Office Ladies - Goodbye Michael with Greg Daniels, Pt 1

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

This week we break down the first part of “Goodbye Michael” and we are joined by the writer of this episode, Greg Daniels! The office thinks tomorrow is Michael’s last day, but Michael has decided to secretly leave a day early. Greg shares his joy of writing this episode, including the easter egg of Michael pushing his Dundie on his desk to match the opening credits shot. Jenna points out how Michael has grown since the first Party Planning Committee meeting in Season One, but maybe the PPC hasn’t changed so much. Angela shares how even though Angela Martin couldn’t care less about Michael leaving, there are shots in this episode where Angela’s eyes are red from crying. It’s hard to let Michael leave to be with Holly and Toby’s brother, Rory, in Colorado, but this episode is still a total treat like vanilla ice cream with hot fudge so let’s fudge it up!  Office Ladies Website - Submit a fan question: https://officeladies.com/submitaquestionFollow Us on Instagram: OfficeLadiesPodCheck out Office Ladies Merch at Podswag: https://www.podswag.com/collections/office-ladies

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. Hello! Hi there.

Okay, are you emotionally prepared because we're about to start breaking down goodbye, Michael? I can't lie to you. I am not ready. I am not ready. I don't think I'm ready either. This is Season 7, Episode 22. It was written by Greg Daniels, directed by Paul Feig.

And you know what, Angie, I thought for this one, no summary. No summary. No summary. No summary, no summary. No summary. No summary needed is Goodbye, Michael. It says it all in the title. Yeah.

Listen, we're very excited because we have a very special guest to break down this episode with us. It is writer of this episode, Greg Daniels. Greg was with us in the studio for the whole episode, and he had so many amazing things to say that we decided we needed to make this a two-parter. Yes. Today, we will break down the first part of Goodbye, Michael with Greg Daniels, who, By the way, received Emmy and Writers Guild nominations for outstanding writing in a

comedy series for this episode. So well deserved. Oh yeah. And, maybe even more prestigious, Miles McNutt gave this episode an A. Come on! Yeah, it's true. Well Miles, I agree. Why don't we take a break and when we come back, we'll start breaking down this episode

with Greg. We are back and we are with Greg Daniels. Greg is here! Hey! Thanks for having me. Hey! So, let's just hop right in. Greg, this episode was written by you.

It was directed by Paul Feig. Can you talk a little bit about how we got Paul back to direct this episode and why it was important to you to have him? Sure. Okay. So, just to set the scene, I was very happy that Paul Lieberstein, who was running the show then, invited me back to write this because this was a big he episode and I had a lot of opinions.

I really wanted to get into it and so I'll just thank Paul for letting me do that. A lot of other folks would have been like, get rid of that old guy. I can't believe that. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. Well, anyway, I was very excited to write it and the thing about Paul Feig, which was so great, you know, obviously you all know, but you know, Paul was at that point probably

the most trusted director since he had spent the whole year with everybody in season five and you know, there was a lot of emotional stuff happening with this and I think it made people feel very safe to have Paul there and of course, he's also a brilliant director and you know, you bring out your big guns for a big episode. I do remember when we found out Paul was going to direct it that we were all just like, oh, thank goodness that we knew that he knew the show so well and us so well. I do remember feeling safe with that. Yeah.

There were some interesting things, I was rewatching the show and remembering stuff and there was a strategy which I thought was really smart that Paul had of taking the most emotional scenes and putting it at the end of the, you know, of the shoot, figuring that people would be pretty emotional by the time they got there and would overlap well. But I remember how difficult it was to shoot the most emotional scenes because it was getting way too emotional, you know what I mean, and it's like I always find it interesting with actors when they're auditioned because they're really comfortable doing something in front of thousands of people or in front of millions of people on TV and then they get into an audition

and sometimes they get all like seized up, you know, and I think it's because they have actual personal stakes on this, it's not they're not pretending, it's like they want to get a job or whatever. Right. And that's what happened here, it's like everybody had an actual personal relationship with Steve, that was, you know, and it was so hard and I just remember, oh yeah, oh my God, it was hard in the editing room sometimes to not have so much tears. Paul did an interview where he said one of the hardest parts about directing this episode

was that people kept crying. Yeah. Scenes with Steve and he said he had to remind us, okay, you guys, you love Steve Carell, but the workers at Dunder Mifflin don't really like Michael. So you don't care if he leaves, except for Jim, because Jim has a personal connection with him and obviously Dwight, who has affection for Michael, but Paul said, everybody you need to act completely disinterested in this exit. And he said it was really hard, he had to keep telling us.

We had to separate reality. He had to give me a minute, he was like, Angela, do you need to take a minute? Because I kept crying and, you know, I'm just showing Michael photos of me and the senator and the senator's aide Thomas, you know, as we're going like to all these different things, antiquing and rollerblading and stuff. But I kept crying. Well, you were the most unlike your character, probably, of anybody on the show. So you were probably the most out of character at that moment, if you were really upset about

anything. I'm gonna miss you. And they're like, OK, Angela Martin reigned it in. Well, before we get into the cold open of this episode, I dug into my digital clutter, Craig. You know, I'm a digital hoarder. Trademark. Digital clutter.

Yeah, exactly. Where's my T-shirt? You should have your own theme song for Angela's digital clutter. I do. We do. Oh my gosh. Do you have it? Oh, shoot.

Angela's digital clutter. There it is. There it is. So I found it. So I found two really fun things. I always like to see what we were emailing about, like what Jenna and I were talking about the week of an episode. And one I'm going to share now, but the other I'm going to save to the very end of the

episode. So it's real special. So stay with us. Here's the first one. It's called Our Hip Jackets. And yeah, I emailed Jenna and Lee, and I said, look at us in our hip jackets. We had gone to the table read and we had made a real effort, the table read for this episode. And Greg, there are a lot of guests at the table read and your wife, Suzanne, was one

of them and she's sitting behind us. I'm going to show you a picture. And of course, you need to note our hip jackets. Was that a reference to Paul Feig's jacket wearing? I don't know. I don't think so. They look like green army jackets. Oh, no.

