We are going to Scranton.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  We are.

• 1:04:01Speaker 00

  I can't wait.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  Should we order two lobster tails and a bowl of soup?

• 1:04:05Speaker 00

  And the house red?

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  We're gonna do so much eating in Scranton.

• 1:04:12Speaker 00

  I know.

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  Like, the bulk of our trip there is just eating our way through Scranton.

• 1:04:16Speaker 00

  I know.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Well, this lunch, it just is not going well. They cannot get on the same page about what to do with Meredith.

• 1:04:23Speaker 00

  They can't. Michael was trying to just connect with Holly, get to know her. He asked her, you know, about where she grew up, Des Moines. We find out she's from Des Moines, Iowa.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:33Speaker 00

  Right? Holly is being business. This is a business lunch, and she feels gross about Meredith. They have this couplet of dialogue that really sums it up. Holly says, "I'm saying that Meredith's behavior is unethical and a little icky, and I don't think I want to work in an environment where that sort of conduct is tolerated." Michael says, "Well, you have to tolerate a lot when you're a part of a family." And Holly delivers such a low blow, if you know Michael. She says, "It's not a family, it's a workplace."

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:05Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh, the look on his face. Like, how do they come back from this?

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  Meanwhile, back at the office, Jim is really trying to trap Dwight into wasting time. He's trying to get him to have personal conversations. He tries to explain an episode of Battlestar Galactica to Andy, purposely getting everything wrong and inserting all kinds of other characters.

• 1:05:27Speaker 00

  All kinds of other characters. He says it's like the crazy monsters and stuff. There's Klingons and Wookiees. He says there's a guy named Dumbledore. They're trying to get a ring back to Mordor. This is triggering every button in Dwight.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  I loved Rain in the scene where he just was... And I also just loved the way John would hold up the stopwatch.

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. They were doing this beautiful, like, comedic dance. It was so good.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  It was so good. You know, we had a fan point out, Lindsay H. said, "I am so impressed with the camera focus when Jim is talking to Andy about Battlestar Galactica slash Star Wars slash Harry Potter slash Lord of the Rings slash Star Wars." Anyway, she says, "The camera focuses on Jim, then Dwight, and back and forth so quickly and flawlessly. She just wanted to give kudos to our camera operators."

• 1:06:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, because, I mean, John and Rain are doing this dance, but they're in it with the camera operator, and that was flawless. I agree, Lindsay.

• 1:06:28Speaker 00

  Me too.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  We also had a fan catch from Justin S. "Jenna, I know you and Phyllis are both from St. Louis, and I'm a big Cardinals fan myself, and I couldn't help but notice that there is a free bird on Phyllis's desk over Dwight's shoulder. And I was just wondering, how did the free bird get there?" Guys, I texted Phyllis about it.

• 1:06:50Speaker 00

  Yeah?

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  We don't know.

• 1:06:51Speaker 00

  Ah!

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  She said, "Oh, maybe that was when David Fries and Matt Holliday came to visit." And I was like, "No, they haven't come to visit yet!" I'll tell you guys that story later. That was amazing.

• 1:07:05Speaker 00

  You guys were so excited.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  And I know they hadn't visited yet because Ellie was with us when they visited.

• 1:07:10Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  So Phyllis and I went back and forth, and she's like, "I didn't bring it in." She said, "I don't know who put it there. I didn't put it there. Phyllis didn't put it there. We don't know who put it there." Well, Justin, I'm sorry. I'm gonna try to get to the bottom of it. You know, answer pending.

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. Jim has a talking head that Dwight hasn't stopped working for a second. He even sneezed with his eyes open, which Jim was like, "I didn't know that was possible." You guys, he peed in a soda bottle. He peed under his desk. I mean, he is not gonna waste any time.

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  I had to know if you can sneeze with your eyes open.

• 1:07:47Speaker 00

  You can't.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  You can.

• 1:07:50Speaker 00

  What?

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Mythbusters did a whole story on it.

• 1:07:54Speaker 00

  Mythbusters?

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  And I watched it late last night, when I suddenly had to know.

• 1:07:59Speaker 00

  We both went on two random tangents. Just wait for mine.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  Is yours about the average amount of time someone has sex? Because I went on that tangent, too.

• 1:08:10Speaker 00

  Yes! Yes!

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  Oh, my God!

• 1:08:12Speaker 00

  Okay, because there's, all of a sudden Dwight is like, "Not wasting time, not wasting time." And then he comes back, and Jim is like, "19 minutes and 48 seconds. Uh, what were you up to?" And Dwight is like, "None of your business," basically. And then it cuts to Angela Martin buttoning her blouse. Did you read the research on Business Insider?

