“The Office” is the funniest live-action sitcom in production and NBC’s highest-rated half-hour series. Its 4th season, on shelves today, began with the Scranton branch’s former intern Ryan Howard serving as everyone’s new boss, with employees Jim Halpert and Pam Beesley carrying on a secret romance, and with branch manager Michael Scott ramming over one of his own employees with a car. Subsequently we saw corporate malfeasance, money woes, GPS misadventure, depositions, a dinner party, a nightmarish bed-and-breakfast, a hobbit-like executive, knee-touching, a number of new romances and several brushes with the law.
Five of the 14 season-four episodes are double-sized, so the set feels like it's holding a full season despite the interruptive 100-day writers strike.
The set is a must-watch for its deleted scenes, usually just as funny as the not-deleted scenes. There’s so much "lost" material it's like getting nine or ten never-aired bonus episodes. Another key highlight is the hour-long “Writer’s Block” panel taped at last year’s “Office” convention in Scranton.
DELETED SCENES:
4.1 “Fun Run” (16:20) The staff suggest the injured Meredith sue Michael. Kelly reels from losing Ryan. Michael suggests Meredith was drunk. Kevin tries to smoke out the secret Jim-Pam romance. The staff visits Meredith in the hospital. The staff, reeling from the death of Sprinkles, discuss faith. Dwight discusses how to put down Meredith if she has rabies. Dwight texts Angela. We meet Michael’s pediatrician.
4.2 “Dunder Mifflin Infinity” (14:57) Michael shows off his GPS and deals with an angry Jan. Michael describes his new boss as a cut of veal. Ryan humiliates Michael with his new authority. Kelly gives Michael advice on Ryan. Dwight lists the only important inventions. Michael assigns Dwight to investigate “ageism.” Michael briefs the staff on Confucius. We meet Toby’s cute (and maybe fake?) girlfriend. Creed continues his scheme to appear younger. The accountants realize their jobs are in danger. Ryan, while explaining why living in New York is better than visiting, learns that Pam is off the market. Dwight, shaken perhaps by his watery mishap, visits Angela.
4.3 “Launch Party” (9:17) An addled Dwight explains his new beard and why he will defeat the defeat the computer. Pam gives tea-bagging advice. Creed reveals he knows a mole-person. Dwight tries to intimidate the hostage pizza guy. Kelly catches Toby breaking the rules. Andy reveals how he got into Cornell.
4.4 “Money” (13:43) Jan visits. Todd Packard is referenced. We see more of Michael’s night job selling diet pills by phone. Mose has a very odd conversation with Pam. Andy reveals his designs on Angela. Oscar learns more about Michael’s finances. Kelly gives Darryl a present. Michael confuses compact discs with certificates of deposit. Jan talks Michael off the railcar. Jim & Pam watch Mose work the trampoline.
4.5 “Local Ad” (8:06) Michael rejects a Toby ad idea that everyone else likes. Michael repeatedly insults Pam’s looks. Michael pitches ideas to Jim. Angela reveals she has appeared in a prior TV commercial. We see more of Dwight and Jim’s second lives.
4.6 “Branch Wars” (5:09) Jim offers an impression of Stanley. Andy applies for admission into the Finer Things Club. We learn what the other staffers think of the club. Pam acts all jealous about Karen. Dwight reveals he cut a chunk out of his penis for nothing. Andy gets a very funny rejection letter, and we learn more about why he got into Cornell.
4.7 “Survivor Man” (5:30) Ryan discloses what he really thinks about “green initiatives.” Michael invites a horrified Pam camping. Michael sends for Jim. The staff discuss birthdays. In the woods, Dwight repeatedly dupes Michael.
4.8 “The Deposition” (8:12) Michael buys something to help with his testimony. Michael makes an opening statement just prior to his deposition. Michael starts talking like Borat. Jim practices table tennis against Creed, who learned the game overseas. Andy offers to stretch Jim. Michael reveals what’s in Jan’s medicine cabinet.
4.9 “Dinner Party” (8:43) Michael outlines his strategy for meeting Angelina Jolie. Dwight runs down his ideal dinner-party guests. Jan explains what happened to Michael’s neighbor’s dog. Jim and Pam sneak food. Michael tries to abate some crying. Jan makes a drunken confession. Angela has semi-kind words for Andy.
4.10 “The Chair Model” (8:36) Dwight hands Michael a bill. Michael explains Jan’s baby carriage. Michael tries to find dating material among his staff’s single friends. Michael discusses Jim with Pam’s landlady. Kevin and Andy try to get to Bob Vance through Phyllis.
4.11 “Night Out” (5:45) Ryan tells Pam it’s not necessary to call him “Mr. Howard.” Trapped staffers watch “The Other Boleyn Girl” on an iPod. Jim tries to share blame with Pam. Ryan’s hobbit-like pal explains his position. Michael, Dwight and Ryan share pillow-talk.