Those are great. Yeah. Look at that. Look at that. Oh, there's our trailer. Oh, my goodness. I know. They're a rack for a TV set or being bulky.

A big, giant TV that we had to like scooch around. So that was my first item from my digital clutter. We read this episode. You and I wore hip jackets, Jenna, and we were real excited about it. I love it. I guess it's everything you ever hoped for. I don't remember what I was wearing. So let's get into this cold open.

This episode opens with Michael on the roof of the building in anticipation of his move to Colorado. Greg, this is how you described this scene in the script. You said, close up, Michael is in the sky surrounded by clouds, reveal he is sitting on a folding chair on top of an air conditioning housing on the highest point of the roof. He is wearing cowboy boots. There was an interview that Brent Forrester did where he shared that this was meant to symbolize death that Michael was in heaven since this episode had the energy of a funeral.

Wow. Do you remember sharing that with the writers? Sure. Actually, I mean, I don't know if it was so much like dark about it, but it was also, you could say, you go to heaven and it's a beautiful ending to your time on earth. And he's going off with Holly to paradise, to the top of the mountain in Colorado or something. I would put it a little bit more positive spin on it, but...

Death. Funeral. Yeah. Goodbye, Michael. There is a lot of, I don't know what the term is, but there's a lot of resonances in the script for different things to get you in an emotional mood. Obviously, we did too much because we had to pull it back. And yeah, little things like that that are just visual reminders of sort of, it's like

a little bit of TV poetry. Yeah. Yeah. Put them up with the clouds. Dave Rogers shared that he loved that beautiful blue sky, but pretty quickly, the sun was too bright and rain's eyes, so you had to put a white sort of like shield behind Steve. And so in this scene, if you see blue sky, that's because that's before rain's eyes started hurting.

And then after that, you're going to just see white. What a baby ring was. He refused to burn his eyeball for this shot. He wouldn't look directly into the sun to say goodbye to Steve. Way to go. I have my first ever sound blanket catch. What? Does that have its own theme song too?

No. It's at 12 seconds on the roof floor next to Steve as he sits in the chair is a blue sound blanket. Good Lord. Oh, and my favorite line in the cold open is when Dwight says, where'd you hear that? Obvious XM radio. It's such a great line. It proxies me up.

Yeah. So in this scene, Dwight appears and he offers Michael some Rocky Mountain oysters. It is a Colorado delicacy. Guys, I did a deep dive on the Rocky Mountain oyster. Are you ready? I am so ready. Rocky Mountain oysters are skinned bowl testicles that are coated in flour, pepper, and salt and then fried.

They are sometimes pounded flat before breading and frying. Flat balls? Flat balls. Do they have a different name? No. Oh. But in Canada, they have different names. Okay.

They're referred to as prairie oysters. That sounds smaller to me than a Rocky Mountain oyster. Oh, I think you're like a prairie dog. Oh, like a giant prairie. Oh, yeah. Or you get them from the prairie to one. I thought they were going to have moose oysters or something like that. I think they're almost exclusively a bowl testicle.

Okay. But in Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, they are sometimes called calf fries. They've also been called cowboy caviar, Montana tender groins, dusted nuts, or swinging beef. Swinging beef? Where do they call it that? Around. Oh my goodness. Nobody goes with the actual definition, I noticed.

Yes. No one just calls them bowl testicles. They are mostly served at festivals, but they are available at Coors Field during Colorado Rockies Games. Okay. They're considered an aphrodisiac. Really? Mm-hmm.

Yes, that's right. Now, eating animal genitalia dates back to ancient Rome. Here we go, Greg. Where do we go? Wait, where am I? Buckle in. Buckle in. We went from clean beef to ancient Rome.

It's turning to hardcore history here on this podcast. Yeah. Well, back in ancient Rome, it was believed that if you had like a problem with an organ in your body, if you ate the healthy version of that organ from an animal, then it would cure you. So if you had a bad liver, you could eat a healthy animal liver. If you were having, you know, impotence, you ate a penis? I don't know.

Maybe that's when you eat the balls. I don't even know if I should be here. But Michael does say that he wants to put a salami in his pocket right afterwards. So maybe... See, this is all in line with what's happening. I hear you trying to move us along here, Greg, but I am determined to tell you this recipe that I found on whatscookingamerica.com. So shouldn't that be on like the website?

So you just sort of throw it to the website if you're, for people who are really interested, then you can get the whole thing. I want people to have some of these tips for making Rocky Mountain Oysters at home. Okay. Number one. Where do you get the ingredients, first of all? That's a good one. I don't know where you get the testicles.

You go to your bull guy. Yeah. Well, it is suggested. Number one tip, you're going to want to freeze the testicles first because then you can more easily peel the skin off while they're thawing. Very uncomfortable. This whole discussion is killing me. Number two, marinate them in beer for two hours.

And then after you cook them up, serve them warm with a hot pepper sauce. And in case you were curious, a single raw bull testicle contains about 26 grams of protein, very little fat, and they are rich in zinc. So they're very good for you. Very good for you. Right. Well, I thought one of the funny jokes in this was that we didn't really put a lot of weight on.

I hope people caught it. It was just quite munching away on them as he's giving his answers. Yes. I did notice. It looked at what he was eating, and it looked like chicken to me. A chicken nugget? It looked like a giant chicken nugget. I think the actual Rocky Mountain oysters do look like chicken.

I can't imagine that Phil Shea fried up some Rocky Mountain oysters for Rain. He was very into. He was very thorough. We may never know. I didn't check into that. Rain looks like a guy who's had a lot of protein and zinc. He does. It's very healthy.

