Office Ladies - WUPHF.com with Aaron Shure

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

This week we’re breaking down “WUPHF.com” and we are joined by the writer of this episode, Aaron Shure! The smartest and brightest of the office workers have invested in Ryan’s Internet startup business, WUPHF.com. It only takes a few days to realize it’s a bad investment and everyone but Michael wants to sell. Writer Aaron Shure shares what it was like to write this episode, along with writing some very iconic cold opens. Jenna answers a fan mail flurry about why the show used straw instead of hay at Dwight’s Hay Place, Angela reveals another connection she has with the actor who played the Senator’s son, and fans give theories as to why we never see him again and if he was even the Senator’s son. So everyone follow us into Dwight’s shelter to enjoy this episode and food for 14 days. After that, we have a difficult conversation.

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, hello. Hi.

Guess what we're talking about today. It's yourself, woof.com. Oh my gosh. Ryan's startup company is here. This is season seven, episode nine. It was written by Aaron Scherr and directed by Danny Liener. He was a new director for us. He had directed Dude Where's My Car and Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.

We had a lot of fun. We did. Here is your summary, Ryan and Michael's business venture woof.com has hit a snag. And their investors slash co-workers are pressuring them to sell the company. Sell the company? The company is days old. No. It's hit a snag so quickly.

There's a lot of graphs for it, though. So many color copies. Oh, I love that runner. I don't like to be a lousy snitch. Well, in the meantime, there's a new corporate policy, Ye Olde Commission Cap, and Jim has hit his commission cap so he no longer feels motivated to work. And finally, Dwight is going to relive his childhood by turning the parking lot into a hay festival, which leads Angela into the arms of a new man.

Oh, yeah. You know what? This was our Thanksgiving episode, I realized. That's why there's a hay festival. This aired on November 18, 2010. We're always asking, where's our Thanksgiving episode? I think this was it. Here you go, woof.com.

Well, we're really excited because today, we are going to talk to our writer of this episode and friend, Aaron Scherr. Yes. Aaron was so lovely, and we got to talk to him for quite a bit. He was such a great guest. Jenna, you and I always love it when writers get to come on. Well, we're such nerds for the writing process, I think. We are.

Well, here's our conversation with Aaron. Hello, Aaron! Hi! Woohoo! Everyone, we're so excited we're being joined by our writer, Aaron Scherr, who, by the way, was nominated for a Writer's Guild Award for episodic comedy for this episode, woof.com. That was one of the high points of my career was getting that nomination. Well, we loved this episode, woof!

I was cracking up. I hadn't seen this episode in so long. I know we always say that because we are doing a rewatch in real time, but I was cracking up. Yeah. We really enjoyed the chance to revisit it, and the number of person hours that went into it, crazy, 25 pages of notes from Jonathan Hughes and Kelly Hanne and the Writing Assistance. Wow.

Wow. And then we whittled that down to a beat sheet and then to an outline and then an initial draft and then a lot changed after the table draft. The game character is Zach Woods. Normally when you're a writer, people will be like, how much do the actors make up? Actors usually bring so much more to it than just coming up with lines, right? But it's almost never as much improv as people think. You're like, usually it's more or less what we wrote and they come up with, they will

add things, especially brilliant improvisers like Steve Carell are going to bring new stuff. But generally speaking, we do the writing and they do the acting. But Zach kind of improvised that whole thing about being in the men's room and looking away. Yes. I remember that. And John couldn't keep a straight face. I remember that scene where John is complaining about the commission cap and then Gabe gives

us a long analogy about how well sometimes there are regulations you don't agree with. Like men are allowed to walk around naked at my gym and I don't like it, but it's, you know, that's their policy. I looked in the script because I was like, that sounds like Zach. He would go on these just bizarre tangents. He's a brilliant improviser. Yes. And that, that was an amazing speech.

Well, let's take you a little bit back to the beginning. How long did you work as a writer on the office? Well I was there five, four seasons, wait, five, six, seven, eight, so four seasons. The season when the, the Scranton Strangler was around too, that's just coincidental. I wasn't, I wasn't. Well before you worked on the office, you worked on Everybody Loves Raymond and the New Adventures of Old Christine, those were both three camera shows in front of a live audience.

