I just completed rewatching the complete run of the Office for maybe the third time (I’ve done a couple of other times when I skip season 8 and most of season 9 because they’re not good). Occasionally you’ll hear about a reboot or a reunion and I doubt that will ever happen. You could do like a sequel where they’re doing a documentary about a different office, but there’s no way that would be as good. A reboot doesn’t really make sense because so many of the characters had moved on by the end of the series. A reunion would be cool, but I wouldn’t want to see it without Steve Carell or John Krasinski and I doubt you’d get them to do it. But if you could get them, my idea for a reunion would be having Michael and Holly celebrating an anniversary by visiting Scranton and getting everybody back together.
So I doubt we’ll ever get any new episodes of the Office, but watching the Michael Jordan documentary gave me an idea that could be done pretty easily. And I’m sure NBC isn’t producing much new content these days so they could use something to fill some airtime this coming year. Just make the documentary that came out in the universe of the show at the end of the A.A.R.M. episode. Sure, it would be mostly a clip show, but it would be interesting to see how the story is told as a serious documentary. The Michael Jordan documentary played with the timeline so The Office: An American Workplace doesn’t have to be completely chronological. You could introduce a narrator if you wanted to.
What do we know about the documentary? Not much. In the episode Promos, it was advertised as being shown over the course of nine nights on PBS. How long was each episode? We don’t know that. If each one was an hour on PBS without commercials, that would be like an hour and a half on NBC with commercials. Of course, each one could have been an hour and a half or two hours (I doubt they would have been any longer than that). The Finale happened after the documentary so there were 200 episodes that could have provided material for the documentary. If each episode was 21 minutes without commercials, that would be 70 hours of content (of course, some were longer, but I’m just estimating here). So the PBS documentary cut that 70+ hours into a documentary that was probably in the 9-18 hour range.
We also know how the documentary starts. It was Jim in Michael’s office from the Pilot. But that’s about all we know about the content. I came up with a plan of what I would have covered in each episode of the documentary (there are definitely other ways to do this, but I think I came up with something logical). Each episode would have two themes. You could kind of go back and forth in each episode like how the Jordan documentary went back and forth between Jordan’s last season and the rest of his career or you could do kind of a Ken Burns Baseball thing where you pretty much split each episode into two halves (like he did with each inning of the baseball documentary). Here’s what I came up with for each episode:
Episode 1- People in the Office/Pam and Roy. You have to establish the people who worked in the office in the first two seasons. When you get into the Pam and Roy story, Jim will be a big part of that also. This episode would use material mainly from the first two seasons of the show.
Episode 2- Michael and Jan/Sales. You get into the corporate side of Dunder Mifflin a little bit as you get into the relationship between Michael and Jan. David Wallace is introduced. Then we’re focusing on the work done by the sales staff. So you’d have lots of Jim, Dwight, Stanley, and Phyllis. We’re still mainly in the first two seasons here.
Episode 3- Jim and Dwight/Stamford. I’m sure the previous episode would get into the relationship between Jim and Dwight, but this episode would go much deeper into that and it would lead up to Jim’s transfer to Stamford (so Pam would be a big part of this episode as well). Now you have the people who work in Stamford introduced and it would end with the merger. This one would use mostly stuff from seasons 2 and 3.
Episode 4- Jim and Karen/Accounting. Now Jim is back in Scranton and we’re focusing on his relationship with Karen (so again, we have a lot of Pam). That part of the episode probably finishes up with the interviews for the corporate job in New York (Jim’s interview is probably the last thing you see with that). Then we’re focusing on the work done by the accounting staff. So we’d have lots of Angela, Oscar, and Kevin and it would set up some storylines for later in the documentary. Andy and Angela get engaged, but they don’t get married. The Jim and Karen stuff is pretty much all season 3, but the accounting stuff could come from several seasons.
Episode 5- Corporate Ryan/Side Characters. Of course, Ryan got the corporate job. So we’re going deep into his character. This part of the episode would come from seasons 1-4, but it would be mostly season 4 after he gets the corporate job. And then we’re focusing on the other characters in the office that haven’t gotten a lot of attention yet. So we’re talking about Creed, Meredith, Kelly, Toby. There would be plenty of Michael and Toby stuff here, but then Toby leaves and Holly is introduced. So this part of the episode would come from several seasons.