He would eat it, too. He would eat it. Rain loved to eat food and scenes. He loved it. Whenever he had a chance to just completely chow down on something, I'm sure he was so tickled that he got to do that. As actors, have you guys ever heard the sort of criticism of actors that like to munch an apple during the scene?

No. What is the criticism of eating an apple? Oh. Well, I don't know if it's just a specific to an apple? No. It's just like a little bit of a crutch for an actor to be able to- Brad Pitt does it all the time. Does he really?

Yes. He eats apples in movies. Dude, watch the Ocean's 12 movies. He's always eating something. Yeah. It's like a way to appear very casual as you're giving your lines, you're munching away and stuff. Oh.

Angela just threw Brad Pitt under the bus. I did make his groceries. He eats in front of actors eating and I just was thinking- I don't know if it's bad. It's just a thing. One of my favorite parts of all of the Godfather movies and Goodfellas movies is how much people eat. The Sopranos eat all the time.

They're always eating. Yeah. The Sopranos. Sure. They have very good catering. Well, now we're in Michael's office and D'Angelo really wants one of Michael's toys. He wants the little 18-wheeler Dunder Mifflin-like paper delivery truck. Michael is clearly annoyed and he says, sure, take my favorite truck.

D'Angelo says, you know what? I'm going to give you space. I'm going to post up in the break room. And then he has a talking head where he says, ugh, dead man walking. And Greg, I had to know if there was a candy bag alt for this talking head. And Greg just told me something outside, Jenna, that you didn't hear and I can't wait for him to tell you. Will you tell us that you came up with-

Oh, well, candy bag is my term. He made it up! You made up candy bag? Yes, yes, he did. I was trying to make it sound fun and exciting to the crew that they have to shoot extra material if we couldn't decide what the lines should be. So yeah. Well, it's one of my absolute favorite things and I didn't know you made up that term and

it makes me so happy. And there were candy bag alts for this D'Angelo talking head. I'm going to read you three of my favorites. Blech, be professional for God's sake. Share your toys. That's good. I like that. Next one.

I've been here three weeks and he hasn't touched the truck and lastly, I don't even want the truck. I just want it because he has it. I'm a helicopter guy. I like helicopters. I kind of like them all better than what we use. My favorite is I've been here three weeks. He hasn't even touched the truck.

Yeah. Well, you know what's interesting is this, I was looking over this and this was, you know, one of the reasons I really wanted to come in, I was very proud of this. It was a script. And, you know, it was an Emmy nominated script and I feel like I was sort of, you know, running on all cylinders at this point. And there's a lot of times in the script where there's little bits of information that are sort of snuck in that are setting up all these different storylines.

And I'm sure the reason why we picked Dead Man Walking was because it led into Michael's next talking head where he says, I'm not sad, I don't have to leave till tomorrow and tomorrow I'll be a wreck. And that is setting up this whole notion of when is he actually leaving, which is Steve's idea and it's like this wonderful way to disguise a lot of the emotional stuff. So the people aren't having to talk to him directly as if it's his last day. They're just trying to, you know, get through a normal day. But he knows it's his last day.

So that's probably why we picked Dead Man Walking instead of those other ones, which are sound pretty hilarious. You're so right though. And I, I mean, Jen and I were talking about this as we prep this episode about how thoughtful you were, Greg, in writing this, because there are so many wonderful moments that point back to earlier episodes. And if you watch it with that in mind, I just got so much more emotional watching it. Yeah.

I mean, I was so delighted to see that party planning committee seen. Yeah. To see how differently Michael regarded the party planning committee in this episode compared to the first one. So much so that I pulled audio clips of both the first party planning and this one. And I thought we could listen to them back to back. Yeah, let's do it. Okay, great.

Blue. Yellow. Red. How about green? I think green is kind of hourish. These are my party planning biaches pulled off an amazing 80s party. Party last year. Awful.

So I was thinking if you haven't already gotten a cake, maybe go in for one of those ice cream cakes from Baskin Robbins. They're very good. Very delicious. Meredith's allergic to dairy, so. She's not the only one that's going to be eating it, right? I think everybody likes ice cream cake. It's not, uh, not just about her.

So it is her chocolate chip. Good to get. How about some... So that's the first one, yeah. And now here is the final party planning committee scene with Michael, right? How about cupcakes? Please. What's wrong with cupcakes?

Everything. There they are. Party planning committee together again. Well, we all wanted to plan your goodbye party. We thought this would be easier. We thought we decided on the ice cream. Mint chocolate chip, your favorite. Mmm.

Yeah, that was a surprise. You know what? Maybe we should get ice cream that everybody will like. Have a vanilla. Let's get vanilla. Okay. Tomorrow, I want everybody to have a good time, no drama, and as for today, just a typical day.

All right? Should we get toppings? What do you like, Pam? What? What kind of topping would you like? Hot foot? Sounds good. Fudge it up.

What I love about them is that the dynamic of the party planning committee has not changed. No. No. Yeah. We have grown not at all in our ability to work with one another. Yeah. I love how surprised you were at being asked your opinion. Yeah.

That was such a good read. What? It's one of those things sometimes where you're afraid it's a trap. Yeah. Really, where is this going? Yeah. Well, I mean, there's another example of slipping in some good exposition there because he says like, I don't want any drama today, just a typical day, and that's like sets up his

whole expectation for the episode and then, you know, that lets us have an act break out of a very slender thing of like, oh no, I'm not leaving tomorrow, I'm leaving today at four or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I have a slightly cynical question. Yeah. I do think Michael would have been more attached to the ice cream flavor if he knew he was

going to be at the party. Yes. Is he able to be so generous because he's like, I'm not even going to be there, so whatever you want. I don't have to control it if I'm not eating it. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, it's hilarious.

