Second Drink: Frame Toby

Today we’re breaking down Frame Toby. NOOOOOOOOOO! Toby’s back and Michael is horrified. Michael does what anybody would do to get rid of Toby, frame him with drugs and get him fired. Meanwhile, the office fights over a very disgusting microwave and Jim buys his parents’ house. Jenna does a deep dive on how to clean a microwave, Angela has a soap box moment about street names, and we find out who ended up cleaning the microwave which was accompanied by… a slow clap! 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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I have a new section on Quince that I've been shopping from. I'm now into the handbags. I got the Eloise Handwoven Clutch in a cream off-white. I love it.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  So chic.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  It was less than $50 and I needed something that was nicer for summery outfits.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Well, guess what? I have decided this is my season of the cardigan.

• 0:25Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  So I got the 100% organic cotton cropped cardigan. I got it in the camel color. It is so stinking cute and it was $49.90. Look at that.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  Oh, it's so cute.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  I know.

• 0:40Speaker 00

  I like the buttons.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.

• 0:53Speaker 00

  Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Office Ladies. It's the best way to support the show.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal from your local Toyota dealer. Make a smart buy on an all-wheel drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or get a Corolla sedan packed with the latest features, advanced tech and head-turning style. Or take a test drive in two of Toyota's most popular SUVs, the spacious, family-friendly Grand Highlander and adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid and plug-in hybrid models available across the lineup, plus efficient all-electrics like the BZ, BZ Woodland and all-wheel drive CHR, you can drive your way and skip the pump. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering. With legendary resale value, built on a reputation for quality and reliability.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  So when it's time for your next Toyota, you could trade in for more. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  Welcome to our second drink of Frame Toby.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  Frame Toby. Michael is horrified because Toby is back at Dunder Mifflin, so he's gonna try to get rid of him, obviously, by framing him with drugs that he got from Leo and Gino.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  Well, we have great behind the scenes details in this episode from our producers Randy Cordray and James Carey and writers Jen Salata and Paul Lieberstein.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  So many good nuggets. And thanks to everyone who wrote in to share their thoughts about this episode. Just a reminder, y'all, we have all of season five's episodes in a folder on our website, office ladies.com. So go in there and write us your thoughts on the upcoming episodes because we love hearing from you. And we are gonna kick off today's second drink with a theme that several people connected with. And Jenna, you and I discussed some of this in our Is Toby the Scranton Strangler Debate episode that we did.

• 3:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Well, listen to this. Julia G. from Littleton, Colorado says, "My question is, do you think the reason Michael hates Toby so much is that, deep down, he knows that Toby has it in him to become the Scranton Strangler?"

• 3:19Speaker 00

  I mean, Julia, yes.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  No, Julia, I don't think you know where I stand on this. This is our whole debate episode.

• 3:27Speaker 00

  Even if Toby was the Scranton Strangler, Michael would miss all the signs.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Well, listen, now, we've already debated this in a whole episode.

• 3:36Speaker 00

  Well, I'm not even debating if Toby is the Scranton Strangler. I'm just saying, if he was, Michael wouldn't clock it. I don't think Michael's anger at Toby has anything to do with this strangler business.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Sometimes Michael has spidey sense about people, so I don't know.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  Okay, well, maybe, maybe. Well, we also got a letter from Hannah B. from Ontario, who said, "Do we think Toby's defensive reaction to having his things searched by the cops is evidence toward him being the strangler?" But Hannah also wanted to acknowledge Creed.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  Hannah points out that Creed is clearly guilty of having narcotics in the office. And this is maybe evidence confirming his need for two chairs to access his ceiling grow operation, which I thought was very funny.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. I have to say, though, Hannah also pointed out that Toby is also normally passive and non-confrontational, and she was surprised when he got defensive, especially if he didn't have anything to hide. I'm just saying.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  What is happening right now? Are we reopening this debate?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  We are not, but we did get mail that made me laugh about it. But we also got a fan mail flurry, lady.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  Yes, we sure did. We got a fan mail flurry from Damon H., Leighton R. from California, Miranda D. from Australia, Joyce S. from Oklahoma, who all wrote in to say that their favorite scene from this episode is when Michael sees Toby is back and screams, "No."

• 5:08Speaker 01

  And Yasmin Y. in Dallas, Texas, said, "Did you know that there is a YouTube compilation video which has Michael's 'No, no' in clips in multiple languages?"

• 5:20Speaker 00

  I did not know that.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Yasmin says, "It's hilarious. Look it up if you haven't seen it," since neither of us had. Lady, I pulled the clip, but there's a lot of people yelling "no" at you in different languages. So let's hear three of them.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  No, God! No, God, please, no! No! No! No!

• 5:49Speaker 04

  Hi, Michael.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  Nein, Gott! Nein, Gott, bitte, nein! Nein! Nein!

• 6:02Speaker 04

  Ciao, Michael.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  No! Oh, Dio! No, Dio, ti prego, no! No! No! No!

• 6:12Speaker 03

  Привет, май. Нет, Боже! Нет, Боже, умоляю, нет, нет, нет! Нееееее!

• 6:23Speaker 00

  It's literally funny in every language. It literally is. It's, you know what it is? I think it's, some of it is the timing and the emphasis, which is all Steve Carell.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, he laid the template for that beat and they follow along perfectly.

• 6:39Speaker 00

  Yes. Brilliant.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  But it is funny. It is funny in multiple languages. Oh, another storyline people really enjoyed was about the dirty microwave in the kitchen and how no one wanted to clean it or take responsibility for it. And Jenna, you shared how to properly clean a microwave and many people wrote in about it, lady.

• 6:57Speaker 00

  Really?

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Yes. Mike F. from Canada said, "I never thought I'd say this, but thanks to Jenna and Office Ladies, my microwave is now nice and clean."

• 7:09Speaker 00

  Well, you're very welcome. You know, lady, we also got a lot of folks who wrote in because they loved your idea to call our mom detective show Bush Hiders because of how we said we might have to hide in bushes on a stakeout. Jules H. said, "I'm tardy to the Office Ladies podcast party, but got to this episode today and I'm literally cracking up at everything Bush Hiders. You two are amazing and my cheeks hurt from laughing." Thank you, needed this. And Alessandra S. said, "Is there a Bush Hiders yet?"

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Um, I had completely forgotten about this Bush Hiders conversation. That really cracks me up. Um, can you imagine? Can you imagine us going into some big TV studio and being like, "We've got the show for you. It's called Bush Hiders."

• 8:03Speaker 00

  I think we'd sell it.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 8:05Speaker 00

  I think it would sell in the room.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness. Well, that was a real joy.

• 8:10Speaker 00

  Well, everyone, this episode is full of all kinds of fun stuff. And so now, without any further ado, here is our second drink of Framed Toby.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  I'm Jenna Fisher.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  And I'm Angela Kinsey.

• 8:25Speaker 00

  We were on The Office together.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  And we're best friends.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  And now we're doing the Ultimate Office Rewatch Podcast just for you.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  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.

• 8:38Speaker 00

  We're the Office ladies.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  Hi, Angela.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Hello, lady.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  We're not in the studio together today, are we?

• 8:48Speaker 01

  We're not, but you look like you're in a fancy studio.

• 8:52Speaker 00

  I am in the fancy New York offices of Stitcher.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Get out. You're in New York City.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. And guess what, lady?

• 9:03Speaker 01

  What?

• 9:03Speaker 00

  Guess what?

• 9:04Speaker 01

  What?

• 9:05Speaker 00

  Our picture is on the wall here.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  In New York?

• 9:08Speaker 00

  Yes, in the New York offices. They have our Office Ladies picture on the wall. I took a picture with it.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Ah, that's so cool.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  I know.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  We have photos in two cities.

• 9:17Speaker 00

  In two cities. That's the big time.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  We're bi-coastal.

• 9:22Speaker 00

  We are.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Right now, wait a second. Right now, we're bi-coastal.

• 9:25Speaker 00

  Office Ladies has gone bi-coastal.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  That feels real boss, lady.

• 9:28Speaker 00

  It does. I like it.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Me too. Well, since we're talking about being in offices, Jenna, guess who's back at Dunder Mifflin?

• 9:36Speaker 00

  Toby.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Well, not everybody's happy about it.

• 9:39Speaker 03

  No, God. No, God, please, no. No. No. No.

• 9:49Speaker 00

  That's right. Today, we are talking about Frame Toby. It is season five, episode nine. It is written by Mindy Kaling and directed by Jason Reitman.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  That's a good duo.

