A Look Back on Weight Loss, Part 1

Hey everyone, we are just popping on to say a quick hello and share some news. We have a new podcasting partner, that's right.

Starting August 14th, we will be partnering with the Odyssey Broadcasting Company to finish our rewatch and start the next chapter of Office Ladies. Yes, it is so exciting.

And you know, I was just home visiting my family in Texas, and I shared this news with. And my sister asked if this changes anything for our listeners, and I thought that was a really good question. The answer is it does not.

That's right, you will still get your podcast every Wednesday wherever you listen to Office Ladies.

And you know, we are already loving everyone at Odyssey. But we also want to thank the folks at Earwolf, who we hold near and dear to our hearts for believing in office. Ladies from day one and everyone we worked with at Sirius XM, we will miss you all and we are so thankful for the friendships we made along the way.

Yeah, now we are going to need a little transition time, so we're going to take an extended summer break for the next four weeks. We're going to be rerunning episodes. Cassie had the really fun idea of rerunning our first four episodes from season five.

Yes.

I loved this.

I did, too. And we also went back into our mailbag because we thought it might be fun to kick off each rerun with a couple of extra tidbits.

I love tidbits.

We do.

I'll start us off all right, so today we are rerunning weight loss part one. Angela, what have you got for us?

Well, if you remember, one of the storylines in this episode is about Andy and Angela's wedding. Andy is really trying to plan the perfect wedding for Angela. And she just hates every suggestion that he has.

Well, because she doesn't really want to marry him.

Well, I know, right? And a few folks wrote in to ask if there were any good alts in the candy bag. For an Andy talking head, Okay, it's the one where Andy says every little boy fantasizes about his fairytale wedding.

Yes, I remember this.

I looked there were a bunch, I can't believe I didn't even share them. On our first watch of this, here are two alts that really cracked me up.

Probs.

Not totes paws, though.

I love it very Andy.

Very Andy. Here's another one I can't stop thinking about our wedding day. I gasp when I see Angela coming down the aisle, she's a vision in white.

Wow, yeah, that talking head reminds me a little bit of Dwight's talking head, where he talks about being the spy. Remember that one that goes like 50 directions?

Yes, it has a lot of twists and turns.

All right.

Well, lady, I have a little tidbit. I saw this letter in our digital mailbag and it made me chuckle. So in this episode, Pam goes away to art school in New York, and you see Jim and Pam communicating on Instant message Old Tech Alert. And you can see their screen names, Anna Jo wrote in to say who came up with the screen names Jim 9334 and Receptionitis 15?.

Well, I remember that he talked us through the rest of us how to do it, yes.

Do you remember what your I am screen name was? By any chance, I do.

We were so tickled that we could now I am each other. During scenes, mine was Ms. accountant.

Ms Accountant Yeah, oh my gosh.

We really kept on theme for our characters.

Well, listen, we weren't just I aming each other either. I would I am with fans during scenes. Remember when we had myspace? Somehow, I think I would get the I am of fans through myspace. And I would write things. And I would say, when you watch the episode Healthcare, there's going to be a scene where Dwight is talking about hot dog fingers and I'm I aming you during this scene.

I don't think I had figured that out.

Yeah, that was something I think B..J. Novak might have.

Yeah, I kind of remember now you guys doing that and we'd be like, what you're talking to people right now?

Yeah.

Yeah, I didn't do it, but I remember you guys.

Well, everyone, there are your new weight loss part 1 tidbits. And thank you for hanging in there while we take this little break to transition to our new podcasting partner, Odyssey.

We will be back breaking down the rest of season nine on August 14th with the farm. But in the meantime, here's weight loss part 1.

I'm Jenna Fisher.

And I'm Angela Kinsey.

We were on the office together.

And we're best friends.

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

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.

We're the office ladies.

Hi everyone, hey.

Oh my gosh, why are we screaming already?

We'll tell you hi, everyone.

We are back in the studio, we are in the studio.

We are vaccinated, our team is vaccinated.

Look at this.

I can put my arms all the way out to the sides and I don't touch any clothes or any walls.

I am not staring at you through my husband's t-shirts or smelling his socks.

It's so exciting.

Lady, I'm looking at your face in real life.

It's weird.

I want to touch it, but I won't.

Can I get you on a zoom?

Actually, will you go in the other room? Can we do this over Zoom? We are thrilled to be here. It's been over a year.

Over a year.

Yeah.

We don't know what this is going to be, guys. We ended up doing more office ladies podcasts from our closet than we ever did in person.

Crazy.