A certain amount of growth, but not a ton of growth. Exactly. Right. Well, after this scene, Michael's going to have a talking head where he talks about how he bought himself his world's best boss mug, but yesterday the whole office gave him a world's best boss, Dundee, so he throws his mug in the trash and then he sets his Dundee on the desk and it 100% mirrors that opening shot. How did you guys do that?

It's so perfect. You wouldn't even know. It looks like it's like just copy and paste it in. Yeah. I actually paused to see if you tricked us and you actually cut away to the original shot, but you didn't. It's a new shot. Yeah.

It's a new shot. Yeah. Well, that was something that I added to the pilot was that mug, the fact that he bought himself his world's best boss mug and when you're doing a pilot, you're always looking for like, what is the one thing you can do that will encapsulate somebody's… Existence. Yeah, complete psychology in one visual thing. I always thought that that prop was like a really good example of somebody who had very

little self-knowledge and so it was good that he outgrew that thing and then it was a great episode that Dundee episode, previous one was great and I can't remember when I think it was just during the writing of it that I realized like, oh, why don't we see that? The use of documentary little conventions was very sparingly doled out for big moments. So like in this one, we pulled out some stops and we did that and we were like, cool. This is how that first shot came in and again, like I think that has a lot of emotional resonance because you realize, oh my God, I've been watching that every week for the whole run of the show.

That's where it came in the last episode, so like I thought that was cool. But then there's other stuff like when he at the end takes his mic off and stuff like that. I feel like the taking the mic off was a big moment in the English show, I think. It was. There's a moment when Tim takes his microphone off when he's going to tell his feelings to Don. Yeah.

And I think it's even in the Christmas special, if I'm correct. So that was obviously, that's like a silver bullet that you get to use once and we saved it for this. Well, Michael is going to take out a list of employees' names and you can see the list at five minutes and 32 seconds. And Greg, did that list sort of shape the episode for you? Did you have an outline with that? Well, let me just remember this little story because I used to work on a show called the

Wilton North Report. And Conan and I both worked there. It was a weird brief experience of a late night variety show. And they did have a cool documentary collective that was part of that show. And one thing I did once was take this documentary crew and go to this guy's retirement party who was retiring from the gas company, SoCal Gas. And we just shot it and kind of looked for something that would be touching or humorous about just sort of this average guy retiring from the gas company.

And anyway, the mood of that informs this script for me because that guy was being toasted by people he'd worked with for a really long time. He was leaving. They gave him little gifts, you know, like, here's a golf ball. You can use it on your golf or whatever, you know. But it was almost sad, it was very sad because they were almost packing him on a Viking ship and lighting him on fire and sending him off, you know. It was like, I don't think he was going to see any of these people again, you know.

And it was very bittersweet. And so, I mean, I had that mood in the back of my head. And then when Michael got the list, he was going to go in. Yeah. So, the thing about the list was it was kind of like the structure of the episode is he's going to say his goodbyes. And so, the list was a good roadmap for where we were going to go. And so, once you saw the list, you were like, okay, I know how this episode is going to

go. I have a general feeling that he's going to have to cross off everybody on the list. And considering that the big sort of dilemma that he has at the end is he hasn't gotten to Pam, you know, to visually see the list and see everybody get crossed off except Pam is going to be our structure, you know. So that was very useful to have the list. It definitely reminded me of the Wizard of Oz a little bit. Yeah, there's a lot of Wizard of Oz in this.

Yeah. So, it's like that final scene when they meet with the great Oz and he's like, you get a diploma and you get a medal. It's like, Phyllis is shy and doesn't, you know, speak up for herself. She gets the clattering teeth and... Yeah. Totally. And I think he watched Wizard of Oz and saw himself as the Wizard of Oz maybe on some

level. Yeah. I did catch a moment where I saw some real Michael growth because when he gives Stanley like the novelty pool table, Stanley says, it's got no balls. And Michael doesn't say anything. Yes. I noticed that too. That's what she said.

Yeah. Well, also, I think the funny, that's also setting up this subplot in this episode is that Stanley got this little broken toy and then Andy gets the 10 biggest clients right afterwards. And he's like, I'm going to lose them. I'm going to lose them. And Michael's like, I have faith in you. And then later he shouts out in the middle of the scene, I just lost one.

I just... Corner Hardware. Yeah. I was lost part of Hardware, Michael. Yes. Yeah. Oh, it's so good. No, I loved that.

That was really... Like, I was confident that was going to be a big laugh in writing it. I was like, have him yell from across the, you know, I also, I loved it on the show when there were stuff coming off Mike. Uh-huh. You know what I mean? It was just felt so real, but you're just like, oh, we're over here and accounting. Oh, no.

Yeah. I'm just joking from his B plot. All right. I think we should take a break. And when we come back, keep breaking down the episode. Like it. We are back and we are still in accounting. Michael presents Kevin with a drawing of Kevin as a pig eating pizza, but then he tears

up the picture and he says, don't be a caricature, Kevin. That's his gift to Kevin, I guess. Is this what? This lesson? Well, Kevin says, I kind of like good with myself. I like who I am. And Michael says, never settle for who you are. Yeah.

So that's maybe more old fashioned Michael giving some bad lessons out. But I mean, I always did, I mean, Kevin was a kind of a pet peeve of mine a little bit with the writing staff because I was always trying to keep him three dimensional, you know what I mean? And like, I love that he was good at basketball and the basketball episode and. Good at poker. Yeah. He's good at certain things.

And, you know, he was sort of musical and, you know, like there were other aspects to his character other than slow and fat. I mean, I think this was maybe something where I was enacting a conversation I had with the writing staff a lot through Michael's twisted, you know, vision of his trying to do something nice for Kevin. Phil Shea, by the way, really stepped up. There's a lot of really funny props in this episode. Like the Scarecrow?