4.12 “Did I Stutter?” (11:18) Kelly convinces Pam to wear her glasses all the time. Michael takes elaborate measures to avoid Stanley. Michael threatens Stanley at length with a letter of reprimand. Ryan beans Pam with a bagel. Toby and Ryan team to destroy Jim. Michael fails to implement Darryl’s advice. Pam hatches a plan of vengeance.
4.13 “Job Fair” (8:11) Michael’s blank sheet of paper plan yields little success. Oscar reveals he had a Kim Basinger poster over his bed. Pam stumbles across her ex’s football trophies. Michael gives away some card stock. Jim explains his strategy of bringing Andy on the golf outing. Oscar rescues a girl from a lifetime of horror.
4.14 “Goodbye, Toby” (13:20) Kevin fails to sell Phyllis on Scrantonicity II. Jim exhibits an awareness of Toby’s interest in Pam. The hobbit-like Troy visits the Scranton branch. Dwight admits annoyance with Troy’s “magical riddles.” Jim finds Ryan’s beard wanting. Kelly predicts Ryan’s fate. Bob Vance increases the Toby-party budget. Oscar has a culinary brainstorm. Angela blindsides Phyllis. Amy Ryan’s Holly frightens Michael. Michael cuts Toby’s big moment short. Phyllis reveals she never spoke to Toby.
COMMENTARIES:
4.4 “Money.” Episode writer-director Paul Leiberstein (making his directorial debut here), writers Michael Schur (who reprises his role as Mose Schrute) and Jennifer Celotta, and Rainn Wilson, Jenna Fischer, Melora Hardin and Brian Baumgartner. Learn that Shrute Farms Bed & Breakfast went up on the Trip Advisor website for real. Learn that Jenna Fischer’s rule for Pam’s hair and make-up is that she never spends more than 30 minutes on it. Learn that all the Shrute Farms material was shot in one 14-hour day at Disney Ranch. Learn that showrunner Greg Daniels cried when he read the part about Pam spotting Mose in the outhouse.
4.5 “Local Ad.” Episode writer B.J. Novak, episode director Jason Reitman (“Juno”), writer Anthony Ferrell, Ed Helms, Leslie David Baker, Creed Bratton and Craig Robinson. Learn that the original idea was to have two of the show’s writers play the ad men. Learn that showrunner Greg Daniels considered reshooting the opening titles for season four (perhaps to reflect Ryan’s new look). Learn that Novak’s brother wrote one version of the jingle.
4.8 “The Deposition.” Episode writer Lester Lewis, writers Ryan Koh and Lee Eisenberg, Rainn Wilson, Jenna Fischer, Melora Hardin, Brian Baumgartner and Ed Helms. Learn that members of Ryan’s posse always has to be shorter than he is. Learn that producers debated using CGI for the ping pong balls (and did for the final shot with Mose). Learn that Jim apparently owned three different cars during season four. Learn that an early draft of this episode featured a subplot in which Dwight gets stuck in a wall. Learn that the New York reception area was redressed as the deposition room in the same episode. Learn that the prop people filled every page of Michael’s diary with entries they believed Michael really could have authored. Learn that the home-office cafeteria was actually the Universal Studios commissary. Listen as Helms demonstrates his Tom Brokaw impression.
4.12 “Did I Stutter?” Episode writers Justin Spitzer & Brent Forrester, episode director Randall Einhorn, series writer Gene Stupnitsky, Rainn Wilson, Jenna Fischer, Leslie David Baker and Kate Flannery. Learn that Fischer has 20-20 vision in real life and that producers mulled giving her contact lenses that would blur her vision so that she really needed real eyeglasses. Learn that the SUV Dwight buys from Andy belonged to series hairstylist Kim Ferry, and that she ended up selling it to a fan on eBay. Learn that Dwight’s org chart employed symbols indicating each staffer’s ethnicity (Toby’s name had a Star of David and a question mark next to it). Learn that it was not the writers’ intention to portray Toby, who reprimands Jim at Ryan’s bequest after rubbing Pam’s knee, as evil.
OTHER EXTRAS:
* “The Office Convention: Writers’ Block” (52:52) At last October’s “Office” fan convention in the real Scranton, Pa., writers Greg Daniels, Lee Eisenberg, Mike Schur, Jennifer Celotta, Justin Spitzer, Ryan Koh, Gene Stupnitsky, Jason Kessler, Mindy Kaling, B.J. Novak, Lester Lewis and Anthony Ferrell and non-writing unit production manager Kent Zbornak discuss the creation of the series. When asked how many years the documentary crew can follow the lives of the “Office” workers, Daniels points out that “Hoop Dreams” shot for six years. Kaling leads the gang in a hilarious song about Paul Leiberstein’s computer skills. Celotta (who reminds me a lot of singer Aimee Mann) reveals that Schur is the one who comes up with the funny names, and Schur explains how these names can confuse set designers. Mindy Kaling points out that according to “Office” cannon, a Scranton Branch employee named “Tom” shot himself just before the fictional documentary crew shot its first day at the Dunder Mifflin offices. The writers speculate that Ryan might have been Tom’s replacement and that it may have been Tom’s suicide that lured the crew to the Scranton branch. When somebody asks whether Jim or Pam started at the Scranton branch first, Daniels admits that an early episode established that Jim was there first, but a later one established that Jim had lunch with Pam on his first day. (Daniels says he’s sticking with the Pam-first continuity because he liked Jim’s story about his first day.) Kaling reveals that “That’s what she said” is still used a great deal in writer’s-room conversations, but there’s no longer any joy in it.