I'm curious, what was the difference between working on shows like that versus working on the office? Which was single camera. Yeah. Well, the writing part is fairly similar. The biggest difference is in the production. So when you're comparing single camera to multi-cam, it was my first single camera show. And one of the things is, you know, a multi-cam is shot like a stage production, like you're

watching a play. And usually, ideally there's a real audience there enjoying it and you can't get that energy. Whereas our show, the office was, you know, shot like a movie and the camera is a character. And so you're in the space and it's much tighter and like people are speaking more quietly and more realistically. But for me being on the set, I was used to laughing loudly to try to encourage the actors and make it clear what parts were the joke. And so I had to learn not to do that.

I remember my first episode was Baby Shower and Greg Daniels was directing and he had to keep telling me like, hey, don't laugh, be quiet. And so I'd go home and have held in some, because oh my God, the performances were so amazing and so funny and it's so hard not to laugh. So I'd go home and feel all this pent up laughter and it'd usually come out and like, you know, indigestion and burps and stuff. But also there was sort of a generational change from Raymond to The Office, then other shows I've gone on to like People of Earth in terms of how we relate to the internet,

which is apropos of this episode, right, which on every bill as Raymond, we would be like, don't go to those chat boards, don't, you know, my space. And then on The Office, we were, you know, interacting with Office Tally and Jenny Tan and we were kind of doing the equivalent of live streaming in that day during an episode when the episode would air, we would, the writing staff would get on and be like tweeting. So on The Office, we would draw from the internet. It was, it was like a reciprocal relationship where we would talk to the internet and the internet would talk to us and we would take so from the internet like in, you know, wedding

dance was straight off the internet and YouTube, right. And also lip dubs, like the opening of nepotism where there was a lip dub and you see Woof.com in there. Well, you know, on our show, a lot of times you guys would pitch us lines in the moment because we've said this before, the writers were on set with us. But my small experience with multicam is that you sort of figure out your jokes and change your jokes in the rehearsal process. And there's not a lot of like on the shoot day coming up with new jokes.

Is that true or did you feel pressure while we were shooting that you had to stand there and throw new lines at us? Yes. Well, we would have, you know, a candy bag with lots of alternative lines ready to go. We would write a lot of pages that would not end up in the final cut. They maybe would be deleted scenes, but on a on a multicam, like everybody lives Raymond, we pretty much had every page that we wrote would end up in the final episode, whereas on the office, we would lose 20, 30 percent of pages.

Oh, yeah. And that's the power of the doc style, though, because it's it's found footage. It's okay if it feels like, you know, you're not seeing every single moment and you can lose a lot and still have the story be there. And you can only you're able to keep just the best moments. I remember once I was went to a panel to just for of aspiring writers. And I showed an episode I wrote, it might have been Wolf, and it was on a DVD. Remember DVDs?

And I accidentally hit play of deleted scenes and I didn't realize it. And so we were watching only the deleted scenes and it had the basic shape of the entire episode. And I thought, wow, this is oddly edited for syndication, but it was so like there was enough of a like upside down world version of the episode there that we had written and shot that didn't make it, you know. So sometimes you would have to write scenes with enough story markers in it so that if it's the only part of this story that survives, there's enough there to hold it up as a story.

So there was a big flexibility in the editing, probably more so than a multicam. Okay, I have a question for you, Erin. We have shared with our podcast listeners that you were the quote, king of cold opens. You really were. You came up with some of the most brilliant ones. I mean, everyone knows Kevin's chili. That is like the spill heard around the world, but were there some other ones that you wrote that you would like to share with us?

Or do you have a favorite? So yeah, I came up, especially even season five, there was a fair number of cold opens that I kind of came up with the PA system, I believe was my idea. And actually that was from the offices of everybody loves Raymond. We figured out that you could do that, that there was a code you could hit on any phone and you'd suddenly have the entire PA system at your disposal. So that was from basically I didn't come up with things, I just remembered things. Cheese puffs was another thing I came up with.