But we're back in person now and we don't know what's going to happen. I'll tell you a few changes right off the bat. Angela has stopped using note cards, guys, and I'm freaking out.

And post-its.

Sam is clapping from the engineer booth.

It's a moment of growth. You guys, I have a word document now, I put everything in.

It's very adult-y.

I'm not saying I'm going to stick with it. Maybe it was something I started doing because I was in my closet and I just didn't have space for all my note cards. But look at me at this big table now, I know.

It's almost like you want to fill it up with note cards, don't you? a little bit you want to fill it up?

A little bit, a little bit.

Well, the other big news for today is that we are kicking off season 5 of The Office with Weight Loss Part 1.

Season Flippin 5.

Yeah.

We're here.

Here we are.

Let's do it.

This is Season 5, Episode 1, written by Leigh Eisenberg and Jean Stepnitsky, directed by Paul Feig.

I was going to go ba-boo, ba-boo, ba-boo, and then I was like, No, that's annoying. So then I said nothing, and then you said nothing, and then we just stared at each other. You know why? Because we can.

There might be a lot of long pauses in this podcast. Today. I'm going to move us into a summary. The gang at Dunder Mifflin participates in an eight-week, company-wide weight loss competition. Pam begins her three-month design program in New York City, and Andy attempts to get Angela to commit to wedding plans, but she's busy.

She is stressed the f out, and the minute Andy asks her about the wedding, she runs to Dwight.

Yeah, I have a question about that, why can't you guys have sex at home, like after work? Are you guys having sex at home after work? Or is it only in the warehouse?

That is such a good question I've never thought about. I mean, I definitely see their hookups in this episode. Whenever Angela is spiraling. Yeah, maybe she's happy at home with all of her cats, and maybe she doesn't let Andy come over. So she doesn't need Dwight to cope.

Yeah.

Or maybe they're just shagging everywhere, I don't know.

Well, we'll discuss more later.

We'll discuss more.

Guys, this was the start of our fifth season, like we said, and to make up for the shorter fourth season that got interrupted because of the writer's strike. NBC ordered 28 episodes for season five, so this season has the most episodes of any Office season.

Oh my God, I didn't know that.

Yeah.

That's some good office trivia, Milady.

Thank you, thank you. Well, it's going to move us into fast fact number one, which is a little complicated. I'll tell you why.

Okay.

Back at the end of season three, we said that Rashida Jones left the show and stopped playing Karen Filippelli because she had to go do parks and recreation.

Was she not going to do parks and rec then?

She wasn't Ang. Because parks and recreation did not exist yet parks and recreation does not exist until the middle of season five of the Office.

Oh, farts, we got that wrong, Milady.

We did.

Why am I saying, Milady, I don't know.

I don't know is Milady the new lady?

I hope not, because people right now are like, my ears are bleeding. Stop saying, Milady, wait. So Rashida, was she leaving to do a different project?

She left because they finished the storyline of Karen, Jim and Pam. It was a storyline thing. I mean, she did go on to do more projects. She did a bunch of movies in that time, but no, it was a storyline thing. Similarly, I'll have, you know, that. We wondered during Branch wars if the photo of Hillary Clinton in her office was a nod to Leslie Knope loving Hillary Clinton.

We were determined to pull up parks and rec by a few years.

Well, I love parks and rec so.

I know, okay, well, there you go, we got that wrong.

So this is important for two reasons one, we need to know the timeline of parks and ReC.

Clearly.

And number two, Greg Daniels, who created the American version of the Office. He created Parks and Rec, along with one of our writers, Mike Schur. So midway through this season five, we're going to lose both Greg and Mike because they're going to be working on Parks and Rec. And that is why Jen Salata and Paul Eberstein take over as the showrunners for season five.

All right.

There you go now. Mike Schur moved to Parks and Rec full time. Greg was doing both shows. Greg did a little bit of parks and rec. He did a little office.

He bounced back and forth.

He did yes, so it took us to get that timeline correct.

Yes, all right.

Fast Fact number two writer of this episode, Gene Stupnitsky, said that the idea for a weight loss episode had been on the writer's wall for a really long time. But they couldn't figure out how to do it in one day. Because, remember, they had that rule where they tried to have plot lines that only cover one work day, right? When NBC asked for the premiere of season five to be an hour long, Greg Daniels had the idea that we could do the weight loss episode as a sort of summer retrospective.

Right, because we never see the characters over the summer, yeah.

Gene said This was a really cool opportunity to see the characters over their summertime and that they almost called this episode summer. You might notice also, for this episode, there is no cold open, it just starts with the opening credits. Gene said that there was a cold open in the script. It was written that way, but they actually just folded it in to the plot.