• 10:01Speaker 00

  I'm going to give you a summary.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  I was hoping you would.

• 10:03Speaker 00

  Michael reacts poorly to the revelation that Toby is back at the Scranton branch.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  I like the use of the word poorly.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  I know. That's an understatement. So he and Dwight hatch a plan to frame Toby for drugs that Michael has purchased from the two Vance Refrigeration employees, Gino and Leo. Pam is incensed by a mess that is left in the microwave by one of her coworkers, we don't know who. She leaves a pointed note, which elicits mixed reactions from the fellow employees. Meanwhile, Ryan breaks up with Kelly, and Jim surprises Pam with the news that he bought his parents' house for them.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  That's a lot.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  It's a lot.

• 10:51Speaker 00

  These headphones are tight.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  The headphones are tight in New York. I fixed them. Do you want a different pair? No, I fixed them. Okay.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  You guys, that was Jared in New York.

• 11:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. Jared is the Sam of New York.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, Sam, say hi.

• 11:07Speaker 05

  Little dig at LA there and our loose headphones.

• 11:10Speaker 00

  Why?

• 11:10Speaker 01

  She likes them loose.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  I like a loose headphone.

• 11:13Speaker 05

  In that case, take that, Jared.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  Jared's all squeezing my brain with the headphones here in New York. Should we go into fast facts?

• 11:22Speaker 01

  I think we should.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  All right, fast fact number one. You might remember, because we shared this earlier, that NBC ordered 28 episodes for season five. It was our longest season.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  I remember, Jenna, when we wrapped season five, we all got sick.

• 11:38Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Like, we all got the flu or something, because I remember the next week, like, texting a few people, I'm like, I have a cold. And Kate was like, yeah, me too. Like, I think our bodies were just like, [chewing].

• 11:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. A standard network television season usually runs on television from September to May. We work from July to March, right? So that we can get the episodes ready. And a standard television schedule is usually where you do three weeks on, one week off of filming. So usually, a show will take one hiatus week a month, but the writers always continue to work for that week. That week off is meant so that the writers and the producer, they have a sort of catch-up week, because they're constantly writing, prepping, editing, delivering the episodes. They would have these episodes in multiple forms. They're like, doing an

• 12:30Speaker 00

  outline for one, but they're writing another, they're punching up another one, they're doing post-editing on another one. They've got like, five episodes going at once. We would just like, be like, what are we filming this week?

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:42Speaker 00

  This year, with this crazy 28-episode season, Steve Carell also had a commitment to do a film. I think it was Get Smart, and he needed like, a six-to-eight-week break from the show in the middle of that July-to-March filming schedule, so he could film Get Smart.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  How did we ever do that?

• 13:02Speaker 00

  In order to do that, we had to film 19 episodes in a row.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  That's when we got sick. That's when we got sick. I just have a memory of a bunch of us getting a cold bug. That was it.

• 13:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. So Frame Toby was right in the middle of this crazy 19-episode schedule.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Oy, oy, oy.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  And here's why I think this is significant. It's really crazy to me that they decided to bring Toby back in the middle of this 19-episode stretch. Because remember, he was now our showrunner because Greg was doing Parks and Rec.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  So Paul Lieberstein is now showrunning and acting in an episode.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  Again, because they gave him that break, and now they're like, sorry bud, you need to be Toby again.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  You're back in the mix.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  So I reached out to Jen Salata, who was running the show with him, and I said, do you know why you did that? Did you just want Paul to never sleep? What was your plan there? And she said, she can't remember exactly the reasoning, but because Holly had left, they were either gonna have to cast someone new or bring Toby back. And that dynamic between Toby and Michael was so beloved. She said, as a fan of the show, she wanted Toby to come back to that role. As a co-showrunner, she was freaked out at the idea of Paul having to wear both hats. But she said he did it so well. And Paul said he doesn't remember sleeping a lot.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Aww.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  But also, he enjoyed doing it. You know, he liked his time on set with us.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Well, I love Toby coming back just because watching Michael spiral is delicious.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  This is one of my favorite episodes of the season for that reason. So thank you, Paul, for doing that.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  For Paul, but thank you.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  My fast fact number two is a big thank you to James Carrey because he gave us the shooting draft for Frame Toby.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Yes, James. This was so fun to watch it with the shooting draft. Jenna and I were texting each other and calling each other like, oh, my God, that's not in. But this is. But did you see that? It was really fun.

• 15:10Speaker 00

  And this is a particularly amazing episode to have the script for because this microwave runner, the dirty microwave runner, it was much bigger in the original script.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Yes, and it was full of Angela and Pam's stuff.

• 15:24Speaker 00

  Yes, so we get to share about all that today. So, thank you, James Carey.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Thank you, James Carey.

• 15:30Speaker 00

  We are also going to have some great location details, thanks to Randy Cordray. He told me all about Jim and Pam's new house.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 15:40Speaker 00

  And I have to share something that Randy said in his email to me when I reached out to him about this episode. Are you ready?

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 15:48Speaker 00

  He said, "A particular delight of looking forward to your questions each week is that I get to revisit each episode to refresh my memory of what we collectively accomplished." Here's what his process is when I write him an email.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 16:02Speaker 00

  He says, "My process is to reread the shooting draft, watch the episode, watch any deleted scenes, and listen to any commentary that might have been recorded."

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Randy, this is what I do every week. This is what Jenna and I are doing.

• 16:17Speaker 00

  That's what I said. I said, "You are an office lady."

• 16:21Speaker 01

  You are an office lady. And Jenna, every time you email him a question now, I'm gonna be like, "Don't ask him that. I don't want to send him down a rabbit hole."

• 16:28Speaker 00

  I know, but he really said he's really been liking it. And remember when our podcast for Weight Loss came out and Randy wrote us that night's email?

• 16:36Speaker 01

  He wrote us the most lovely email.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was just like, "Ladies, you nailed it. You got every bit of information that could be known about how we did that engagement scene with the rain and the parking lot. I'm so proud of you two."

• 16:49Speaker 01

  I know. It was like we got an email from our dad. That's how I felt. Like dad thought we did a good job.

• 16:54Speaker 00

  I know. I want Randy's respect.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  I do too, because I respect him. Look what he's doing. Just off an email of questions, we gotta have him on the show. He's gotta come on. He's an office lady.

• 17:04Speaker 00

  We need to have Randy and James come on.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:08Speaker 00

  Because they worked together. Okay, future revisit it, everybody.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Did you hear that, Randy and James? I guess that's my serious tone. What am I doing? Did you hear that? You're coming on the pod, fellas.

• 17:18Speaker 00

  I'm gonna move us into Fast Fact number three.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  I think the world is gonna be grateful for this Fast Fact because I was grateful for it.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Oh no, somebody did a deep dive.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  This is how to clean a microwave.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Oh, Lord.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  This episode's about dirty microwaves and I thought, how could we clean this microwave?

• 17:41Speaker 01

  This episode is about dirty microwaves.

• 17:46Speaker 00

  All right, Ainsley Bubaco, our associate producer, helped me with this and I love it. Here is how to clean a real dirty microwave.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  All right, get a microwave safe bowl. Fill it with two cups of water and two tablespoons of vinegar. Now, side note, if you'd like, you could add a drop of your favorite essential oil. If you want.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  If you want to be fancy.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, you can clean your microwave fancy or regular.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:13Speaker 00

  Now, turn the microwave on, obviously, put the bowl in the microwave, and then put it on high for five minutes. You want it to get real steamy in there.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:22Speaker 00

  That's what she said. After it's done, don't open the microwave door for 15 minutes.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Why? Because you'll burn yourself or something?

• 18:31Speaker 00

  No, because that makes all the baked on grime sort of soften.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  And then you can wipe it off?

• 18:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's step three, wipe it off. Just wipe it out. Done. Your microwave is clean. You're welcome.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  You're welcome.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  That's it. We can go to break. You can clean your microwave while you listen to some advertisements. Or if you're listening on Stitcher Premium, you won't have time to clean your microwave because it's ad free.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Oh, well, let's take a break because Jenna just told me the bathrooms in New York are real far from where you're sitting.

• 19:03Speaker 00

  They are, and you need a key.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 19:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Well, in LA, it's a porta potty on the side of the road, so I'm gonna go.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Sam is applauding. All right, guys, we'll be right back.

• 19:18Speaker 00

  We'll be right back.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Well, we are back and everyone's real excited because there's brownies in the conference room.