* “Blooper Reel” (22:39) The entire cast at one point breaks out into the “Office” theme, but mostly they just break out into laughter. See Steve Carell reduce a room to hysterics with his Borat impression. See Ed Helms dutch-oven Angela Kinsey!
* “Summer Vacation Promo” (3:02) A supersized promo broadcast a week before the 4th-season premiere reveals what the characters did over the summer. Michael says about “Ratatouille”: “I didn’t buy it.”
* “Michael Scott’s Dunder Mifflin Ad” (1:24) The insanely conceptually complex and much too long effort in its entirety.
* “Rabies: The More You Know” (:24) In a public service announcement, Steve Carell reveals that rabies kills more than 4,000 American every 1,000 years.
* A 38-page “table draft” script for “The Dinner Party,” printed on actual paper.
“Cheers,” which occupied the “Office” timeslot on NBC a quarter-century ago, is even funnier than “The Office” and was as sharp in its antepenultimate season as it was in its first. In season 10 both Sam and Rebecca tumbled into the thrall of baby fever, Frasier made out a will and led the guys on an ill-fated road trip, Carla inherited a crystal ball and fell for upstairs nemesis John Hill, a back injury transformed Norm into the Cranes’ permanent house guest, Cliff introduced his girlfriend to his mother, Sam gave up pranking, Henri and Woody both proposed to Kelly, Woody took up gravedigging, Harry Connick played Woody’s brother, Emma Thompson made her appearance as Nanny G (not to be confused with Nanny McPhee), Rebecca insisted Norm pay his bar tab, Sam considered returning to pro baseball, Frasier lost Lilith’s beloved lab rat and Cliff confronted Johnny Carson over “stolen” material. The season ended with Rebecca nearly destroying Woody’s wedding by insulting the help.
“Quark” was NBC’s 8-episode 1978 sci-fi spoof about a spacefaring garbage-scow. The series was created by screenwriter Buck Henry (“The Graduate,” “Candy,” “Catch 22,” “The Owl and the Pussycat,” “What’s Up, Doc,” “Day of the Dolphin”), who in 1965 co-created “Get Smart” with Mel Brooks. Part of the post-“Star Wars” wave of small-screen spaceship shows that included “Buck Rogers” and the original “Battlestar Galactica,” the sitcom gained a cult following in part becasue it mocked specific “Star Trek” episodes, including “The Deadly Years,” “The Enemy Within,” “Shore Leave,” “The Ultimate Computer” and “Mirror, Mirror.” Its crew included a cowardly, slapped-together robot, a Spock-like plant-man and a hermaphrodite. The girls who played the Doublemint Twins played the ship’s helmsman and her hot clone navigator. Hans Conried played the voice of The Force-like Source in episode two; the great Ross Martin played the Ming-like Zorgon The Malevolent in a two-parter.
Honey West , the original Veronica Mars, was a hot blonde P.I. who began life in the 1957 novel “This Girl For Hire,” and fought crime over 30 half-hour episodes on ABC. She wore bikinis and tear-gas earrings, tore around in a convertible sportscar and (one year before ABC’s introduction of “The Green Hornet” and “The Avengers”) was the first character on an American TV series to utilize martial arts. Honey was played in the 1965-66 series by the fabulous Anne Francis, who a decade earlier had cavorted as the beminiskirted Altaira Morbius in “Forbidden Planet” and five years earlier played the shopper menaced by mannequins on “The Twilight Zone.” If you’re into action girls, they don’t come any cuter.
“It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,” which deals with 7-year-old Linus Van Pelt thoroughly confusing the traditions of Halloween and Christmas, delivers big laughs 42 years after it first pre-empted an episode of “My Three Sons” on CBS. A meditation on the failings of faith, it’s worth owning for director Bill Meléndez’s show-stopping “vocals” for Snoopy and the timeless score by Vince Guaraldi, jazz that even jazz-haters can love. Sally Brown’s episode-closing meltdown is a classic, and it’s hard not to be a little moved when Lucy momentarily drops her evil persona to look after her kid brother.
For your $13.99, you get the remastered 25-minute special, a 14-minute making-of documentary “We Need A Blockbuster, Charlie Brown,” and the decidedly less-inspired 24-minute 1981 special “It’s Magic, Charlie Brown.”
, on shelves today, began with the Scranton branch’s former intern Ryan Howard serving as everyone’s new boss, with employees Jim Halpert and Pam Beesley carrying on a secret romance, and with branch manager Michael Scott ramming over one of his own employees with a car. Subsequently we saw corporate malfeasance, money woes, GPS misadventure, depositions, a dinner party, a nightmarish bed-and-breakfast, a hobbit-like executive, knee-touching, a number of new romances and several brushes with the law. 