I mean, I definitely noticed I felt like it clipped along, yes.

Fast fact number three This episode has an all crew commentary. Angela, take it away.

It does, you guys. When I started listening to this DVD commentary and realized it was all crew, I called Jenna right away. It was one of the best DVD commentaries I've listened to up until now. It's so good.

And you've listened to all of them.

I have, and I want to share with you guys who is on this DVD, commentary for weight loss. Okay, it's phenomenal, it's great.

Oh my gosh, what was it like to hear all of their voices again?

It was so wonderful and you know, Kelly Cantlie, I loved her so much, and Jenna. We still are on each other's Christmas card list. We send each other Christmas cards every year and I just adore her. And I texted her.

And I get her Christmas cards too from her and her husband Kevin and their two dogs. I look forward to them every year.

There is so much awesome information about the making of weight loss 1 and 2.

Wow, that's what they were keeping track of, so many things.

And then, lastly, this episode was a huge challenge for the editing department. Do you remember in Goodbye Toby, how I had the script? I had the shooting draft, and I kept telling you how? The scenes were all rearranged differently for the episode that actually aired?

Yeah.

Well, Jake shared in the commentary that Greg and the writers were very used to being able to just move scenes around and kind of change how the episode would take shape. And they could not do that in this episode. Because it's week to week and everything progresses week to week within one episode, and you can't move around that story.

No, and our clothes are changing, right? Yes, like you'd notice, but there is. I saw a little flub.

Yes, well, you'll have to bring that up, they also address, and I'll bring this up when it happens. A character that they had to keep digitally changing their shirt.

What?

Yes, I'll share when we get to the moment.

ANGELA I think you need to do fast facts more often because that is possibly one of my favorite fast facts we've ever done. I'm giving you fast fact number three from now on. Oh, I bet you are.

Thanks.

I know you guys, fast facts are really hard. fast facts are really hard.

Jenna created Fast Facts for herself and then was like, Angela, these dang fast facts. I wish every week the crew did. The DVD commentary is what I wish because it's the best commentary. It was the most insightful, interesting, the best background. Trivia. Fast Fact Three was easy because of our crew's commentary.

I cannot wait to watch that pay off as we break down this episode. Let's take a break. Shocker. I need to go to the bathroom.

You know, we've had a big morning, it was a reunion, we both drank lots of beverages.

All right, we're going to go to the restroom, we'll be right back.

All right, well, we are back. Everyone is in the conference room, they are having a feast. I mean, there is a buffet of food happening here.

Yeah, well, Michael tells everyone they better eat up because it's their last meal. They're going to start this weight loss competition, but first, they're trying to bulk up.

So that when they lose weight, the number is big, there's a big difference.

Yes, exactly. Dwight has also told people they can't even use the bathroom. You're going to have to hold it. They want maximum poundage on the scale.

And the stakes are high because Michael explains that this is a corporate weight loss challenge, and the branch that loses the most weight wins. Three whole extra vacation days.

Everyone's excited.

Yeah.

I paused and I went frame by frame, and I made a list of all the food I could see.

I love this. This is reminding me a little bit of my pizza by Alfredo. Moment. Is it going to be 10 minutes?

No, there's not that much food.

Okay, let's hear it.

All right, there is a chocolate fondue fountain, there is a cheese fondue fountain, there are marshmallows, fried chicken, ribs, maybe some waffles, cornbread muffins, donuts, lots of soda, mac and cheese dumplings. I swear someone has mashed potatoes and gravy on their plate, and then Jim has some strawberries on his plate, probably for the chocolate fountain. But I was surprised to spot a bit of healthy food.

Jenna, do you know what I remember about this scene?

What?

How funky that cheese got.

Yeah.

It got real smelly.

Yeah.

Kelly shares on the DVD that they could only keep that cheese melted for three hours, and then it would start to coagulate or whatever.

It got so gross. I mean, that really makes me think twice about any cheese fondue fountain.

The fountain food I might be done with fountain food.

When I was in college, I had a boyfriend. And we read that. There was this protein shake company that was going to give a $10,000 prize to whoever lost the most weight and gained the most muscle by using their protein shake.

Right, so the idea is to get healthy, lose weight, and here's your incentive is a bunch of money or something.

Yeah, so we entered.

You and your boyfriend, yeah, you did the shake challenge.

We did, here's the thing we did, the same thing we're like in the week before.

You carved up.

We did, we ate a bunch of food, I probably gained about five pounds.

In one week, yeah.