Whether or not I was in the kitchen and I saw the cheese puffs and I threw one into my mouth. And that's, you know, when you're a writer, that's what you do. You're like, is this a thing? Is this, you know, I'm tapping my, I'm tapping my pencil. Is that a thing? You know, you're just constantly trying to desperate to come up with ideas. Gosh, all of these are really so memorable to you said cheese puff cold open.

I mean, that I get that sent to me all the time. People want to know if we really caught them and all that. You know, that was an example though where people throwing cheese puffs into their own mouths is not in and of itself a great idea, but what you did with it made it so delightful. And you were really, I mean, I just watched, I rewatched that and it's so what you did made it a thing, you know, the way you reacted to it. And it's also kind of impressive that you, you were able to do that. But I feel like that little thing, it's, it's really cool because it's so relatable.

We've all done that with popcorn or whatever. Maybe you're procrastinating or, you know, it's such a relatable thing. And then the other thing that's so relatable is like coming up with bigger stunts for yourself, you know, trick shots with food and, and then the joy when you land one that you came up with, that's just, that's a thing. Yeah. Like you tapped into something. I think you're so great, Erin, at just observing and then bringing what you've observed to

the page and I would love to see your notes because I feel like, are you someone when you go out in the world or you travel, are you like jotting down little moments? Yes. Yes. A lot of three by five cards, actually. Oh, you're speaking Angela's language. Well, you, I know you go, you've talked about that, how much, how much we tried to externalize the stories by putting them on three by five cards and putting, attacking them to the wall.

And, you know, as you show in your book, there's all those, you know, the writer's room is just festooned with them and it's a great, you know, Greg Daniels, that was always his, one of his many great writing ideas is trying to externalize it, get it out of your head, put it down on paper and, and it makes, makes it something you can literally manipulate in the world. And it also gives you a new perspective on the, on the idea. So it's. Was there ever a note card you put on the wall that, that didn't make it, but you still

remember it? Tons of them. I kept, one of them is the, I wanted there to be a, if not a cold open an entire episode where Michael actually gets rose colored glasses, because he's heard that expression and he wonders, you know, what it's like. So he literally gets rose colored glasses and then drives to work. And it's true life is much better when you have rose colored glasses, because all the lights were green.

There wasn't a single red light on the way to work and people were waving at them like your life is better when you. That actually sounds like an amazing cold open. Like I can just see Michael. Yeah. That's the thing. I fully see him doing it. Like buying them and be like, everyone's my friend, everything's awesome.

He's causing accidents left and right. And I found a card that just said, all it said is twice tarantula gets loose. Oh. Uh-huh. So I don't know where that goes. Probably ends up on Creed somehow. Of course. No, it goes in Creed's, Creed's drawer of mug beans.

We wanted to ask you a little bit about the talks that went into season seven and knowing that this was going to be Steve Carell's last year, which meant that it was Michael Scott's last year. What was that discussion like in the writer's room? How to handle his exit? It wasn't like one discussion. It was just a constant discussion. We were obsessed with this question.

It was scary. And so you got 15 writers. We pretty much had every conversation you could have about how are we going to do this. And we even went as far as to write like a talking point memo of things that actors and producers could say to the press about it. I do remember getting an email from, I think it was Greg that said, here you guys, if you're asked about Steve leaving or Michael leaving or what's going to happen to the show, here's things you can say.

Yes. Which was very helpful. Yeah. Because we were asked a lot. And I think one of the smartest things that I don't know if it was Greg or Paul who came up with the idea, which is that he left before the end of the season, which was just so smart because it gives, yes, he's leaving, but it's not a finale. That's still the office and the office goes on and here's an example of three episodes

of what we are promising you. And there's the fun of who is it going to be, who's going to actually come in and replace him. It was scary. It was scary. But I think Steve was very clear that he didn't see himself as the show and he was very generous in letting it continue in a way that showed that as important as Michael was to the show, the ensemble was also very important.