• 19:33Speaker 00

  Every time I worked in an office and someone brought in a baked good, it was a whole exciting moment.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Heck, yeah.

• 19:39Speaker 00

  I loved it.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  We're not sure why there are brownies, but everyone's real happy about it.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  It's true. We had a fan question from Jessica L. that says, "Why are there brownies in the conference room?" At the beginning of the episode, was it someone's birthday? And then Jessica would like to know, "Did Angela bring the brownies?" Because we've heard a lot of references to Angela's famous brownies.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:02Speaker 00

  Well, I looked at the script.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:05Speaker 00

  Because I had it.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 20:07Speaker 00

  It says, "Phyllis is giving away brownies, but there is no further explanation as to why." But it does make a note that Angela is not eating the brownies.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, in the script, Pam is like, "Angela, why aren't you having any?"

• 20:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Pam, a little bit of a [BLEEP] stir.

• 20:24Speaker 00

  Andy says, "She's dieting. My baby's trying to fit into a child-sized wedding gown for our big day."

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 20:32Speaker 00

  And Jim says, "Why? And why do those exist?"

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then Angela says, "It's from my pageant days. I was Miss Tiny Mid-Atlantic Bride when I was 10."

• 20:43Speaker 00

  What?

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Was Angela's childhood?

• 20:46Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Seriously. And you guys, remember, this is a callback. Remember Performance Review, season two? Angela had a talking head where she said, and I quote, "I actually look forward to performance reviews. I did the youth beauty pageant circuit, and I enjoyed that quite a bit. I really enjoy being judged. I believe I hold up very well, even to severe scrutiny."

• 21:08Speaker 00

  Well, we know that you won Miss Tiny Mid-Atlantic Bride when you were 10.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. And that's my wedding dress. There it is.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  I wonder how many more of these that you won? I wonder, were you a big winner in your mind as the character of Angela? Do you think she won quite often?

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Yes, I think that Angela Martin like peaked at 13.

• 21:33Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Like she was it. She won all of like the young pageant, junior pageant, and then she retired.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  I see. Okay, let us move on. While we're in the conference room, Kelly is gonna take two brownies.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  One for Toby.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  Right. And Michael kinda scoffs at this, but nobody else seems to think it's a joke.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, he calls her a weirdo. He's like, whatever weirdo.

• 21:59Speaker 00

  I know, and Jim is like, Michael, Toby is back. And Michael's like, okay. And so he walks back to the annex and no one's there, but then suddenly someone is there, and it is Toby.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  It's Toby. I want you guys to know at 1 minute 23 seconds, as Michael turns to see Toby, and he has that look of horror in his face, if you look at the wall behind him, you will see that there are three framed sort of things on the wall for Toby. There is an award for Toby Flinderson, a certificate of achievement, and a diploma from the California Coastal College. So Jimmy, he had been back long enough to hang up his framed items. And in the script, Toby had a talking head where he said this, "I've been back for six days. I think I've even talked to him."

• 22:51Speaker 00

  I wish that stayed in.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 22:53Speaker 00

  I wish so much it had stayed in.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  For my background catch, folks, the California Coast of College, I don't think that's a thing. I Googled it, I couldn't find it. I did find the California Coast University, which is a private online university based in Santa Ana, California.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  There you go, my background, people.

• 23:14Speaker 00

  Well, we got a lot of fan mail. People wanted to know if Michael's screaming no and all of that was improvised, or if it was in the script. In the script, it just says, "Michael turns and screams," in all caps.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  But that whole like, no, no, God, no, that was Steve. That was Steve's interpretation of that script note.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  And how funny was that? You guys, if you read that you scream, I think most of us would just be like, ah, right?

• 23:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  But Steve made a meal out of that moment.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  In the best way.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  He's a comedy genius.

• 23:50Speaker 00

  Yes. You know, Screen Rant did a list of the top 15 pop culture references created by The Office, and the meme of Steve saying no is one of them.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  I don't doubt it. I have been online where I see people that I don't even know, like respond to other people with just Steve's face going, no.

• 24:10Speaker 00

  It's amazing.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Well, the episode starts and Michael is spiraling. He's gonna call David Wallace. He's watching stupid Toby as he shows his stupid photos of Costa Rica to Phyllis.

• 24:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, he manages to get David on the phone by texting him 911. Call me. But you know what? Michael said he's learned that people will not return his calls unless he texts 911.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  And now everybody does because they think something horrible has happened. So.

• 24:38Speaker 00

  I had a pager when I first got to LA.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  So did I.

• 24:41Speaker 00

  You had to because you didn't like really have cell phones. You had a pager. And the only reason you had a pager was so that your agent could page you if.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  You got an audition. And then you would have to go find a phone.

• 24:55Speaker 00

  You'd have to find a payphone.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  And call them back. Yeah.

• 24:57Speaker 00

  I used to keep a Ziploc bag full of change in my car for two reasons. One, for all of the metered parking that didn't accept credit cards, just coins. And two, so that I could find a payphone and call my agent back when my agent paged me, which was maybe twice a year.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I remember one time distinctly, I was driving through Santa Monica with some friends, and my pager went off and I almost swerved off the road. Because I was like,

• 25:26Speaker 00

  My career is happening. I've hit the big time. I've been paged.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  We were supposed to be going to the beach. I was like, no, we can't do that now. I have to find a payphone. So we're all like driving the streets, looking for a payphone. I pulled over, I ran up to the payphone. I put my quarters in, called them, and they were like, all right. Have you ever needed any kind of glasses? I'm like, what? No? And they're like, we have an audition for you for LensCrafters. They would like people who wear glasses. I'm like, that's not me. All right. Bye.

• 26:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's pretty much it. But then I did have a boyfriend once who was not calling me back.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Did you light up that pager?

• 26:09Speaker 00

  I sure did with a bunch of 911s. You know it.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Did you really?

• 26:15Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I did.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Were you a psycho girlfriend?

• 26:20Speaker 00

  You know what? He was cheating on me that night.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Oh, so you knew? You knew?

• 26:26Speaker 00

  I knew it. We broke up after that.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 26:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  I wouldn't light up the pager. I'm like, sitting here calling you psycho. I wouldn't light up the pager, but I would drive over and like hide out in a bush.

• 26:38Speaker 00

  That's so much more elaborate than texting 911. Here was my plan. I was like, I know he's cheating on me, so I am going to light up that pager and make it buzz. So that while they're, whatever they're doing, the pager's just like

• 26:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm just gonna ruin their good time. He probably just turned it off.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  I guess I'm just gonna jump out of a bush and be like, hey, what are you doing?

• 27:03Speaker 00

  Gotcha.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Now I'm gonna go home because I've got twigs in my hair and I'm embarrassed.

• 27:09Speaker 00

  Is this a plotline for mom detectives? Should we set mom detectives in the past where all we have are pagers and bush hiding?

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Yes. Oh, bush hiding.

• 27:20Speaker 00

  Uh oh. That could be something else.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  What's wrong with us? Can we call it Bush Hiders?

• 27:27Speaker 00

  No. We can't. It doesn't even make any sense.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  It doesn't make any sense.

• 27:34Speaker 00

  You go pitch it. Hi, our show, it's called Bush Hiders.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  And if you don't want to buy it, you're in a [BLEEP] because this is gold.

• 27:41Speaker 00

  And they're like, what's it about? And we're like, it's two mom detectives.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  It's two older women in comfortable clothing.

• 27:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, we're not wearing any designer clothes. We want like 30 minute wardrobe sessions.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  It won't be fitted. And we want a lot of old tech that no one watching it will really understand.

• 28:00Speaker 00

  And we're gonna hide in some bushes.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:03Speaker 00

  Do you want it?

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, where are we?

• 28:09Speaker 00

  We shouldn't have shared that on the air because someone's gonna steal it. I guarantee you in two years, you're gonna turn on HBO Max and there's gonna be two 20-year-olds starring in a show called Bush Hiders. Mark my word. Mark my word. And they're gonna be young, hot detectives in designer clothes.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 28:28Speaker 00

  That's how it works in this business.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 28:31Speaker 00

  I'm not jaded. All right. Should we move on? What's happened to me in New York? Who am I here?

• 28:37Speaker 01

  I don't know. You just took a big swig of coffee and you're like, that's how it works in the business. Well, listen, you know what? David Wallace tells Michael he's just gonna have to deal with it.