Yes. I love the Scarecrow. How many different Scarecrow's did Phil present? Oh, I think it was just this. He nailed it. Yeah. He completely nailed it. I loved doing props with him.

Like there's, I can't remember which episode, but there's like a little Venus of Willendorf statute, you know? Oh, yes. That sort of like Neanderthal pregnant carving that I think Moe's has or Dwight has or something in his farm. Yeah. I love like, like things where you're like, well, yeah, I've sort of, I can agree that that is art and so it must be allowed on screen.

But it's also like so weird and, you know, sexualized and strange. I was at Bed Bath and Beyond this week and all of a sudden I hear Angela and I turn around and it's Phil Shea and he has three different types of woven gray blankets that he's holding. And I was like- Steaming of a choice? No. Exactly. Which blanket?

I know. I was like, Phil, what are you doing? He's like, I'm shopping for gray blankets for American Otto. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. And then we ended up chatting for a bit and it was so great to see him. We got a fan question from Betsy Y in Westminster, Colorado, who said, I have been waiting since the beginning of the podcast to ask a question about this episode.

Oh, wow. My favorite scene from the entire show is when Michael gives Oscar the scarecrow and then Michael's talking head afterwards where he is laughing. I need to know everything about this scene. How did Oscar not laugh? Was Steve laughing for real? Was this improvised? Well, I went to the script.

That talking head with Michael is completely scripted and Steve is just laughing so hard. He's laughing like how Steve laughs too when Steve thinks things are really funny. It's so good. No one is better at fake laughing than Steve Carell. He is the best. I got to tell you about my dad. So my dad is very, very foundational in my comedy writing career. Like, my biggest break was writing a Seinfeld episode and it was all basically the story

of something that happened to my dad in New York where he was trying to park his car. He pulled the parking space episode where he pulls it, he backs into a space and something fronts into it. And someone's playing. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, that happened to my dad and he was so stubborn because he'd been trying to find a parking space for like 45 minutes and he just sat in his car and the other guy wouldn't budge either.

And then my dad saw a friend of his walking down the street and he shouted out to him, get my wife, get her, bring me dinner. And, you know, it was like this really funny sort of New York conflict. Anyway, so I wrote that up and there's a lot of little references to my dad over the series. So for instance, in I guess the first dundies when Michael puts on a Karnak turban and does a joke about health care, who has better health care, yellow or, you know, that was a joke I wrote for my dad's comedy routine that he used to do in his company. He used to put on his turban and do do Karnak routine like Johnny Carson.

Yeah, he would do Johnny Carson thing and he had a sidekick and I would write for him and he used to do this every year at the management meeting of his company. How old were you when you first wrote like a bit for him 14 or something? And so I used, but that was the exact joke. The one that's in the dundies was the exact joke that I used for my first joke for my dad that went over really well in his company. And there's other things in here. For instance, in the company, my dad was a salesman in this company at one point and

he had a friend and they used to go on sales calls and they would, and the friend would pretend he had a metal plate in his head. So I put that in in the sales call. When D'Angelo was like trying to figure out what their bit is. And they would sort of double team these guys and, you know, try and get sympathy for the guy with the metal plate and yeah, so there's a lot in there. But one of the things that my dad does that to me is the most likable thing that he does is he gets on these runs where he's making himself crack up and his voice gets really

high and he can barely speak through the laughter, you know what I mean? And Steve's always on some level reminded me of my dad. So this was like a total moment of overlap for me is seeing this thing that, you know, my dad would do coming out of Steve so brilliantly who, you know, knew my dad. I know that's some in-depth backstory for your friend and the coolest thing to me about this moment with Oscar is Oscar is always so superior to Steve. Like the essence of their relationship is Oscar's always right and he's always much more mature.

Actually. Michael. Yeah. And he corrects. He's like brava, you know, he's a little irritatingly correcting here and in this instance, Michael was smarter than Oscar Martinez to be between Steve and Oscar Nunez. I don't know. We have to have some kind of a contest.

Yeah. I loved it. I loved it so much and it just anytime I hear stories like that were something that you write or any of our writers write and how it relates back to their life is just my favorite thing to hear. It's like our onset stories, like you guys have all the cool onset stories about, you know, the time that the heater fell over and started a fire and, you know, whatever it is, you don't have any of those cool stories, so it all has to be like, where'd you come

up with that? I love it. Well, now Michael is going to approach Angela Martin and I talked about this a little bit earlier. If you go to nine minutes and 51 seconds, you can see that my eyes are bright red, like they're all red. Angela, Paul Fieg said he had to call for makeup to give you eye drops to take the red out because you wouldn't stop crying and your eyes were so red.

I know. Well, during the scene, you're going to show the pictures of your time with the senator and his super hot aide, Thomas. Is this the first part? Is this the first hint that we have of the aide and the senator or is that earlier? I feel like you had one comment about his aide earlier. Yes. No, why?

Didn't he join you for Valentine's Day or something? Yes. Yes. I've been in deleted scenes, but I shared it that everyone talks about how they're going to spend their Valentine's Day and Angela has a talking head where she was like, the senator's taking me out somewhere, but then he has to leave early to meet his aide, Thomas. They do a lot of late night work sessions. Yes.

Well, Randy shared with us that these pictures were not shot on a green screen. You actually went to an antique shop and you went to a nearby street to go rollerblading to shoot those photos. Do you remember that, Angela? I do. We were all in one day and we drove to a few different places and I was most excited about rollerblading because I love to roller skate and so I was very excited that my character got to do anything other than just sit in a corner and scowl.

But rollerblading is very different than roller skating. It is. Can you do both? I can do both. I prefer roller skating. Right. But I was just excited to be outside and skate and I got to wear shorts and I got a day where I got to like travel around the valley.