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  I read several articles. At like midnight last night.

• 1:08:38Speaker 00

  Me too.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  On this subject.

• 1:08:39Speaker 00

  Our search history. Oh, my God. Delete our search history. First of all, the one research I read about was fascinating because they gave 500 couples.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:08:49Speaker 00

  Stopwatches. It is as awkward as it sounds. They had to hit start.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  And stop. I don't know how we talk about this, but

• 1:08:58Speaker 00

  I don't either.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  Maybe parents, if you're listening with your kids.

• 1:09:01Speaker 00

  Earmuffs for 30 seconds. Earmuffs.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, they had to record their sex time over a four week period.

• 1:09:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  And they had to press start on the stopwatch at the moment of penetration.

• 1:09:17Speaker 00

  Oh, God.

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  And they had to press stop at ejaculation.

• 1:09:22Speaker 00

  We read the same article. Oh, my God. You know what I found amazing is the range was from 33 seconds to 44 minutes.

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:34Speaker 00

  That's a huge, huge variation.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  It is. And then what was really interesting to me was I read this whole article by a sex therapist who, after doing a bunch of research, broke down the ideal amount of penetration time in a sex act. I mean, this is insane. I told Lee all last night, everything I'd read. He's like, how are you sharing this on Office Ladies? I was like, I don't know, but I found it so fascinating.

• 1:10:05Speaker 00

  I know.

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  So what she found was that in surveying the person being penetrated, that their ideal amount of penetration time in sex was anywhere from five to 11 minutes. But all of sex, they all wanted more than just penetration. So she deemed that like the ideal amount of sex encompassing more than just that moment would be around 19 minutes and that it should consist of 10 minutes of foreplay and nine minutes of actual intercourse, that she felt this was the bullseye after all of her research.

• 1:10:50Speaker 00

  Okay. Well, something I discovered in my research is that of these 500 couples surveyed, the average time was 5.4 minutes. And this was true across continents. I mean, literally, it's a global thing. And this got me to thinking, 19 minutes and 48 seconds.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:11Speaker 00

  I did the math. I think it took them six minutes to get down to the warehouse.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  Six minutes to walk down a set of stairs?

• 1:11:19Speaker 00

  Or take the elevator. It's not close. They have to go in the elevator or stairs, and they have to go down the corridor through the warehouse to that back room, open it up.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  All right, so six minutes to get there, they need six minutes back.

• 1:11:32Speaker 00

  That leaves them six minutes in the middle.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:11:35Speaker 00

  I think they had six minutes to shag.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  I mean, I think what we've discovered in all our research is you can have a really satisfying shag in six minutes.

• 1:11:45Speaker 00

  By the way, this article went on to the evolution of sex. Why is there thrusting? It was fascinating. I was fascinated.

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  Oh, the things we have learned.

• 1:11:59Speaker 00

  And shared with you all, so you're welcome.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  Well, let's get back to this Michael Holly story, okay? This whole lunch has really strained things between Michael and Holly. When he gets back, he has a talking head where he says he won't even ride the elevator with her. And then he throws her leftovers in the trash.

• 1:12:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  And then up in the kitchen, he's pouring himself some coffee. She puts her cup out. Not only does he not pour coffee in her cup, he takes the whole pot and walks out of the kitchen.

• 1:12:31Speaker 00

  She called Dunder Mifflin a workplace, and it is his family, and you do not do that.

• 1:12:37Speaker 01

  You do not. If Holly wants to use the copier now, she's gonna have to wait for Michael to copy a plaque off the wall first.

• 1:12:46Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, Holly has a talking head. Things are tense. People are suspicious of her. Her best friend in the office won't even speak to her. So now we have a little window into Holly. She really sees Michael as her best friend.

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  Now Angela, in the script, there was a scene here where Michael calls Toby.

• 1:13:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  For help with Holly.

• 1:13:05Speaker 00

  Yes, it's in the deleted scenes.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  Guys, it's so good because Toby basically says at the end of all of this, "Oh, well, Michael, I think Holly's doing the right thing. And in fact, now that you've told me, I'm obligated to report this Meredith incident to HR as well."

• 1:13:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  But that's how desperate Michael is, is he's gonna call Toby, who I guess is still in a hospital in Costa Rica?

• 1:13:31Speaker 00

  And he's still not nice to him. He calls Toby for help, but he's still not nice.

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  This is not the last HR rep that's gonna be involved. Kendall from corporate has called and Holly's gonna come in Michael's office and they're gonna discuss it with Kendall.