• 28:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  And he couldn't believe that one of his employees had been back so long and he didn't know. And Dwight and Michael let him know that the annex is icky. It's icky back there.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. And he really wants David to get rid of Toby. And David says, I can't get rid of him without cause. And Michael says, he has cause. It's because I hate him.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Because?

• 29:09Speaker 00

  But that is not, obviously, cause.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Well, they're gonna find something. But Jenna, another issue is happening.

• 29:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  It's a day of drama in the office.

• 29:18Speaker 00

  Pam is preparing food in the kitchen and she discovers a mess in the microwave.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Jenna?

• 29:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Did you see what Pam was preparing?

• 29:27Speaker 00

  I know what Pam was preparing.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Share.

• 29:31Speaker 00

  This is maybe one of my most frequently asked questions outside of what was in the teapot note.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  No way.

• 29:38Speaker 00

  Yes. People are like, what is Pam microwaving in the episode with the dirty microwave? Here are some guesses. We got mail. Here are what people are guessing that I was microwaving.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  Apple juice.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  A probiotic drink.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  Egg whites, bone broth.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  Soup, milk, porridge, and yogurt.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Well, I had no idea, so I looked at the script, but Jenna, you tell us.

• 30:07Speaker 00

  It's egg whites.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  It's egg whites, which I, by the way, knowing my BFF in real life, thought was kind of fitting.

• 30:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, because you can buy egg whites in these little cups. And that's what she's doing. She's going to microwave herself some egg whites. A lot of people also asked, what was in the microwave? That is also in the script.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 30:29Speaker 00

  And it just says, like, a saucy mess, basically.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  I typed it out. It says, Pam opens the microwave door to put in some egg whites, but the microwave is splattered all over with red sauce.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Now we're in the break room, and what would we title this? Jim's Exposed in the Break Room? No, that doesn't sound good.

• 30:49Speaker 00

  Exposure in the break room.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Exposure in the break room. Andy, I guess, has peepers like a hawk and read Jim's email and found out that Jim is buying his parents' house and hasn't told Pam.

• 31:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, or as Kevin puts it, the same house he used to pee the bed in.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Phyllis thinks it's romantic until she asks Jim where it is. Jim says it's on Linden Ave. And Phyllis makes a face, and then in the background, you see me kind of roll my eyes like, ooh. I looked up Linden Ave in Scranton. I couldn't find a Linden Ave. I found a Linden Street, but it's sort of like in the heart of the city. There's like shops and churches and definitely no quarry nearby.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  Oh, hmm, interesting. We got a lot of questions from, for example, Brittany Y. and Jenner B. Whose house did they use for Jim's parents' house? Was the interior a set or was it the actual house that they used for the exterior? This is where Randy Cordray really came through for me, Ange.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  Bring it home, Randy.

• 31:50Speaker 00

  I remembered that it was two different houses. We used one for the interior and one for the exterior. And Randy said that our location manager, Kyle Alexander, Had found several choices and that Randy had really hoped that they could find a single residence that they could do both interior and exterior, just because it would be so much easier to shoot at just one location. But it didn't work out that way. Randy said everything they looked at either worked for the interior, but not the exterior or vice versa. So for the exterior, we used an occupied home on Calvert Street in Van Nuys, California.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  But the interior was not suitable to shoot. This was because it was absolutely adorable inside.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  And it needed to look a little janky.

• 32:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was so cute. And when we were shooting there, they would let John and I step in to the house to kind of get our makeup refreshed and touched up, but we would just stand right inside that front door and then we would go back outside again. And that was it.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  And it was cute inside?

• 32:58Speaker 00

  Oh, my God, it was so cute. It was decorated like, oh, like an English professor's home, like just

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Cozy.

• 33:08Speaker 00

  Cozy, literary, bookshelves, just beautiful, kind of restored home inside. So great.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  I did something similar one time on this show called Haters Back Off. We filmed the exterior in one house and the interior in another. And when we were filming the exterior, it was cold and kind of misty raining and they let us step inside just the front room.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, same.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  While we waited, right? We didn't go throughout their house at all, but we stepped in the front room and I was with Steve Little and we weren't really sure what to expect. We opened the door to step in and there was maybe 4,000 tiny dolls.

• 33:45Speaker 00

  What?

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  What?

• 33:47Speaker 01

  There were dolls in cases, all kinds of fancy dolls in every kind of case you could imagine, cases on the wall, little case stand on the ground. They were everywhere. And Steve and I stood right on the other side of the door and we're like, Okay, so somebody likes dolls.

• 34:04Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh, I would be like, run.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  I know.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  Run now.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  I was like, okay, all right.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  If you have that many dolls, there's a very good chance that one of them is gonna come alive and try to kill you. I mean, if we've learned anything, one of them is possessed.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  One of them is possessed, and you know who's on the case? The mom detective.

• 34:23Speaker 00

  The mom detective, we got that covered!

• 34:25Speaker 01

  We got it covered. We'll hide in the bushes, we'll figure it out.

• 34:28Speaker 00

  That's right. So this house was so cute. What Michael Gallenberg did, our set designer, he added a broken rain gutter to the outside. He changed the front door so that it would match the other location.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 34:44Speaker 00

  Where we go inside. And he also added that swinging screen door that bangs into the overhead awning.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Oh, that was really funny.

• 34:53Speaker 00

  I know. And then they also asked the homeowner to turn off their sprinklers for a week, leading up to the shoot, to make the grass look kinda dry and weather beaten. And they did. They kinda killed their lawn for us, thank you. Now, for the interior of Jim's parents' house and for the garage scenes, they found an unoccupied home on Allot Avenue, which is also in Van Nuys. It was only a few blocks away from the other house. And for this one, they went in, they added the shag carpeting, they added the wood paneling, they changed the front door, like, they bought a front door and they put it on both houses, so it would match, you know? So he was able to go in and completely set design the interior of the home.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Is it A-L-L-O-T?

• 35:36Speaker 00

  A-L-L-O-T-T.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  And you say it a lot, or Allot? Allot.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  Allot?

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Allot.

• 35:46Speaker 00

  So from everything I said, the thing that we're gonna discuss is the street name, and how to pronounce it.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  I want you to know something. Whenever I think about, like, where I'm gonna live, I think about the name of the street and having to tell it to, like, the pizza delivery guy. I live on Allot. Allot. A-L-L-O-T. No, not Allot. Not Ellet. Allot. I play it out in my head. You guys don't do that?

• 36:10Speaker 00

  Clearly, you'd rather live on Calvert Street.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Calvert, yes.

• 36:15Speaker 00

  Much easier for you to get your pizza on Calvert.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  That's right. I'm not spelling that every single time.

• 36:22Speaker 00

  This is like how strongly I felt about pockets and women's clothing. This is your soapbox moment, Angela.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can't tell you like how many times I've had to spell my street name out. It's annoying. Not gonna say it. Don't need the creepers.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  You don't want anyone in your bush.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  I don't want anyone. Well, I might want someone in my bush, but I.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  I think he already lives with you.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  I think, oh geez, Louise.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  I don't know what's happening.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 37:00Speaker 00

  Should I go to New York more or less?

• 37:02Speaker 01

  I don't know. I don't know.

• 37:05Speaker 00

  All right, we had some more questions because Jim, during the stocking head, he's showing us his parents' house. And Sam Kay would like to know, please explain the clown picture in Jim's parents' house. Please explain.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  In the script, it just says, Jim examines a hideous painting of some clowns putting out a fire. He tries to pull it off with all his might. Nothing. Jim grimaces. Randy Cordray told me that that clown painting was provided, it was made original for us by one of Phil Shea's go-to artists. He did not have the artist's name in his files, so we'd like to put it out there. If you are listening and you are the person who painted the clown painting, will you contact us on Office Ladies Pod? We want to know more.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 38:01Speaker 00

  But Randy Cordray said that the artist actually provided them with multiple preliminary choices. And that Mindy, Greg, Paul, and Jen all had to stand and look at multiple clown paintings. And that's the one they chose.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  That was their job that day.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, pick the clown painting.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  How was your day? I had to pick a clown painting.

• 38:26Speaker 00

  So crazy.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  It cracked me up that it was on the wall like that and that he couldn't remove it because I feel like that's such a dad move. You know, it's like that moment where your mom is like, that painting is always tilted. It's always tilted. And then your dad goes and super glues it to the wall because he's tired. Of it tilting. It just made me laugh. I wanted to know the story behind why they bolted it down.

• 38:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. What is the story there? There's a story. We don't know what it is exactly.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  We don't know.

• 38:55Speaker 00

  Well, now, guess what? Oscar and Andy discover a note on the microwave. It's a very shaming note.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  It is.