Antiquing and rollerblading. Antiquing and rollerblading. It was really fun. Nice. So we have failed to mention D'Angelo's struggle in this episode, which is that, you know, he is being very tempted by all the snacks and the vending machine. We're going to see him in the break room now and he is making a s'more on the heating pad of the coffee maker and Andy is going to come in and say he needs some help with

a client. Greg, have you done this? Have you made a s'more like in a microwave or something? I feel like this is something you would do because I have been in the kitchen with you where you're like, we only had a few ingredients of something and maybe we didn't have all the right utensils. You're like, let's try it. Well, I went to boarding school.

So a lot of times, you know, if you, you couldn't cook, you had no access to the kitchen. And so sometimes you have to like make up stuff that you could do with one of those little coils that heats up and, you know, so if there was any grilled cheese with an iron sort of thing. Yeah, that kind of thing. So we had a fan catch from Madison M. and Denver, Colorado in this episode and I'm going to just say ahead of time, Madison is correct. Madison said, I noticed a continuity error in this episode at 10 minutes and 40 seconds.

DeAngelo is cooking the marshmallow chocolate treat with the coffee pot and he walks in and at 10 minutes and 51 seconds, he throws it in the garbage with his left hand. But at 11 minutes, when he slaps the top of the doorway and leaves finger prints, it's with his right hand. That's a good catch. Yeah. I mean, it's possible he had chocolate all over himself, but that's a good catch. I remember that chocolate fingerprint hand being up there for a very long time.

I'm eager now to watch it and try to spot it every time. When was it ever cleaned off? I don't know if it ever was. I mean, it might be there till the end. I don't know, but I feel like it's definitely above my head when I'm doing the fake juggling in the break room in DeAngelo's last episode. Can I tell a quick story about The Simpsons? Yes.

Yes, please. No, nobody wants stories about The Simpsons. When I joined the writing staff on The Simpsons, which was the end of season four, they were in the writer's room. There was this weird brown object stuck to the ceiling and it turned out that somebody had chewed up a bunch of carmels, stuck it on a doll of Bart on his spiky hair, and stuck him to the ceiling. That was like a little room bit for a while, and then the doll fell off and the carmels

were there. This was like two years old by the time I got there, and they were like, oh, yes, I'll tell you the story about the carmels in the ceiling. It's just hardened. I was like, yeah, why does anybody clean it up? Those kind of things will last sometimes in an office, like the chocolate fingerprints could be there two years later. People are like, oh, yeah, that was a time that it just lives there now.

I feel like I have those things in my house. I feel like I'm like, oh, yeah, that was a kid's- You become blind to the stuff in your house. I hope you don't. No, I mean, I feel like we have like, here's a perfect example. One year for Halloween, we put like hand prints and footprints on the gate, the side gate of our house. Okay.

They were like a path, like a scary path. When we peeled them off, part of them remained. They didn't peel off exactly and like part of the stickies there. Oh, I see. And now they just live there. Yeah. You get completely blind to the stuff in your environment. Like I'm sure that somewhere in my house, there's a list of things that a dog who died

like six years ago can't eat or whatever, it's just still in the kitchen. It's taped up. Do not feed this dog who no longer is with us. No chicken. The worst thing you can do is get out a magic eraser and start like erasering part of some hand prints on your wall because then all you see is like how smudgy your walls are. Yeah. That's life with kids.

Yeah. That's a hole I went down recently. Well, Oscar is going to ask Michael where he should send his last paycheck and everything hits Michael. He doesn't even know his address. It's real. Yeah. He said, I don't know.

I live in Mountain Tun, you know, and he starts to freak out and then he goes into the break room and everyone is just hanging out and just eating and having a normal day and he's sitting in the corner and he's just becoming more and more emotional. Yeah. Pam's talking about how she's going to have to buy a new shredder because the last one broke. I love it that Kevin's like buy one that shreds magazines. Yeah.

Why is he so fixated on shredding magazines? I don't know. He clearly broke the shredder. I know. She's like, Kevin, none of them shred magazines and then Jim is like, Kevin, did you break the last shredder? These are such like real fly on the wall office conversations, I feel like. I love them.

Well, that's what I'd love to also about this episode is he's leaving and there's so much opportunity for really mundane moments to hit him emotionally, like the very, very end when he looks back and it's just, you know, the typical sounds of the office is about to leave and he's the only one who knows he's leaving. But this is another one of those moments where he's just overhearing this chitter chatter and yet it's also setting up Pam's lie that's going to get her out of the office later. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's so true when you have to say goodbye to something that means a lot to you. I even remember, you know, when we were writing our book and I went back and I rewatched the finale and kind of reliving that last week and everything became big. I'm like, this is the last hot snack. Yeah. Last time I'm going to have, you know, hot dogs at 1030. This is the last time I'm going to be freezing on this set. Do you remember the gift that I made for Steve when he left?

So basically I went and I saw three places that he did a lot of work from and I took very high quality photos of what he would see. His view. So his view of the crew and the other cast. So I had one from him behind his desk in his POV and I put like all the, you know, I put Vada sitting there with her notebook and the cameras and, you know, so that it was like a reminder of what he used to see when he looked up from his filming and then I did one of all you guys in the conference room, what he saw when he was standing in front

of the conference room. And I think there was one other one in the bigger room that had all a lot of the crew in it. Yeah. Just so he could remember what his point of view was of those things, but it's sort of the same thing a little bit emotionally here. It's like here he is sitting and he's just looking out at, you know, an average scene from that.

Yeah. Job. And those are the ones that hit you so hard. Well, he's going to go into his office now and he's like, I can't do this. I can't do this. And he's starting to freak out about moving and he's going to call Holly before he does. He has my favorite line in the episode, which is, I'm not going to start in profit level one.

I don't think my credits are going to transfer. If you've taken improv class, you guys, there are so many levels and if you have to repeat a level for whatever reason, there's like eight levels sometimes. And that just got me. I've said it a many times. So the thing I think is so brilliant about Steve is his ability to play multiple things going on in his head at the same time. And I love the speech.