Yeah. Coming back to wolf.com for a second, we were curious who came up with the idea of the Hay King, the Hay Place, Hay Festival, Dwight's whole Hay existence. This is an interesting journey for me because when you've been on writing staffs for a while, you learn to go with the flow, right? You read the room and if you're a professional writer, you know, you roll in the direction that the room's going, but I actually didn't like Hay Place at first. It wasn't my idea and I didn't love it and I don't know why I had such a burr in my saddle

about it. I think I imagined, I mean, this is sort of an obvious thing, but it's good to remember that you don't know what's going to happen. You don't know when you have just an idea, it could be the best thing ever or the worst thing ever. All depends on execution. And I just sort of had a bad version of it in my head and I sort of felt like, well, how much resources does Dwight have to build a Hay maze?

Does he really have the ability to do it? And so I kind of had a bad attitude about it. Yeah, the maze was big, but I saw them build it and it's doable. It's doable that two people could have built that maze in a weekend. And so the other thing, though, we got a little feedback from the internet was that's not Hay, it's straw. Oh my gosh, Erin, when we are finished speaking with you today and we're breaking down this episode, you would not believe the mail that we got about this from farmers across the

country, that that is straw, it is not Hay and I've got a whole deep dive about it. Jenna said there was a fan mail flurry from a lot of agricultural folks who really wanted you to know. Oh yeah. I learned something. I learned a lot about Hay and straw. Hay is, do you know, I don't want to steal your thunder, but you know, Hay is dangerous. You know, it can combust spontaneously.

What? If you pack your Hay too tightly and it gets wet, it will become a huge fire. I did not know this and this is not part of my breakdown. I did not know this either and my dad grew Hay and I'm going to talk about that as well when we get to it. Yeah, and you have to monitor the, you have to stick things into your Hay bail to make sure it's not going to combust, to make, to monitor it. That I do remember.

I remember my dad doing that, but I didn't understand why. Erin, are these all things that you learned about Hay and straw after the episode aired? During, well, during the process, I was researching it and the part I didn't know going into it was that they would use straw. I thought there would be Hay, but then it turns out for obvious reasons you would use actual straw. Straw is just structurally better. But I think one of the best reasons for that Hay place to exist was the scene between the

senator and Angela, which was one of my favorite scenes, rewatching it especially. And that was not in my original draft. The fact that he laughs at you and thinks, well, he thinks Angela is funny. And for her, that's a new experience and I was just such a, like that got me. That moment got me also the moment when Michael says he knows who Ryan is, but he's still going to have faith in him the way he did and the rest of the staff that rewatching it. I was like, wow, that's amazing.

That just really, I kind of teared up a little bit because I think that's the quintessential Michael Scott moment where he's got a wrong idea, but for all the right reasons. Yeah. Erin, so much of your real life has made its way into episodes of The Office. Was there anything from this episode that was inspired by your real life? Apart from having made a lot of bad investments, I have felt that like, oh my gosh, is this a bad investment? Yes, usually it was.

But other than that, it's, you know, let me see. Just bad investment anxiety, you were able to write to that very authentically. Yeah. Well, Erin, thank you so much for coming and talking with us. I always love hearing a writer's perspective. You guys are always my favorite people to hang out with on a project. And on the show too, we were always popping in the writer's room, probably driving you guys crazy.

Was it annoying or did you like us? We loved it. We would love it when you would come in. Okay. Was it just because we gave you a break or because you actually liked us and our ideas? One of the things we would do is watch what you did and how you talked, and it was almost inevitable that it would influence what we thought about your character. So we were paying attention.

Oh, that is terrifying. And Erin, lastly, is there any project that you're working on that we can share about? Well, I recently wrote a script with Norman Lear, who just turned 100. Wow. It was for Nathology. So I'd never done that before where it's just a one-off creating an entire world and a bunch of characters for one episode. It was with Shondaland for Netflix, but the series didn't go, but our episode was so well

received that we're trying to find a way to make it its own series. So we're doing that. That's fantastic. Yeah. Amazing. Well, Erin, thank you so much for stopping by Office Ladies. Do you know we're going to keep bugging you because we're going to keep wanting your input about episodes?