Because we just like ate pizza and burgers because we were like, this is great. I mean, we'll start out with more weight and then we'll lose it all and more.

And we'll win $10,000.

I mean, we took pictures of ourselves. I still have it.

Oh, no.

I mean, somewhere I have it, I know, because I was cleaning out some old photo albums and I found it and it jogged. This memory you had to prove the day of the weight loss start, yeah.

Oh my god.

So I've got this picture of myself.

This was before you could Instagram, now you can Instastory or Instagram, and it's a timestamp. But back then you had to hold up like a newspaper, yeah.

And take it with a regular old camera. I'm in like a sports bra and some like sport shorts, and I'm holding up a newspaper and I will tell you what. Not only did we not win, I did not lose any of the weight.

That you gained carb loading.

That's right after the eight weeks, I mean, we gave up so quickly. We were all in for the first week of the fitness challenge. And then all that happened was from all of this is that I gained five pounds and then I held up a newspaper. The end?

Well, guess who knows?

You, me.

Thanks to our crew, it was not real bug spray. Of course, this was a prop bottle that Phil Shea had designed, he had this made, and it was full of aerosol water. Oh.

You know, I assumed that's what it was, but it didn't look like water, I mean, it looks so real.

I thought it looked real and I thought everyone's reactions were really good. Great acting folks, you sold it.

Well, now the gang is going to go down to the warehouse, they're going to weigh in.

Yes, and Jenna, at one minute, five seconds. There is a great shot of the big scale that we're all going to get weighed on. And I have a prop breakdown.

Give it to me.

Okay, that scale was custom made by Rice Lake Weighing systems. They made it specific to our requests and they were able to program the little computer screen with whatever the riders wanted them to put on it right. It was like part of the joke, our weight.

My mind is being blown right now that that was not a real scale.

No, the scale didn't exist, it was made just for us, and Rice Lake Weighing System didn't ask for any credit or any company plug. They were huge fans of the show and they did come to set the day we filmed this.

That I remember, mm-hmm now during this weigh-in. Angela, What's up with Meredith's face? Did you notice her face is all red?

Oh, yes, I want you guys to know. I took a photo of Kate's face as meredith, looking like that. And I texted it to Kate last night. And I said, Kate, you know what? You should? Win Team Player Award for the run of the office. Because her character was always getting into some kind of mishap, which resulted in Kate being in the hair and makeup trailer forever, right?

Yeah.

And here was the storyline, and it's shared. In the deleted scenes. Meredith gets severely sunburned and here is her explanation Sam, can you play the clip?

Hello, hello, hey, your face is almost back to normal.

One more kid calls me Hell, boy, I swear to God.

Oh, you wish?

Hell Boy's a hero.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, she went out on a boat, got super, super sunburned and this was something they had to watch in continuity of which stage of the sunburn was her face at.

Yeah.

So they just had to leave it in. And Kate said the day after the show aired, Steve came up to her on set and was like, You know what, Kate? I still thought it was funny, you know? I kind of love that Meredith has this mystery about her, that she has this whole other life we don't even need to explain.

Yeah, that was hard. When you had a storyline and then you'd watch the episode, they wouldn't warn you a lot of the times, you'd just watch the episode and it was gone.

Yeah, and, you know, with supporting cast. We were often in the B or C story and those really got moved around a lot and trimmed and edited, and it did happen. But Kate, man, such a good sport.

Wow, guys. Also in this scene, Michael throws Pam off the scale because she's going to go away to art school, so he doesn't want her extra poundage. Now they've already weighed in, and then Pam gets off the scale and a new weight is displayed. So embarrassing.

Yeah.

But yeah, when they speculated about my weight, they put me at 145 and I just, I don't know. I just corrected it, I thought it should be correct.

I have no problem with that. Well, Jenna, that scene made me laugh, just because your performance, your reaction. You watch everyone doing the math and you're just standing there. Yeah, and it was very funny the way you played that moment. Now it's week two of their weight loss contest.

Yes, and in this talking head, he shows an old photo of himself. Well, we got some mail about that. People wanted to know, What is this picture? Is this from Leslie David Baker's real life?

Is this young Leslie in this photo?

It is young Leslie in the photo.

Oh my gosh.

I texted Leslie and he gave me all the info.

Oh, let's hear it.

It's a photoshop picture, he does not know any of the other people in the picture got it. They photoshopped him into it using one of his old prom photos.

Oh, Leslie, I love that.

Yeah.

Well, they're really taking this whole get healthy fitness thing seriously. Holly is running a yoga class in the conference room. I only saw three people in attendance Creed, Kelly and Michael. I didn't see anyone else.