Episode 6- Jim and Pam/The Michael Scott Paper Company. The previous episodes would have covered everything between Jim and Pam up until he withdraws from consideration from the corporate job and decides to stay in Scranton. Pam did say in the Finale that she didn’t watch the whole documentary because it was too painful and she wanted to scream at herself so it would make sense not to get to Jim and Pam getting together too quickly. So we’re waiting until the sixth episode to focus on Jim and Pam dating, getting engaged and married, and having kids. Then we’re looking at Michael deciding to leave Dunder Mifflin to start the Michael Scott Paper Company and how that affected Dunder Mifflin leading up to the buyout and Michael, Pam, and Ryan coming back to Dunder Mifflin. Erin is introduced for the first time after she replaces Pam as the receptionist. I would also include Jim’s promotion to co-manager in this episode. This episode would come from seasons 4-6.
Episode 7- Erin/The Warehouse. Now that Erin has been introduced, we’re focusing on her. She is pretty easily the best character who wasn’t part of the original cast (there’s not much competition because all the other characters that get added and become regulars are pretty terrible). Since we’re focusing on Erin, there would be a lot of Andy as well (another character who wasn’t part of the original cast, he’s okay sometimes, but terrible other times). And then we’re getting into the warehouse. Roy would have been a big part of the first episode so we would have seen the warehouse a little and I’m sure Darryl would have been introduced, but Darryl is now going to become a big part of the documentary. The Erin stuff all comes from season 5 or later, but the warehouse stuff could probably come from the whole series.
Episode 8- Sabre/Michael and Holly. Sabre buys Dunder Mifflin and David Wallace loses his job. Jim returns to sales after being co-manager. Unfortunately, Sabre buying Dunder Mifflin means that we’re introducing Gabe. Darryl starts working in the office instead of the warehouse. There’s the stuff with the defective printers with Michael being the face of the company and that eventually leads to the return of Holly. So the second half of this episode focuses on the relationship between Michael and Holly with the two of them eventually moving to Colorado. So this episode is coming from seasons 5-7.
Episode 9- Life after Michael/Dwight and Angela. Michael is gone, unfortunately that means that Andy becomes the manager and Robert California is his boss. Also unfortunately, we have Nellie introduced as well. David Wallace buys Dunder Mifflin. Kelly and Ryan end up leaving for Ohio and Pete and Clark are hired. Jim starts Athlead and eventually gives up on that business to save his marriage. Darryl leaves Dunder Mifflin for Athlead. Eventually Andy leaves. That’s pretty much seasons 8 and 9 and we’re spending as little time on all of that as possible. Then we’re focusing on Dwight and Angela from like season 5 to the end. We would have covered their relationship a little bit in episodes 2-4. There’s the Angela, Senator Lipton, Oscar love triangle that eventually ends with Angela’s sham marriage falling apart. The documentary ends with Dwight getting promoted to regional manager and then getting engaged to Angela.
I really want them to produce the PBS documentary. I think I came up with a nice little plan for it. I’ll end with some final thoughts on the show. I did a little research where I found the average IMDb user rating for the episodes in each season. I was interested to see how the seasons would rank. From best to worst, it goes like this: 3, 4, 5, 2, 7, 6, 1, 9, 8. Those rankings aren’t bad. I think season 2 is pretty underrated there. I think the best run of the show is seasons 2-4. I’d probably put season 2 number 1. And I’d put season 5 ahead of 4 just because it has so many more episodes (because of the writers’ strike). I’d keep 7 ahead of 6 because the last few episodes with Michael are some of the best of the series (but David Wallace doesn’t appear in season 7 so that’s a drawback). I’d flip 1 and 9. I like season 1, but it’s only six episodes. Season 9 has some really bad stuff (especially with Andy), but the last three episodes are really good. And season 8 is just terrible. Michael is gone, David Wallace doesn’t come back until the end of the season, Andy is the manager, and you have way way too much Robert California, Gabe, and Nellie. I didn’t need any of them, they’re the three worst characters in the whole show (season 9 Nellie is whatever, season 8 Nellie is terrible). If you took all the screen time they got and gave it to Nate instead, then you would have had something (he was the rare late introduction to the show who was a really good character, but he was a minor character). Michael was the best character on the show so of course it wasn’t going to be as good, but they tried to replace him with terrible characters. Besides Robert California, Gabe, and Nellie, there’s way too much bad Andy. I never really liked Andy, but he was at least interesting when he was a salesman. By season 9, he’s mostly terrible (A.A.R.M. is a great episode, but the Andy part is awful). They should have relied more on Jim and Dwight after Michael left. The best part of seasons 8 and 9 is how the relationship between Jim and Dwight develops, but there’s just too much bad stuff in those seasons. So my rankings go like this: 2, 3, 5, 4, 7, 6, 9, 1, 8. So yeah, I hate season 8 and much of season 9 isn’t good, but it was one of the greatest shows ever for seven seasons and it ended on a high note with some really good stuff at the end of season 9. Make the documentary, NBC. You need to put something in prime time this year so that’s something you could put on pretty easily.