We love your stories. Please do. I love listening to your show and I love reliving even the parts that I wasn't there for. And congratulations on such an amazing podcast and your book, too. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, which you contributed some wonderful photos to. Oh, amazing photos of the writer's room.

I mean, we can't thank you enough. Yes. Yes. Oh, we love you, Erin. Thank you so much. Likewise. Bye. Muah.

Let's get into this episode. Yeah. It starts in the dark. Mm-hmm. All the lights go out, there's a power failure. Dwight says, guys, come on, follow me to the shelter. How many shelters does Dwight have? I mean, we know he has one at Shroop Farms, but I guess he has one at Dunder Mifflin.

I'm jealous. I know. You want a bunker. He has food for 14 days. And then there's going to have to be a difficult conversation. So Michael takes the blame. He had his space heater and fan both plugged in to the same outlet, but it's all fine. The lights are back on.

But the servers are down. They need to enter the password to get back in. And can we just all take a minute? I kind of need everyone to just take a minute with me, because what does Pam say? Pam says, wait, does anyone remember when it was set up? And Michael says, like, eight years ago. And then Pam says, oh, Lord of the Rings stuff? Pam.

Yeah. Is a Lord of the Rings fan. I want it noted. I don't think she's a Lord of the Rings fan. Yes, she is. Let me have this, Jenna. She's not. She just knows.

Come on. She knows her office family. Why was that? And she's like, oh, I know what it is. Lord of the Rings was eight years ago. It's probably like some, I bet she couldn't name a reference. She doesn't say anything. Lord of the Rings.

I disagree. I disagree. I think Pam is a big Lord of the Rings fan. She isn't. I refuse. I am Pam. I'm telling you, she's not. This is a trait we share in common.

Well, they have to sort of toggle back in their minds about who was the IT guy when this was set up. Yeah. And they realized it was Lawsonge. Yeah. That was what they called him. I love it that they've never known the name of a single one of their IT guys. No, no one.

And guess what the password is? It's Big Boobs with a Z. I did like that Meredith and Angela both chimed in things about Pam. I said drama queen, Angela said nosy. Some side sass during the scene. Well, we had a fan question from Ryan S. in Massachusetts who asked, when the power goes out in the office, since you guys work on a soundstage, how did the whole process of making the lights go out work?

Was it simple or did it take a lot of planning? Ryan, thank you for this question. This is a kind of like nerdy production question I like. For Randy Cordray, our lighting and electric crew, who was headed up by our gaffer Frank Esposito and his Best Boy Jim Holt, had to do a lot of work to make this happen. Because as Randy pointed out, all of the interior lights in the office go out, but the exterior lights that light up our fakie scrim, you know, to the fake outside out the windows, those all stay on.

So we couldn't just like throw the master switch. Right. Some had to stay on, some had to go off. But also, all of our stage lights in like various support rooms around the soundstage like craft service and the sound booth and all of that, they're all on this same like lighting board. Right. And they can't lose lights.

Our sound booth can't lose lights. Yeah. So what they did was they ganged, I guess that's a term or combined, all of the circuits that needed to go dark into a single dimmer and then they would give a cue to our first AD to hit that dimmer and then the appropriate lights would go off and the others would stay on. That's how we did it. All right.

Well, let's get into this episode. Ryan and Michael arrived to work and their cars have the Woof.com bumper sticker. Yeah. It says Woof.com whenever, period, wherever, period. I counted. Ryan has one sticker. Michael has nine. Hmm.

That logo was created by Henry Sain and you know, you can go over to the NBC store and they sell Woof shirts and a Woof mug. Still? Yeah. Wow. But no bumper stickers. Well, now we're going to have a joint talking head with Michael and Ryan. Ryan is Woof and Michael is Facebook and they go back and forth.

This was reminiscent of a commercial that was running at this time. It was like, what was it, Jen? It was like, um, it's Apple and it was the I'm a Mac, I'm a PC. Yes. And they starred Justin Long as Mac and John Hodgman as PC. Look how excited you got. Did you mini dive this? What'd you do?