Oh.

Yeah, and then Michael is so excited. He runs up to Jim as Jim is going into the bathroom and is like, Did you see Holly's butt? and Jim's like, No.

What's that?

Lonesome Dove was written by Larry McMurtry, who is from my hometown of Archer City, Texas.

Yes.

And I knew Larry, and I know his family, and Larry was this amazing, prolific writer. I got so excited just to see one of his pieces of work mentioned on the office, knowing that I grew up going to his bookstore.

That is so cool.

Love it, you guys got to know. There's only like 1,800 people in Archer City, so everybody knows everybody.

We got some fan mail from Brittany. She did her own little mini deep dive on sesame seed allergies.

Oh.

Yeah, she did a deep dive, she did. She said that she would like us to know that. Sesame seed allergies are actually the ninth most common type of food allergy.

I did not know that. Do you have any allergies?

I do, I'm allergic to sweet potatoes.

Crazy.

Yeah, I found that out late in life because my mom would only make sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving. And I'm sorry, mom. But they always looked really gross to me, so I just never even ate them. I don't know if I had some sort of like visceral kind of instinct that I shouldn't eat them.

Like your body knew.

Yeah, but I never ate them. And then my first Thanksgiving in Los Angeles, I couldn't go home. I couldn't afford it, so me and my friends, we had our own Thanksgiving and someone brought some sweet potatoes.

My daughter has a mild allergy to dairy, but you can really tell, like if she's had ice cream and stuff, she'll get really stuffy.

Oh yeah, a lot of people have like a lactose intolerance that causes like some kind of like diarrhea.

Well, this is our spinoff podcast, it's called,-.

What food studio?

Body fluids and other stories.

I mean, since we're on the subject of milk and stuff, I just want to say, guys, don't give milk to cats.

Oh, yeah, it makes them sick.

Yeah, it's like a thing that's been passed down in these cartoons forever. You give cats a dish of milk, they are allergic to the dairy and milk don't give it to them.

Can I add to your milk with cats thing? Oh yeah, don't give bread to ducks. Oh, bread to ducks.

You know what you can give them? what peas, oh peas and bird seed.

Okay, more food talk for you three minutes, 49 seconds. Dwight is replacing the junk food in the vending machine with fruit.

Because of the like banging the fruit in with the hammer.

Just all of it, ripping everything out, resetting it, putting the fruit in. It took them an hour to do a seven-second scene.

Coming up is a really awkward scene, in so many ways, so many Oscar is going to offer to set Holly up with his yoga instructor. I feel like that was awkward. Number one.

I mean, it's jumping in real quick, being matchmaker, yeah.

I always feel like you wait for someone to ask you to set them up. Because there are so many assumptions you're making about their life and their preferences when you offer to set them up, right?

Yeah, I don't know also how long has he known her? Have they hung out? What does he know about Holly, right?

Right?

This takes us to front reception, and Jim is making sure Pam is all packed for New York. He's holding a box of her items she's going to take with her. Did you notice, at four minutes, 47 seconds, what is in the box that is so important? It's got to travel to New York City with Pam.

Apparently her weird, spindly, plasticky desk decoration, she can't live without it.

I put the multicolored sphere bobble thing.

Yeah, we've talked about it on the podcast before. I get that. Maybe she needed to clear her desk for whoever's filling in for her.

Just leave the box.

Yeah, put it in a storeroom and get it out. When you get back, there's nothing in that box you need. At Pratt Pam, nothing, but Pam has a talking head.

Oh, pam.

But it's okay, you're trying to be all New Yorky, you're trying to be cool. Yeah, that's the Manhattan Area code.

Well, at five minutes, 13 seconds. There's going to be a storyline that starts, which is Andy and Angela wedding planning. There's lots of delicious stuff, there's lots more in deleted scenes. All of this wedding planning is just absolutely stressing Angela out and making her more and more irritated at Andy. This is how he walks up to her.

I loved it so much.

That's how they're starting their conversation. Andy's excited.

He says Every little boy fantasizes about his fairytale wedding.

And ding, ding, ding. This is when they had to go in and digitally change. His shirt and tie in post-production. Because the writers wanted to move this talking head here, it had been in a different place in the story. His tie and his shirt are digital.

Because they had to make it match the scene with Angela.

That's right.

My mind is blown.

Oh yeah, they had to change all of that in post so they could move this talking head up.

Well, in the scene with Angela, he is suggesting that they get married at the Breakers in Rhode Island, this famous estate. Angela doesn't like it. He said This is really important to his family because this is where his parents decided not to get divorced.