• 39:07Speaker 00

  They think that the note is worse than the mess.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Angela likes the note.

• 39:12Speaker 00

  She does. Meredith thinks that the person who wrote the note is definitely rich and should get off their high horse. I love this moment with this note on the microwave.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  I do, too. It's so relatable. If you have ever worked in an office, there is at least once in your time of working in that office, a note stuck to something about something that people are like, eh.

• 39:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. And also, the note where the person leaving the note has clearly reached their limit.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:42Speaker 00

  They can't take it anymore.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  No, the note is masking a deep, like, river of anger. They're just pissed.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  Well, I think this is such a fun moment because we get to see Pam and Angela in agreement about something. I think Pam starts to doubt her note a little bit when she realizes that Angela's on her side. Do you think?

• 40:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do.

• 40:07Speaker 00

  Well, the cool thing is that this moment at the microwave would have continued. In the script, there are two talking heads here, one from Pam and one from Angela. And lady, I thought we could read them.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  I did, too. And they really further the story. It's so fun.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  Okay, here was Pam's talking head from the script. She's holding up the note. This is the front of the note. And then it says Pam holds up a memo. This is the front of my latest office memorandum. This can only lead anyone to believe that I wrote the note, which I did.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  And then immediately, it would cut to Angela's talking head. And this was what was in the script. Everyone keeps asking if I wrote the note on the microwave. It was so perfectly worded and a little bit snotty. I wish I had written it.

• 40:59Speaker 00

  Now, there were even more candy bag talking heads, which we'd filmed as well, and they ended up in deleted scenes. But these are the two that were in the script.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Yes. And you guys, what cracks me up as well, I don't know if you noticed this. Not only are Pam and Angela kind of oddly on the same side of this argument. Did you notice Jenna that they're dressed alike?

• 41:21Speaker 00

  Yes. I noticed that Pam is doing that thing that Angela always does where she wears like a weird short sleeve sweater over a blouse.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  They both have V-neck, short sleeve sweaters over short sleeve blouses. Angela's is like brown on brown and Pam's is black over purple. But what the, what is this short sleeve sweater?

• 41:44Speaker 00

  I have to believe that was a genius wardrobe choice by Alicia Raycraft.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 41:50Speaker 00

  Cause that is funny.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  I screen grabbed them. I'm going to put them on side by side in stories.

• 41:56Speaker 00

  Well, we got a fan question from Maddie and Laura. They asked, in the episode, both Pam and Angela agree that the note on the microwave was acceptable and correct. Where do you guys stand in real life as Jenna and Angela? Note or no note?

• 42:15Speaker 01

  You go, you go first.

• 42:16Speaker 00

  You go. Why are you making me go first?

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Oh, I'll tell you what, I'm probably a no note. I'll just sort of like stew and resent you forever. I'm probably a no note. But here is my reaction to the note. When I see the note, I'm like, you know what? You needed that, whoever you are, out in the world. You needed to get it out. So I'm okay with it. One time Jenna, I'll never forget this. I was in high school and I had finally gotten my driver's license and we went to the mall. You know, you're going to go to the mall. And I think Jenna, because I was so excited, I had my friends in the car with me. We're at the mall. I was a little distracted and maybe I didn't do the best parking job.

• 42:55Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  And after our day of going to Claire's boutique and hitting up 579, maybe the candle store. We go back out to my car and there is a note.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  I'm so sorry. You, you bought candles as a teenager? It goes that far back for you?

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love a candle. And the candle store-

• 43:14Speaker 00

  Teenage Angela went to the mall and she went to the candle store.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  She loved Yankee candles, Jenna.

• 43:20Speaker 00

  Okay. I'm so sorry. Go on, you get to your card.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Yankee candles, it was right next to the Hallmark store. I could get myself a card, maybe a knickknack, go get a candle.

• 43:31Speaker 00

  I'm sorry, how old are you? You're, you're like, you're 16 in this story.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  I've been a grandma my whole life. Anyway, I walk back out to my car with my friends. This is my first outing in my car to the mall.

• 43:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  There's a note under my windshield wiper.

• 43:49Speaker 00

  What's it say?

• 43:50Speaker 01

  This is what it said. "Hey dickhead, next time leave me a can opener so I can get into my car."

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 44:05Speaker 00

  I was like, what?

• 44:06Speaker 01

  I must have sandwiched the guy's car. I don't know.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Oh, but you know what? I was like, he needed that. Whoever he or she was, they needed this. They needed to get it out. Okay.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  So basically where you stand on notes is you wouldn't write one yourself, but you don't have a big kind of reaction. You don't take them personally when they're out. You sort of like that person needed to get it out.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Think about the time it takes to sit down and write a note or type it out and print it on a piece of colored paper like Pam did. She had two different colors. She had black ink. She had red ink. It was on a yellow piece of paper. She clearly needed to be heard in this moment.

• 44:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  So I would just hear her.

• 44:55Speaker 00

  Would you clean the microwave if it was dirty?

• 44:59Speaker 01

  I probably would.

• 45:00Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  I would probably just clean it. Cause I mean, who needs, and then it's done.

• 45:05Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  I would just clean it. If I go into the little kitchen here at Earwolf and there's like a mess around the sink and it's not my mess, I just wipe it up.

• 45:13Speaker 00

  Here's what I would do.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Okay. You look very serious. That's why I'm like, okay.

• 45:18Speaker 00

  Well, I'm thinking about it in my head. I'm really trying to, you know, ask myself, who am I? What would I do? I'm a problem solver, right? So if I kept going in the kitchen and there kept being a dirty microwave and there was no system in place for who cleans it, I would want to create that system or create that rule.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  A hundred percent, Jenna. You would make a chore wheel.

• 45:43Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  And we would all like on Mondays, I would be in charge of cleaning the office sink.

• 45:48Speaker 00

  Yes. Or it's Monday Microwave Day. We'd give it a fun name. And that's the cleaning day and it would rotate around. And, you know, part of that would be the cleaner you keep the microwave, the less work on the day you have to clean it. So it'll incentivize us all to keep a cleaner microwave because no one's going to want to clean it on their clean day.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  I like that very much about you. You're solution based.

• 46:16Speaker 00

  I am.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Well, in the script, the microwave storyline continues. There is now another note on top of Pam's original note and it says this, "Hey, anonymous coward who left the note, be a man. Spend less time writing notes and more time cleaning up the microwave."

• 46:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then it continues. Throughout the episode, there would have been more notes piling up on the microwave, not just on the microwave, they're on the cabinets.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. They ran out of space on the microwave. They're taping them to the cabinets around the microwave.

• 46:50Speaker 00

  There are so many notes that clearly people have written multiple notes because there's not even that many people in the office to weigh in on this, right?

• 46:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:58Speaker 00

  So here's one of the notes, "Hey, whoever was bashing the first note, grow up. The microwave is filthy and no one here is a maid."

• 47:05Speaker 01

  And then there's another one that says, "You are all a bunch of idiots and privileged ass wipes who weren't raised right. If I find you, I'm going to knock your teeth out." That's got to be Meredith, right?

• 47:17Speaker 00

  Do you think it's Creed?

• 47:19Speaker 01

  I think it's Meredith.

• 47:20Speaker 00

  I mean, Meredith is the obvious choice, but I think we could find out that Creed wrote it. Lady, I think we should take a break because when we come back, Michael is about to serve up some high caliber acting. I mean, watch out Kurt Russell.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, Michael Scott's coming for you.

• 47:39Speaker 00

  He sure is. All right, we'll be right back.

• 47:51Speaker 00

  It's time for Michael to do his best. This is Michael's best. Michael approaches Toby's desk to welcome him back. He's asking questions about Costa Rica. Toby says it was amazing, but he came back because it was kind of hard to meet people. It was hot. But Michael can't stand it. He cannot stand this incredibly innocent small talk with Toby.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  No, he can't. He goes back to his office. He has this talking head where he's like, I tried, I tried, I tried to talk to Toby and be his friend, but it's like trying to be friends with an evil snail.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  I want to know who in the writers' room came up with evil snail because it's so funny.

• 48:34Speaker 00

  It's such a good description of Toby.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Such a good description. And then he goes on to say he feels like Neve Campbell in Scream 2, and he has this very funny talking head where he learned a lot, I guess, from the Scream movies. But Jenna, there was another talking head in the script. So the one you see with the Neve Campbell.

• 48:51Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  That was not in the script. So that must have been an alternate talking head they handed him on the day.