• 1:13:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  We had a fan question from Megan Q. Who voices Kendall from corporate HR? Kendall was played by John Hartman. Now, the role of Kendall was first mentioned in the episode, "The Job," when David Wallace mentions his dislike for the HR rep Kendall during Jim's job interview in New York.

• 1:14:12Speaker 00

  Wow, that's a major callback.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  I know, but we also brought him up again in weight loss, I guess. And here's the thing, Kendall is gonna come back two more times this season. He comes back in person in Stress Relief and Company Picnic. He's always played by John Hartman. You might recognize John. He had roles in Mad Men, Arrested Development, The Good Place, Blackish, Space Force, and Monk.

• 1:14:39Speaker 00

  Ah, there it is.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:14:41Speaker 00

  There it is. Well, you think Kendall is gonna get Holly's back, right? And agree with her. But instead, he just shuts her down. Says he doesn't really see this as a huge infraction. And what she needed to do was to get everyone through that binder. That was her job.

• 1:14:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. "We just needed you to get signatures. Are you able to get signatures or not? Because every other branch got signatures."

• 1:15:07Speaker 00

  And I think Michael feels bad. For her in this moment.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  I feel badly for her.

• 1:15:12Speaker 00

  I do too. She was doing the right thing and corporate doesn't have her back.

• 1:15:16Speaker 01

  So Holly is just gonna go out to the bullpen and say, hey, guys, I have to finish this ethics training. She has to finish reading from the binder so she can say she did it. No one is giving her any respect.

• 1:15:30Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Well, Michael's gonna step up.

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:33Speaker 00

  Because he he does feel bad for her. So he goes out there and he goes up, you don't get it. He loses it.

• 1:15:40Speaker 01

  It's so funny. Everyone goes in, she reads from the binder and the look on Michael's face as she's like reading from the boring binder. He's in love again.

• 1:15:49Speaker 00

  Well, I don't think he ever fell out of love. They had their first spat.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  I guess they did.

• 1:15:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, because Holly looks appreciative. They're both like, oh, okay, we're back.

• 1:15:59Speaker 01

  We're gonna get through this.

• 1:16:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  At the very end of this episode, we have a tag. Everyone's in the break room. They're eating steak that was clearly provided by Meredith. We had a fan question from Kelly W.

• 1:16:13Speaker 00

  Okay, Kelly, what is it?

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  During the last scene when everyone's eating steak in the break room, what is everyone actually eating? Is it prop food or actually real expensive steak? And Savie A. wants to know, Angela, what were you eating since your character is a vegetarian?

• 1:16:30Speaker 00

  I was eating potatoes.

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  That's what it looked like to me.

• 1:16:33Speaker 00

  I was eating potatoes. That's something we thought about. One of the things that Peter and Vartan shared is that our prop food was amazingly good food.

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:42Speaker 00

  That they didn't give us like kind of crappy food to eat in scenes. And Peter and Vartan would work with props, but I would have to think that Phil Shea and his team got us really good food from a restaurant.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  That was gonna be my guess. Whenever I ate food in a scene, it was delicious.

• 1:16:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  So it was probably some really good steak.

• 1:17:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  What a day at work. Hey, guys, come in and eat these steak and ribs for an hour.

• 1:17:07Speaker 00

  Angela, you can have these potatoes.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  Sorry, Ange. Well, there you have it. That's business ethics.

• 1:17:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, thank you so much to Amy Ryan.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  And thank you to James O'Carry for giving me the lowdown on Coopers.

• 1:17:22Speaker 00

  And thank you to BJ Novak for pitching Peter and Vartan and Sergio and Alan to do the DVD commentary. That was just so wonderful. If you guys love the show, you'll love these commentaries.

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  Well, I think. On that note, I might go have a volcano.

• 1:17:39Speaker 00

  And I hope all of you guys have some hardcore love in your life.

• 1:17:45Speaker 01

  For approximately 19 minutes.

• 1:17:47Speaker 00

  Or an average of six minutes.

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  That would be fine. See you next week.

• 1:17:52Speaker 00

  Bye, guys.

• 1:17:58Speaker 01

  Thank you for listening to Office Ladies Second Drink.

• 1:18:00Speaker 00

  This episode was initially created in collaboration with Earwolf.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  Office Ladies is a presentation of Odyssey and is produced by Jenna Fisher and Angela Kinsey. Our senior producer is Matt Beagle.

• 1:18:11Speaker 00

  Our Second Drinks episodes are produced by Molly Nugent.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  Our audio engineer is Sam Kiefer.

• 1:18:17Speaker 00

  Odyssey's executive producer is Leah Reese Dennis.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  Office Ladies was mixed and mastered by Bill Schultz.

• 1:18:23Speaker 00

  Our theme song is Rubber Tree by Creed Bratton.