How romantic.

Yes, that's where you want to get married. I looked this place up. It was built back in 1893 as a summer home, not even a main residence. It was built by the Vanderbilt family.

Back then.

Back then, it took two years. Is it massive? Yeah, there are 70 rooms in the house.

70 rooms for their summer residence.

Right, and the Great Hall has 45-foot ceilings, there's a gold room.

Okay.

That was actually built in Europe and then shipped to the United States and reassembled in Newport. Good Lord. It is estimated to be worth $150 million today.

That one room.

No, the whole house.

Oh.

I know I see how you went there because of the way I structured that.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, it now belongs to the Preservation Society of Newport County. It is available for tours. It gets about 300,000 visitors annually. But get this. Great-grandchildren still live there on the third floor during the summer.

Oh my god.

But you can't tour their private residence area when you tour the house.

This is like going to Buckingham Palace.

I always wonder about that.

You live there, but there's tours.

What's it like to live in a house? Yeah, what is that?

I don't know, 70 rooms, maybe you don't even know.

Are you not giving tours of your home, Angela, to tourists while you live there?

You're welcome to come over the hall bathroom, you have to jiggle the handle. It's a double flusher, it doesn't quite do it the first time. Well, all of this wedding planning stresses Angela out, and she immediately pages Dwight.

Once I speak my vows, I'll stop sleeping with Dwight, but for right now, I am engaged. This is a period of, I guess, non-commitment, but commitment, I don't know.

I don't know, I don't know how she's going to deal with how batshit crazy Andy makes her once they're married. What will her outlet be? But yes, I thought that was interesting because there's that moment when she comes out of the storage room with Dwight, where she sees the camera.

Well, they need to follow up on these things now. We have a scene where Michael, through his window, sees that Pam is getting into her car. She's getting ready to drive to Pratt. And he has not said his goodbye.

No, he hasn't, and I want you to know, I know whose office it was that he was in.

Was it Paul Lieberstein's?

No, it was jen Salata's.

Okay.

There you go, if you're curious, that's the writer's room that Michael was in, and poor Michael. He practically wipes out two flights of stairs trying to get to Pam so he could say goodbye.

It's so funny. And he wrote her a poem, but he left it upstairs. It ends with the word seagulls. Here's what I have to say about this scene. Pam is going to drive to New York in a pencil skirt.

Also, here was my question, Where is she going to park her car? There's nowhere to park your car in New York City, you have to pay for a parking spot.

Well, she's going to Brooklyn, she's going to like a college campus.

You think they have a spot for her?

I think they do, oh, okay, I think there's a campus parking lot.

Okay, okay.

I'm not worried about that, I'm worried about why did she come into work even for a half day, why didn't she change her clothes? She's going to arrive at Pratt in a pencil skirt and pantyhose.

Really, Pam. I hope there's parking.

Well, listen.

I wanted you to know. Randy Cordray shared that this parking lot scene took place on an incredibly hot day. It was like triple digit weather in Los Angeles. And Steve runs hot anyway and he had to run into this scene and it was super hot. In a suit, well, Phil Shea found a cooling vest that Steve could wear under his suit to help keep him cool. It's the type of vest that marathon runners and athletes have, they use it to cool their body temperature down.

I've never heard of this thing, which makes sense to me, because I would never seek it out. I would never think, How can I be colder in any situation?

No, never, it's a whole thing. I googled it. There's many different types of cooling vests that you can get, athletes use them.

You know what I do own what a warming vest. I have a vest and you put little hot packs in it and it keeps you warm. I bought it so that I could watch my son play ice hockey outdoors.

Yeah, well, we used to stuff those little hot pocket thingies, what do you call them?

Not the food hot pockets, What are they called? I love the idea of us having a vest filled with hot pockets, though. Because then if you get hungry, it's a snack as well, it keeps you warm and low.

Listen, on the office, I had one skirt that had two little stitch pockets in the back, and I had one little tiny stitch pocket in the front. They would give us those little hot pack things.

Little hand warmers.

Little hand warmers. I would stick two in my shoes, I would stick one in that front pocket, two in my back pocket, I'd stick a few in my bra, same.

Yeah, I remember that.

If my sweater had pockets, I'd stick them in there, I'd stick so many of those on my body. When we were filming outside, when it was cold, one time, our camera operator, Matt Stone, was like, Ange, just don't take this the wrong way. But I can see lumps in your butt on camera. they don't look human, like human lumps. I was like, Dang it.