• 48:56Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  In the script, this is Michael's talking head, it's almost the same right up until the evil snail.

• 49:03Speaker 00

  So evil snail was in the script.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  Yes, evil snail was a keeper.

• 49:08Speaker 00

  We've always had that.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  But this is how it changed in the script. The last four months without Toby have been absolute bliss. I fell in love with a beautiful blonde woman. I fell out of love. I tried scallops. The office was broken into. I became a father. I grew a goatee. The Olympics were a great success for China, and now that I've tasted freedom, I can never go back. I'm going to kill him. No, too far. But I will do something. No, too little. I will get rid of him.

• 49:35Speaker 00

  Oh, I like it.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  I love his breakdown of what all happened, and I love that he included he grew a goatee.

• 49:43Speaker 00

  Me too. It's true, in fact, that Michael is going to try to get rid of Toby. He is looking for fireable offenses.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Dwight says there are two that he can find in this binder, workplace violence or sexual harassment.

• 49:59Speaker 00

  So I guess Michael's first plan is to try to get Toby to sexually harass Pam. He goes up to Pam's desk, he hands Pam a note, and he says, "Go give this note to Toby. Don't read it. Don't read it." Pam reads it.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:16Speaker 00

  In the note, it's written as if it's from Pam, and it says, "Please hug and kiss me. No matter how much I struggle, I'm too shy to confess my love to you."

• 50:26Speaker 01

  Can you imagine if Toby had read that note?

• 50:29Speaker 00

  His brain would have exploded.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, that doesn't work.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Pam's like, "No, I'm not going back there."

• 50:37Speaker 00

  So now, the new plan is to get Toby to beat up Michael.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they march back to the annex, and Michael's sort of confronting Toby and trying to sort of, you know, antagonize him to hit him, and Dwight's like, "Hit him!", and then Kelly jumps in so quickly. "Hit him!"

• 50:55Speaker 00

  I know. First of all, her and Ryan were making out.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:58Speaker 00

  That they've stopped making out so that they can weigh in, and they're for a fight. They're like, "Do it. Hit him. Hit him." Toby refuses. It's not working. None of these plans are working. So you know what they're gonna have to do?

• 51:13Speaker 01

  They're gonna have to go big.

• 51:14Speaker 00

  They're gonna have to frame Toby for drugs, like on The Shield.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  I love that Dwight said, "I've framed many animals." I framed a raccoon opening a Christmas gift.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  Oh, Dwight.

• 51:28Speaker 00

  Well, Michael thinks it sounds mean, but sometimes the end justifies the mean.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  That's such a good line. It's such a good line. It's so smart. It's smart funny.

• 51:39Speaker 00

  It reminds me of this gem, "I'm not superstitious, but I'm a little bit stitious."

• 51:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:46Speaker 00

  That it's right in line with that.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  So, yeah, Michael's gonna go and hit up Leo and Gino over in Vance Refrigeration for some drugs. They give him what they say is two pounds of weed, and they want $500. Michael has $500 in his wallet?

• 52:04Speaker 00

  I thought the same thing.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  That's a lot of cash in your wallet. And for my background catch people, did you see the Lackawanna Library Card? In Michael's wallet? Yes, when he opens his wallet, there's a Lackawanna County Library Card.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  Do you know what I found recently when I was cleaning out my closet?

• 52:23Speaker 01

  What?

• 52:23Speaker 00

  Pam's wallet.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  You did?

• 52:26Speaker 00

  And in it, there's a credit card that says Pam Beasley. There's all these cards they made for my wallet, my prop wallet.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  I'll take a picture. We'll put it in pod. Yeah, we have to put it in stories. That's so fun.

• 52:40Speaker 00

  How crazy is that? They did that. That's how detailed Phil Shea was.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 52:45Speaker 00

  If you had a prop wallet, it reflected your character. Although, is Michael going to the library and why? What's that for?

• 52:53Speaker 01

  I mean, I feel like Michael's probably had that library card for like 20 years in his wallet.

• 52:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Maybe there was a time where he didn't have internet and he'd have to go to the library. Oh, wait, we didn't have internet.

• 53:06Speaker 00

  I know.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Maybe he used to go to the library to make copies because the copier in the office is crap.

• 53:12Speaker 00

  We'll get to that next week.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:15Speaker 00

  So, and you know how when sometimes we're watching an episode or we're breaking down our document to prep to do the podcast, we'll get curious about something and we'll do a deep dive?

• 53:25Speaker 01

  Did you do one on something?

• 53:27Speaker 00

  I didn't. Our associate producer, Ainsley.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  Ainsley, what'd you deep dive?

• 53:33Speaker 00

  This is what she wrote me. She said, "According to a regrettable Google search, the price of one pound of recreational marijuana in Pennsylvania ranges from $1,900 to $2,550." She had to know. She was like, okay, they're selling Michael two pounds of weed for $500? Ainsley got curious. How much is a pound of weed in Pennsylvania?

• 54:00Speaker 01

  And now I looked and we shot this in September of 2008. So how much was it in 2008?

• 54:06Speaker 00

  I'm not sure, but today, that's going to run you quite a bit of money. With today's prices, Michael got a deal because it would cost him close to $5,000 to get two pounds of weed today. I also want to say that's clearly not two pounds of anything in that baggie.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  No.

• 54:25Speaker 00

  It's green, but it's not two pounds. I mean, two pounds, I have two pounds of things all over my house, like two-pound weights, two-pound bag of flour. That's not two pounds of anything.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  It's not.

• 54:38Speaker 00

  I've had a two-pound bag of spinach in my house before. It's much bigger than that. It takes up the whole Crisper drawer.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  You're very passionate about painting a very clear picture of what two pounds is.

• 54:49Speaker 00

  I mean, it's so glaringly obvious that that's not two pounds. There are so many signs that Michael is missing.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Don't get Jenna started.

• 54:57Speaker 00

  Don't get me started on what two pounds of something is.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  I'll tell you about my two pounds of spinach.

• 55:04Speaker 00

  I just ordered two pounds of Epsom salts, and that was a large package as well.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  What are you making?

• 55:10Speaker 00

  Warm soothing bath.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Well, listen, we're about to find out that Pam has an ally in this whole microwave business.

• 55:19Speaker 00

  Does she? She has Ryan, who's pretending to be an ally, and he's laying it on thick, and I love it.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, he says, "I'm totally on your side." But the truth is, he went to make a cup of noodles, and the microwave is still a mess. And he wants her to clean it up. And she delivers some real Pam sass.

• 55:37Speaker 04

  Hey, Pam, I just wanted to let you know, I'm totally on your side with the whole microwave situation.

• 55:43Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 55:44Speaker 04

  I was just back there to make some cup of soup. The thing is still a huge mess.

• 55:47Speaker 06

  I know. Can you believe it?

• 55:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's crazy. But I guess the thing is, at some point, notes are no notes. Someone's gonna have to just get in there and clean it up.

• 56:00Speaker 06

  I guess that's why we have a temp, huh?

• 56:04Speaker 04

  Oh, no, trust me, I would just make it worse.

• 56:06Speaker 06

  How would wiping it with a paper towel make it worse?

• 56:08Speaker 04

  I would find a way.

• 56:10Speaker 06

  You've seen things cleaned before, though, right?

• 56:12Speaker 04

  I, Pam, I am hopeless at that stuff. I, I...

• 56:15Speaker 01

  I mean, that's some good Pam sass.

• 56:18Speaker 00

  That was all scripted. I know it sounds like Jenna sass. It was scripted. I just brought myself to it.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  You brought some real truth to it.

• 56:26Speaker 00

  I did. Well, Ange, we got a lot of fan questions asking, "Who did clean the microwave?" Because this never gets wrapped up. We never find out. Did it get clean? Who cleaned it? This would have wrapped up. It's in the script. And we filmed a big scene that would have explained all of it.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  It was a fun scene, too.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  It was, and it has a great Pam Angela moment at the top.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it starts with Angela. She's storming in from the kitchen. She's super ticked off. And she's holding up a note. Someone has drawn a penis on the note. And she confronts Pam.

• 57:04Speaker 00

  I know. She thinks Pam drew the penis.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Why does she always blame Pam for this kind of stuff?

• 57:10Speaker 00

  I don't know. Here's how it went. Pervert.

• 57:16Speaker 00

  Angela, I didn't do that.

• 57:17Speaker 06

  So is this what they taught you at your fancy art school?

• 57:19Speaker 00

  Why would I draw a penis on my own note?