It's so funny. Everything is really funny in the speech. It's just so unexpected that he's worrying about his improv credits. I don't think we've thought about him being an improv class in years, you know, I love to think that he's been in it all along. Yeah. Yeah. This is like a greatest hits episode to me.

It's like, this is, you know, that was one of the reasons why I was so happy to be able to write it because I have memories of every episode going up to here with him from the pilot to this episode and making little references to it. Like that was such a brilliant gents a lot of written episode, the one where he's doing improv and he invents Michael Skarn and yeah. So that's our little reference to that. Yeah. There's the references to like the whole history up to this point, I think, and a lot

of these little scenes. Randy Cordray sent me the call sheets for this episode and I was able to look at the call sheet for Steve's final shooting day. That scene in the break room, that was first up. We shot that at 7 a.m. That was one of the scenes on his last day. And then this scene where he's freaking out and he calls Holly, this was also on his last day.

You mentioned that Paul Feig sort of stacked his day with the most sentimental, most emotional moments. He had to cry all day. Basically, yeah. Yeah. Well, he was, I mean, by the time it got to the Jim Michael scene, that was the biggest difficult one to edit. I mean, they were both just complete messes in that scene.

Yeah. I mean, I kept running into Paul Feig saying, tell them to dry it up somehow. Yeah. It's too much. Well, when Steve is Michael's voice, you know, it cracks when he goes, you came here as a young man. I was like, I was like crying. Coming up is one of my favorite scenes because Michael is going to have to say goodbye to

Toby and he has to do his best to not say something awful to Toby. And he does it. It is amazing even when Toby tells him that he has a brother in Colorado. I mean, Michael cannot get away from this family of wet blankets when he's like, what? And you know, like that GIF that him just going, no, no, like, you know, that's what is going on inside of his head. But he does it. And then Kelly just wants him to walk away.

Yeah. But then I guess, is this another greatest hits when he gives Ryan his St. Pauli girl neon sign and his whole closet is blue. Yeah. It's funny. The one with, we didn't mention going by with Phyllis and her, and her mitten, but that's a reference to the first Christmas episode. Yes.

And he hated that stupid oven mitt that she made for him. And I love that she's, she's really testing his maturity here because the description that she has of this mitten and how you're supposed to clean it, it's like the worst gift. And she's like, you can't wash it, it has to be air-dried, it's like all these, you can't get it wet. You can't get it wet. Like all these things.

Yeah. It's just, it's just horrible useless mitten and he's so nice to her. But you can, you know exactly what he wants to say. Yeah. Yeah. So there are a few really great deleted scenes, Greg. They're on the DVD and I wanted to ask you about one of them. When Michael is having this moment in the break room where he's getting emotional, kind

of, I'm toggling back here for a second. There is this beat that didn't make it to the air episode where he takes off his boots and throws them in the trash. Those boots that he had on the roof is like, boots, I'm going to Colorado. And then ultimately Creed ends up wearing them. He finds them in the trash. Yeah. But was that from a personal story for you?

Yeah, that was a personal story. I kind of think that the boots were a bigger deal in my first draft of the script because I think you barely see them on the rooftop. I noticed them. Oh, right away. Very clearly. I was shocked that Michael was wearing cowboy boots. A student brings.

I did not deep dive cowboy boots though. Yeah. But that happened to me. I went to visit Austin, Texas and I got very inspired to buy a pair of cowboy boots while I was there because everybody had cowboy boots and I brought them back and was wearing them in New York. I decided I was walking from my apartment to my job at Saturday Night Live wearing these cowboy boots.

How big of a walk was that? Yeah, it was like two miles on the concrete of New York in the cowboy boots. By the time I got there, I was like, you know, I've got like flat feet and this really should not be wearing cowboy boots. And anyway, they were so painful that I took them off and threw them out and got a pair of sneakers. And A. Whitney Brown, who was this writer on Saturday Night Live who had a much more authentic country background.

He had his grandmother's recipe for vitals, which is like a squirrel or something on his wall. And maybe not flat feet. Yeah, probably not. He fished them out and I swear he wore them every day for the rest of the time that I was on that show. He was your creed. Yeah, he was the creed.

So anyway, I cribbed that joke a little bit, but it was a deleted scene because it was probably more meaningful to me than anybody else. But I do think it was good because creed, I can't remember what the bloat of that scene was, but I feel like creed says something like you think it really was the boots and then they're like, no, we don't think we think it was something emotional. He's like, good. He grabs the boots out. Yeah.

Like wear something. You want to make sure it was okay to take the boots. Yeah. He's just carried about. Oh, is Michael like kind of teary when he throws the boots away? Yeah. I mean, he says that his feet hurt or something. That's why he throws the boots.

Yeah. And the boots are also supposed to be. I didn't see the deleted scene. So I didn't know what happens in it. The boots are supposed to be sort of symbolic of his move to Colorado and at this point he's questioning if he's going to go to Colorado. So he gets rid of his boots. Okay.

Right. So now we're in the conference room. The party planning committee is still planning this party. They're so slow. Meredith would like to get an erotic cake. And she said they're really great because they have real women depicted on the cakes. Yeah. And Phyllis is like, as someone who buys a lot of erotic cakes, it just feels good to

be represented. Yeah. I love this scene. I don't think this was in my writer's draft. I feel like it goes to BJ in here. I feel like this is a room written scene. It's very funny though. It's interesting you say that this was an extra scene.

I guess when you guys got permission to supersize this episode, we got that news a little late and we did shoot a couple of things that did not involve Steve. They couldn't because he was gone. We shot this a week later. This was one of them. I do have a continuity catch at 14 minutes 51 seconds. Did anyone notice that Angela Martin now has her hair down? No.