Well, I can't believe that they got a cooling vest, and I'm glad they did. I am too.

I thought that was so smart. Mm-hmm. Well, it's time for another weigh-in.

Big announcement They lost 31 pounds. Michael and Holly are so excited they're going to do a wrap.

It's the most adorable thing because they're so dorky and cute together.

Well, a little wrap trivia is that they have about 10 minutes of them wrapping. Even though the part that you see in the show was completely scripted, even down to Holly rubbing her jacket.

Yeah, yeah, the wiki-wiki, what? All of that was scripted.

All of that was scripted, but they did go on and on. Amy Ryan gave an interview where she said this was her favorite scene to shoot because they had so much fun.

The crew said the same thing. They said it was so much fun, that those two just went off and that the chemistry was just so apparent.

I think this was the scene when they were shooting, when they realized, Oh yeah, these two true love. Yeah, well, now it's week three and there is a new receptionist in town.

Yes, Ronnie.

Yeah, Ronnie, played by Dale Raul. She has been in a ton of stuff. She was Maxine in True Blood.

Oh, Maxine Fortenberry, I love True Blood, she was fantastic.

Of course, you would know that.

Yes, I have a crossover connection with Dale.

Tell me.

We were both on fresh off the boat. well, there you go, not monk, surprisingly, but fresh off the boat.

Well, she will come back in season six. This is not the last we're going to see of Ronnie. Meanwhile, we're going to see Pam in her first class.

She looks so cute, She has, like, I'm calling it the college ponytail. She wears this really cute ponytail at school.

All right, the ponytail is the only thing that's cute about Pam, are you kidding?

I thought you looked so cute in all of your college scenes.

Did you notice how young everyone else is in the class?

Oh, you stop it.

No, but this was a deliberate choice.

Well, ok.

Pam is in her late 20s.

Do you like how immediately I like, stand up for my best friend? I'm like, you stop it, you are beautiful.

You look just as young as those other ones, that's right.

And you are smart.

OK, thank you.

You're welcome.

I want you to know I was not being down on myself, I was just pointing out a deliberate production choice. Pam is in her late 20s, and they made sure that everyone in this class, that the background performers, were all much younger. They're just starting off in college, right? Pam's going back to school.

What do they call it? A non-traditional student.

There you go, well. Not only that, she's in the wrong class. The teacher who was played by Sandra Lowe, Professor Monaghan.

She's got that zinger of a joke about Zaf Chancery, you know?

Yeah.

Which, by the way, I read a Reddit thread where people were like, That doesn't apply, it's wrong, oh.

Oh my well, Pam does not end up leaving the class, and we got some mail. People were like, Pam has been so good about standing up for herself. why doesn't she just leave the class?

I don't know. I sympathized, I felt like she's new here, she feels out of place, she just got singled out.

Yeah, but I guess it's going to mean she misses her actual first real class.

Back in the office, Holly hears this coughing, right? She's at her cubicle. Kelly is coughing. She sounds sick. Did you notice on Holly's desk what her nameplate says?

Yes.

Hollis And then, in quotes, Holly P. Flax.

I did notice that, so that's her real name, her name is Hollis.

Hollis.

Kelly has a talking head. Where she says she's on the third day of her cleanse diet, where she's doing the lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper and water, that's all she's allowed to have. Angela, Have you ever done any of these fad diets?

I haven't, but I had a roommate who did something with cayenne pepper and water. And I think it just gives you the runs, right? You just poop.

You know, I got approached to do an ad for this diet tea that's supposed to flatten your tummy.

So you drink the tea and it flattens your tummy. How?

By making you poop a lot. Oh so, we were cleansing tea and I was like, Well, first of all, I'm not going to do an ad for anything I don't believe in, so send me the tea and we'll see what happens.

Did you drink the tea?

I was doing splitting up together at the time and I was talking to Oliver Hudson about it and he said, I'll do it with you. Let's both do the tea and see if we get flat tummies.

He's so funny, but I can so hear him saying that because he's just like, let's do it.

He was all in, so I asked for two packages of the tea Oliver, and I started doing it, Angela.

Did you poop?

First of all, I gained weight, what? Second of all, we're just pooping and farting and just we're trying to work and do our scenes. Oh, no, the crew was like, stop drinking the tea, you guys.

You're like, we're farting them out.

They're like, Seriously, we cannot have the two leads of our show drinking this tea.

Being so flagellant on set.

It's ruining everything, so I just, I don't know, I just don't do this stuff.