• 57:21Speaker 06

  Why do you wear bright colors? For attention, Pam.

• 57:25Speaker 00

  Everyone, I have an announcement to make.

• 57:30Speaker 00

  I'm the person who put the first note on the microwave.

• 57:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, Pam comes clean. And I remember shooting this because Pam kind of goes on to take charge of the room. After she admits that she wrote the note, she's like, "And I guess I just have to say, what's so wrong about the note? Why is everyone so offended by this note? Shouldn't you be more offended by a consistently dirty microwave?" She gets on her soapbox. It's Pam's soapbox.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  It's Pam's soapbox. And you guys, as an actor, when we got to have a moment where we commanded the whole bullpen, it was exciting. And also, we were like, kind of terrified.

• 58:09Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  Because you're in charge of like, the pace of the scene. This only happened to me a handful of times when Angela makes a big announcement or something. But I remember Jenna watching you, and you were so good in this moment. Because everyone is like, throwing you little curveballs. You know, Oscar and Stanley and Kevin, you know, they're all kind of sassing you.

• 58:27Speaker 00

  And you know, the last time that I had a scene like this was back in Beach Games, when Pam was going to confront the whole group about her feelings and how they didn't come to her art show. But in this instance, people were interrupting me, and they're coming at me. And I got such a window into what Steve's everyday was.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:48Speaker 00

  At one point, the group starts hazing Pam about being in New York. And Pam gives this speech that kind of takes Jim off guard. And I think we should hear it.

• 58:58Speaker 03

  Listen, New York, that might fly.

• 59:02Speaker 00

  Why? Because I went to New York for three months? That and the black sweater, Manhattan. OK, yes, I went to New York, everybody. I'm not going to apologize for it. I experienced more there in one week than I experienced here in three months. I love New York. You know, I especially love that people there cleaned up after themselves.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  Well, Jim has just heard her say all that.

• 59:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, and the camera is pushing in on his face. And he's realizing, at the end of today, he's going to tell her he bought them a house in Scranton. She's not going back to New York anytime soon. This place she loves.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  I really wish this moment had made it into the show because I feel like it just sets up the stakes for Jim because he's doubting his decision from the very beginning. Did I do the right thing? Is she going to like this? I don't know. And I feel like he needed to hear this. And I feel like the audience needed to hear it.

• 59:49Speaker 00

  I do, too. I think it's a shame that it got cut out. And you know, at the end of this whole scene, Pam says, "Fine, I'll go clean it." So it is Pam, in the end, who cleaned the microwave.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Yes, in the script, the very last line of this big scene says this. Pam marches over to the kitchen and Stanley starts to slow clap.

• 1:00:13Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  We had a slow clap that didn't make it.

• 1:00:19Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, that's right. Oh, that's bringing back that memory of me walking to Stanley's slow clap. Mm-hmm. So good. It's time for Michael to plant what he thinks is two pounds of marijuana in Toby's desk. And at the same time, Dwight is going to call the police and report that there is a drug dealer named Toby Flenderson on the premises. And when asked to give his name, Dwight says his name is Andy Bernard.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Dwight is gonna throw Andy under the bus any chance he gets. There was this deleted scene, Jenna, that for Michael to be able to have the time to go plant the drugs, they needed to get Toby away from his desk. So Dwight asked Toby to show him his photos from Costa Rica. "Let's go to the conference room. I'll look at your photos." Toby is thrilled that someone wants to see his photos. And then Michael sneaks off to plant the drugs. But in true Michael fashion, he can't keep this secret. He has to share with someone that he might have just done something. This is what he said.

• 1:01:23Speaker 03

  I think it's really cool that he wanted to see my photos.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  What's this for?

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  Pink thing on that white oval? That's me. I was boogie boarding. Wait, who took this picture? Did you make some friends? Oh, I hired a local kid to snap it. Tell me about this monkey.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. I'm not, I am not at liberty to talk about it. Let's just say that I somethinged something in somebody's something. And if discovered, then someone will get somethinged. I may have said too much. He can't not say anything.

• 1:02:02Speaker 00

  He can't. Containment is not his strong suit.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:02:05Speaker 00

  And then I have to say, that scene with Dwight and Toby, to me, it sounded like Rainn Wilson improvising questions trying to stump Paul Lieberstein.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Jenna, you're not wrong. I'm looking at the script right now. The part with what's the red thing crawling on that oval? That was scripted.

• 1:02:23Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  But the tell me about this monkey is not in the script.

• 1:02:27Speaker 00

  Okay. Also, what about that question, who took these pictures?

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  That's in the script.

• 1:02:32Speaker 00

  Oh, it is?

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:33Speaker 00

  That's a funny line.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  The improv moment is the monkey.

• 1:02:36Speaker 00

  Okay. Now the police arrive and they are gonna look into this possible narcotics situation. Pam doesn't know anything about it. Dwight's gonna take charge.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  And then Michael starts freaking out.

• 1:02:49Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  And then they realize it's a Ziploc of maybe like, what, a Caprese salad?

• 1:02:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. It looks like there's definitely some cheese in there. And some salad dressing.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:00Speaker 00

  I'll have you know, the police officers were played by Patrick Fawcett and Michael Harity, and neither of them have been on Monk. I checked.

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  Oh, good call to check, though.

• 1:03:11Speaker 00

  Also, can we talk about how when the police first arrived, Creed stood up?

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:03:17Speaker 00

  As if he was gonna be handcuffed.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  And then put his hands behind his head?

• 1:03:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  And then his talking head where he's like, "Just keep talking to me until the police leave."

• 1:03:26Speaker 00

  I love it.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  So good.

• 1:03:28Speaker 00

  I love it so much. We got some fan mail. Brooke L. said that Toby seemed very concerned about police officers searching his desk. Could this be because they might find evidence of him being the Scranton Strangler?

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:03:42Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  At 16 minutes, 27 seconds, we have a very rare side-by-side talking head.

• 1:03:51Speaker 00

  So rare. How did they get through it?

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  I don't know. Michael and Toby, side by side.

• 1:03:57Speaker 00

  I know.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  I would have loved to have been a fly on a wall in that talking head, because you know. I looked for the bloopers. I was like, "Shirley, surely there's something on the blooper reel."

• 1:04:05Speaker 00

  I looked too!

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  Yes!

• 1:04:07Speaker 00

  Because I was like, "I know these guys. I know Steve and Paul together," and they were as tickled by the Toby-Michael relationship as the audience was, as we all were.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Yes, and they would mess with each other. You remember in a scene, there's a blooper where Toby has to hand Michael a piece of paper, and Steve and him start cracking up because Paul wrote [BLEEP] you on it?

• 1:04:27Speaker 00

  Yes!

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  So I know they were giving it to each other, and I wish there were some bloopers from this.

• 1:04:34Speaker 00

  There is footage somewhere, for sure.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  Somewhere.

• 1:04:36Speaker 00

  Well, listen, in the annex, Ryan and Kelly are making out again.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Oh, it's such a sloppy makeout, too.

• 1:04:44Speaker 00

  It is.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  Not that a tidy makeout would have made it any better at work.

• 1:04:49Speaker 00

  Exactly. Well, Ryan wants out. He doesn't want a sloppy makeout. He doesn't want a tidy one. He's going to Thailand with some friends from high school. A high school. You know, he has to break up with her, because if he doesn't, he'll always resent her. If he didn't go, he would like them to be adults about it. Maybe they could have sex one more time. And does she have any cash?

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  That "let's be adults about it, but we could also have sex one more time"? I think that's such a dude move.

• 1:05:17Speaker 00

  I feel like I've heard that so many times.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  I know!

• 1:05:20Speaker 00

  "Do you want to have some goodbye sex?" No.

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  No, just goodbye. Get your sorry ass out of here.

• 1:05:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:30Speaker 00

  Fan question from Gracie R., when Ryan is telling Kelly he's going to Thailand, why are they both wearing different clothes? I'll tell you, Gracie, because this scene was originally supposed to be the tag at the end of the episode, and it was meant to be a new workday. So in the script, this scene was not during the same day that we were framing Toby. It was the next day. But in editing, they moved it up, and we are going to end instead with a delicious Dwight Talking Head. We'll get to it. But first, Jim needs to show Pam what he's done.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  That's right. Jim is nervous but excited. He is, as my daughter says, nervicided. And she's like, why are we stopping at your parents' house? And he says, I bought it. And then Jenna, at 18 minutes, 2 seconds, Jim says, let's go inside. I'll show you inside. What? Has Pam never been inside the house?