The whole entire episode, she has her hair pulled back in a clip. And then all of a sudden in this extra party planning committee scene, her hair is down. I noticed that my hair is much prettier. Somehow the way we did my hair, it turned out prettier than the original week of shooting. So clearly there were some continuity photo issues because someone did not notice that your hair had been up. And why didn't I notice? I had just filmed this episode when they didn't put the clip in, I didn't even register

it. Do you remember that kind of stuff? You got to, I guess. Sometimes, yeah. I mean, there are many times where I'd be like, oh no, no, no, I had my hair in a braid for that. But for whatever reason, I didn't catch it on this day. Well, maybe the topic of erotic cakes made you relax.

Take your hair down. Take your hair out. Take your hair out. Yeah, exactly. Well, Michael is going to approach Pam, but she's rushing out. Yeah, that was shot on the last day, that scene of me and the bullpen with Steve. The other storyline that's going on that we haven't talked about is that Gabe is really just kind of aggressively trying to get Erin back.

And he keeps going in the restroom to look for her. He's kind of getting aggressive with Andy, but at 16 minutes, 15 seconds, we have a great call back to women's appreciation because Creed is going to come out of the women's restroom. That's where he does his number twos. He's made that clear. He's much nicer in there. I don't know if we've been in the restroom since women's appreciation.

The women's? I don't know if we have. I mean, the men's. We've been in the men's quite a bit with Michael, but I think you're right. I'm not sure we've been back into the women's restroom. I love the gym line at the beginning of this. It's like, so you're filming in the restroom? You're filming us going to the bathroom now?

Yeah. That was really well done. Zach Woods is hilarious in this thing where he's just threatening Andy. He's the type of actor for me that anything he says is just hilarious to me. I would always laugh if I was in a scene with him. Well, coming up, we're going to meet Toby's brother, Rory, on a video call. Toby is going to let Rory know about Michael coming to Colorado. Rory would like to know if Michael likes jam because he could give him a basket of jam.

He has lots of jams. We had a fan question from Hannah L in California. Is Toby's Colorado brother played by Paul Lieberstein's real brother, Warren? If so, how did this come about? Was it planned for a while? Was this a card on the writer's wall? Now, I remember Warren and Paul talking about this, and I remember them kicking around names for what Toby's brother's name would be.

At the time, I had been going through old photos of my theater days. There was the sky. That was very nice, but kind of drove us all crazy named Rory. There's always one person in a theater group, and I was like, the name Rory, you've got to use the name Rory. Put that name on the list. I always wonder, I don't know who ended up voting, but I made sure Rory got on the list. Rory's a great name for that character, too.

It's sort of like the rural juror on 30 Rocks. It's just a really weak, soft sort of sound. It's hard to say. It's hard. It's hard to say. Combined with Flindersen. It just sounds Rory. Rory Flindersen.

You really get a sense of their parents and the name choice for their sons, Toby and Rory. Rory's got some kind of bizarre fascination with jams. You just, that's one of the possible spinoffs. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Jamming with Rory. It's Michael and Rory in Colorado. Well, I reached out to Warren about this, and he told me, I'm going to quote him.

He said, it came down between me and Steve Buscemi to play Toby's brother, but Steve was considered too handsome. Haha. And then he said, this little scene was a ton of fun to be in. They shot it maybe six times. And after the second take, Paul Fee came up and said, it's great, but could I please mumble a little bit more like Toby? Then after the next take, again, same note, could I please mumble more?

So the next take, I really went for it and mumbled so hard that I could barely understand the words coming out of my own mouth. After that shot, I apologized because I thought it was ridiculous, probably, and just a bunch of gibberish. And Paul Fee said, no, it was perfect. And if I could try to mumble even a bit more, you know, like Toby and Warren said, I think it wasn't really until that point that I truly appreciated my brother was a mumbling genius. We had a fan catch from Nevada D in Boulder, Colorado, who said, background catch.

I've been holding onto this one for a while now, and I am so excited to share. In this episode, we see Toby video chatting with his brother, Rory, who lives in Boulder, Colorado. The view through Rory's window is of the Chautauqua National Historical Landmark or the Flat Irons. Based on this view, Rory Flunderson lives on Baseline Road in Boulder, and that would mean that he's rather wealthy for living in that part of town. Well, Randy Cordray said that he called a very good friend of his named Todd Pazzle

of Broomfield, Colorado, asked Todd to go to Boulder and shoot an image of the iconic Flat Irons. The house seen in the image is the actual ranger station at the park. And Randy said Todd and Randy have climbed several of the Flat Iron formations seen in the background. Wow. That's interesting when people get to be characters. I mean, obviously, at this point, Rory was not going to have a giant impact on the show

probably unless we went to see Michael in Colorado. But some of them are so random because the Toby character was just Paul reading a line at the table, and Kevin Reilly being more of him, he's funny. And yet when I played the yarn salesman that lives next to Michael in the condo, it just didn't go anywhere. No, no notes from the execs. Nobody was like more yarn salesman. Well, I caught him.

I even knew he never appeared. That's right. That was a deleted scene. Well, that was your mistake. Yeah, exactly. So Michael's about halfway through his goodbyes. I think we take a break now and we finish up next week. I think so too, because otherwise this would be like a two hour episode.

Yes. All right, you guys, thank you so much for sending in your questions. We're going to get to the rest of them next week. See you then. Thank you for listening to Office Ladies. Office Ladies is produced by Earwolf, Jenna Fisher, and Angela Kinsey. Our show is executive produced by Cody Fisher. Our producer is Cassie Jerkins.

Our sound engineer is Sam Kieffer, and our associate producer is Ainsley Bubbico. Our theme song is Rubber Tree by Creed Bratton. For ad-free versions of Office Ladies, go to StitcherPremium.com. For a free one month trial of Stitcher Premium, use code, OFFICE.