Well, you know, my husband, he's super healthy and he just makes really good choices about what he eats and he exercises. It's really annoying his ability to be so consistent. My hardest struggle is consistency, just making that space for myself. And I think it's even when you peel back the layer. It's making that time for yourself. And it's just a hard thing to do, yeah.

Well, I think we should take a break because I need a moment to center myself before Jan comes into the office.

Oh, oh, yes, and there's some really good Jan stuff I want to share.

All right, we'll be right back.

Oh yeah.

Jan enters the office and tells Ronnie to make her some copies of a document on canary yellow paper.

Oh yeah, she walks in like she owns the place.

She also does not acknowledge that she's speaking to a person she's never met.

Oh, yeah, that's true. This made me wonder if Jan is entertaining Michael being in her life again. So she can just use him and use the office she's getting free copies, right?

Yeah.

Well, in the deleted scenes, there's a little bit of a runner about this. She is giving Michael a list of things she needs him to do. All her errands go to the dry cleaner, she hands him a bag, grocery shopping, et cetera. Like Michael is her personal assistant. And then when he kind of boxes anything, she's like, Well, I thought you wanted to help? Wow.

For sure.

Jim has this talking head where he says Michael led us to believe he was the father of Jan's baby by telling us he was the father of Jan's baby. Well, this talking head would have continued, and they had to trim it. And Jim then holds up an email and says, But then Jan sent this email to everyone, and here's what Jan's email said Hi everyone, Jan. Here writing to share some wonderful news and to squash a rumor.

That's amazing.

Yeah, so she sent that email to everyone in the office.

Well, Holly would like to know who is Jan?

She says, Who's that woman in Michael's office with the feet?

Because Michael is rubbing Jan's feet, Oscar explains that she's Michael's ex-girlfriend, and Holly immediately decides, Yes, you can give your yoga teacher my number. I want to date your hot yoga teacher.

Yeah.

His hot hot yoga teacher because he teaches hot yoga and he's hot.

So I'm sure he's very bendy. Yeah, yeah.

Then Holly overhears Angela berating Kevin for being an idiot, and Holly is going to come to Kevin's defense. Because, remember, Dwight told Holly that Kevin was there as part of a special work program?

Yeah, when Dwight was hazing her, Yeah, oh, she runs over to Angela and she's like, How dare you you don't speak to him like that?

And this is when everyone realizes, including Kevin, what Dwight told Holly.

Angela is so delighted by this moment, she can't stop smiling.

No, she loves that. Holly has been humiliated. Poor Kevin. He's crushed. This means that Holly has not been paying attention to him because she wants to date.

Him, no.

He's realizing, well, now, Andy is going to approach Angela in the kitchen. In addition, he has made non-refundable deposits at four different wedding locations. Hot air.

Balloons over Napa Valley, world famous Walt Disney's Epcot Center Scuba diving wedding in the Bahamas and the Wilkes-Barre Marriott Ballroom. C. To which she replies Dangerous, tacky sharks haunted.

And no, just in general.

And No.

And of course, this means Angela and Dwight are going to hook up again. We had a fan question Kayla would like to know when Dwight slaps Angela's butt. Was that scripted? Because she thought your reaction was very genuine? You were surprised?

No, that was improvised, that was Rainn Wilson, but now listen, you guys, Rainn and I were very, very good friends. And we would always do a few takes where we would try to surprise each other a little bit. Within the boundaries of what I knew would not make anyone uncomfortable, and vice versa. And so no, that was Rainn just mixing it up and catching me off guard. Which is why my reaction is so earnest.

We also got mail from Alice, who would like to ask Angela in your talking head afterwards. Was any of that improvised? Because it's one of my all-time favorites, you know what?

People quote this talking head to me, and it was completely scripted and it read like this. I have a nice comforter and several cozy pillows. I usually read a chapter of a book and it's lights out by 8.30, that's how I sleep at night. Completely scripted.

You go to bed at 8.

I have lots of cats to take care of, they get up early. Well, now Jim and Pam are going to talk via video call. You guys, old tech alert, this was a real big deal. This was an actual live Ichat.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is before Zoom, this is before FaceTime.

And, you know, Dwight is annoyed, Michael is so excited and picks up the computer and wants to show Pam all around.

I know, which is making her a little sick. She's like, Can you please put me down? I thought it was so cute, guys. This happened in real time. We had some questions from Alice R.

Yeah.

And I have to say I was really excited because during most of this episode I was not on our set. I was really filming on location to film Pam's art School. And so for this day, I just remember how excited I was. Even though I was all the way on the warehouse set, I was able to come over for hot snack.

Yes.

I stayed for lunch, yes.