• 1:06:32Speaker 00

  We got so much mail about that. People wrote in. They said, if Pam knew they were at Jim's parents' house when they pulled up, wouldn't that mean she's been there before and she's probably been inside?

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  You would hope Pam has been inside his parents' house. They've been dating for a while. They live in the same town.

• 1:06:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it's interesting because his parents have moved out, but they've left some furniture. Also, how rough were they on this house?

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  I know. And Jim says, I was helping my mom out. Where's his dad?

• 1:06:59Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  I have a lot of questions.

• 1:07:02Speaker 00

  There were a lot of questions. Rachel M. and Megan L. said, question for Jenna. In this episode, when Jim is showing Pam his parents' house, I was wondering what went into how you decided to play this scene? Because she seems really worried and unexcited, but then in the end, she says she loves it. Any input you could give about how you decided to play this or what the director told you would be super appreciated. Well, guys, we've already discussed my personal opinions on someone buying someone else a house without telling them. So this was a little bit of a mental gymnastics for me to get Pam to the place where she's

• 1:07:43Speaker 00

  going to say she loves it and where she says that line, I mean, you bought me a house. Because it was like not how I would react as Jenna, you know, I had to really play the character and play the character's truth. And in the script, I was being told that my character's truth was that she loved this gesture and it made her feel loved.

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I mean, I think we often did that. Obviously, we had to play the truth for the character. I mean, I hope you guys know I'm not very much like Angela Martin and how I would react to things, but it made sense to me, Jenna, for Pam, you know, and Jim made the garage into this art studio and he's really putting down some roots with her. And I think Pam wanted a family and she wanted all of these things that Jim is offering her. She had wanted that.

• 1:08:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, I had thought a little bit back on The Talking Head where Pam discusses what her perfect home would look like, how she always wanted a home with a terrace.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:50Speaker 00

  You know, picking her home seemed like something that Pam was attached to. So I did bring that up. I said, you know, we've established that Pam has daydreamed about what her home would look like. And now this person has taken her out of the process.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  You brought that up to the writers at the time of when we were filming?

• 1:09:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so I was saying, like, help me understand why Pam now is so happy and so excited. And Angela, we got to exactly what you just said, which was that it was a vulnerable thing for Pam to give up the art school track. And she did that because of two reasons. One, graphic design wasn't what she meant she wanted to do as an artist. And two, she's ready. She's very, very ready to start living this married life, to be in the season of family and marriage with this man that she's been waiting years for.

• 1:09:55Speaker 00

  And so this home is her fast track to that season of her life and she's just ready.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  And you know, they're going to get to fix it up together. So there's still that element of nesting that's going to get to happen. And so that's kind of what I was thinking was like, I'm ready.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you have to think, when Pam talked about her dream house with this tower and the terrace and all of that, she was in an unhappy relationship. When you're in a place, you feel stuck in life or you're unhappy, you daydream. And you daydream about these fantastical things. And there are coping mechanisms. And then when you're with someone you really love, you don't need the fantasy anymore.

• 1:10:40Speaker 00

  That's such a good point, Angela.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  You're just ready to have a life.

• 1:10:43Speaker 00

  And she's ready to have that life.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:46Speaker 00

  Now, we did get some mail about that garage. Katie C. and Chris G. said, "When Jim is showing Pam his parents' house, he says the garage has great lighting. He then proceeds to open a windowless garage door, revealing a completely windowless garage space." Where's the great lighting, Jim? Where?

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  Okay, well.

• 1:11:06Speaker 00

  I thought that was really funny.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  That is really funny. I want you guys to know that I have a garage that we use as a home office. And for a long time, we would just raise the door. And then there would be amazing light, you know? So it did get great light, but you had to raise the door. And then years later, we actually just removed the door because we're like, this is never going to be a garage again. You know, we've sort of made it into this little home office and put an actual sliding glass door. But I get it. It does have great lighting. You just have to open it up.

• 1:11:40Speaker 00

  But he does present it like this garage has great lighting, as if the other garages that you open, the whole side of the building, wouldn't have great lighting. He's presenting as if it's like a special feature.

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:55Speaker 00

  That kind of applies to every garage that doesn't have like a giant tree planted in front of it, which it wouldn't because it's a garage.

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  Right. Most garages are just boxes with no windows.

• 1:12:06Speaker 00

  I have to tell you two things about shooting these scenes at the house. The scene where Jim is trying to take the clown painting off the wall for Pam is one of the hardest I've ever laughed on the show. It is the second hardest time. The first was when we did the scene in Dinner Party, where Michael's showing us the tiny TV on the wall. This is the second. Every time John tried to lift the painting on the wall, I could not stop laughing. I don't know what it was, tears, tears choking on our laughter. We laughed so hard. I looked for it in the bloopers and it's not there and I'm so upset it's not there. It took us like an hour to shoot that tiny moment of him.

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  Trying to take.

• 1:12:51Speaker 00

  Trying to take.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  The painting off the wall.

• 1:12:54Speaker 00

  The painting off the wall.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  John is also so funny at physical comedy.

• 1:12:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  I laughed out loud when he peeled back that fake wood paneling and it kind of startled him.

• 1:13:03Speaker 00

  Yes. So then at the end of the scene in the garage, when we're hugging, I improvised the line, "What about the clown?" And it made John laugh and that's why he's like burying his head into my neck. And then when he said, "Yeah, I can't do anything about that," it made me laugh and so I'm like smushing my face into his shoulder. You can totally tell we're breaking and that's why it was because we were still, anytime we brought up the clown painting, we lost it.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  I loved that moment. It made it intimate and funny and sweet.

• 1:13:37Speaker 00

  I think it's time to talk about the greatest Dwight talking head of all time.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  That's saying a lot because there are some amazing Dwight talking heads, but this one really is like top five.

• 1:13:48Speaker 00

  He's going to describe his perfect crime and I think we have to hear it.

• 1:13:53Speaker 04

  What is my perfect crime? I break into Tiffany's in midnight. Do I go for the vault? No, I go for the chandelier. It's priceless. As I'm taking it down, a woman catches me. She tells me to stop. It's her father's business. She's Tiffany. I say no. We make love all night. In the morning, the cops come and I escape in one of their uniforms. I tell her to meet me in Mexico, but I go to Canada. I don't trust her. Besides, I like the cold. Thirty years later, I get a postcard. I have a son and he's the chief of police. This is where the story gets interesting. Interesting. I tell Tiffany to meet me in Paris by the Trocadero. She's been waiting for me all these years. She's never taken another lover. I don't care. I don't show up. I go to Berlin. That's where I stash the chandelier.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do not know how Rain got through saying, this is where the story gets interesting. I know. Every time I watch this episode, I laughed at that line and I watched it like three times.

• 1:14:51Speaker 00

  This entire Talking Head was scripted and it was delivered as scripted. I think this is one of the most brilliantly written pieces ever. It's just so good.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  It's so good. And who better to deliver it than Rain Wilson as Dwight? It was just perfect.

• 1:15:08Speaker 00

  I agree. There you have it, everyone. That's Framed Toby. Did you have anything else, Angela?

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  I don't have anything else. I do want you guys to know because Jen and I both watched the bloopers. Next week on The Surplus was one of the hardest I've ever laughed in a scene.

• 1:15:24Speaker 00

  Oh, I can't wait. Thank you so much to Randy Cordray, James Carey, and Jen Salata and Paul Lieberstein. I traded some emails with them as well. Man, that was fun.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  That was a delight. I will be trying to clean my microwave using your method.

• 1:15:40Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  And we'll see you here next week.

• 1:15:45Speaker 00

  I'll be back in LA next week. I wonder, will I bring New York Jenna home with me? We'll see.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  I don't know. New York Jenna might get the E next to our podcast. Sorry.

• 1:15:56Speaker 00

  What can I say? See you next week, guys.

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  See you next week.

• 1:16:04Speaker 00

  Thank you for listening to Office Ladies Second Drink.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  This episode was initially created in collaboration with Earwolf.

• 1:16:11Speaker 00

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

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  Our Second Drinks episodes are produced by Molly Nugent.

• 1:16:21Speaker 00

  Our audio engineer is Sam Pfeifer.

• 1:16:23Speaker 01

  Odyssey's executive producer is Leah Reese Dennis.

• 1:16:26Speaker 00

  Office Ladies was mixed and mastered by Bill Schultz.

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  Our theme song is Rubber Tree by Creed Bratton.