Well, I did a commercial. What? For them. I did an I'm a Mac. I'm a PC commercial. It never aired. Oh. Were you Mac or PC?

I was neither. Those guys were always Mac and PC. Oh, I see. But this campaign was so successful. People loved it that they started having celebrity guests come in and do other bits with the Mac or with the PC. Okay. So did you do a bit with the Mac or the PC?

It was with both of them. I can't remember a lot of details about it. It's a little fuzzy because it was a really long time ago. It was while we were shooting the office. It was kind of during this time. But they told us ahead of time, we make like 12 of these, but we only pick a few that will actually air. They put them through focus groups.

So you only got paid the big bucks if your commercial got picked. Oh. So my commercial didn't get picked. That focus group was like, they were like, not loving mine, I guess, I don't know. But what I did get was a boatload of Apple credit that never expired. Get out. So for 10 years, every time I needed a new laptop or anything that related anything, I would just go to my contact and be like, Hey, remember, I did that commercial that never

aired. You said. I'm ready for this item. That's a pretty great sorry you didn't get it gift. It is. No, I mean, I got my sister a laptop. You know, yeah. I got my family, not just for me.

You're like Oprah. You get a laptop. You get a laptop. You get a laptop. I was. It was like the best failed commercial ever. But I have an audio clip from one of their commercials. If you want to play it, I'm not going to be in it, obviously, as we've established.

But here you go. Hello, I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC. That's it. That's it. That's it. It's been tight. You okay?

No. I'm not okay. I have that virus that's going around. Oh, yeah. Thank you. You better. You better stay back. This one's a doozy.

That's okay. I'll be fine. No, no. Do not be a hero last year. There are 114,000 known viruses for PCs. PCs. Not Macs. So describe this.

I think I got a crash. Hey, if you feel like that'll help. Good. That was it. That was the bit. It was basically that Mac was always doing well and thriving and the PC was always getting a virus or confused or overwhelmed. So these commercials just threw shade at PCs.

100%. Well, I really wish we could see yours, but I know you can't. I'm sorry. Did you notice during this talking head that Michael wore glasses? Yes. That's because John Hodgman wears glasses. Oh. And so he's doing a spin on the PC guy.

Now I get it. Well, I know this is how the episode starts that aired, but in the shooting draft, there was a different opening to this episode. Oh. Yeah. It starts with Ryan pitching the whole idea of this company to Michael in his office. Okay. I actually like the version that they aired because they just start in the middle.

You know? Like Michael's in. Yeah. He's enthusiastic. He doesn't have to be convinced. Right. And this is kind of like what Aaron was talking about when we spoke with him, how they would write so much that you could lose part of it, but the full story still is there.

In this alternate opening, Angela is in Michael's office and they're talking about receipts for his taxes and she's holding a box and they kind of argue. And then Angela takes the box and exits in a gruff. And that's when Ryan enters. Okay. But lady, in one of the takes, I hit one of Michael's toys with the receipt box. Okay. And it made it into the bloopers.

Lady guesses what I hit. What toy? The clacky teeth? I hit the clacky balls. The clacky balls? Yes. And they would not stop clacking for the rest of the scene. Here.

Let's listen. Absolutely. Get these done. Out. Out. Hello. Hey. Here to talk about woof.

Is that cool? Yes. Definitely. As long as you're here to tell me I'm a billionaire. On your way, man. On your way. Sorry. If they try to keep going and BJ tried to make them stop and then he moved his hands

and they started again. Oh, the old clacky balls. The old clacky balls. I'm telling you. I'm telling you. I am again inspired. We need to do a bonus episode where we break down the whole history of the clacky balls. The clacky ball origin story?

Yes. Ladies who Google. Get ready for it. It's going to be a. I feel called to know more. It's going to be a ball fest. Ball fest. It writes itself.

Erin is about to have one of my favorite lines, which is she doesn't like to be a lousy snitch. A lousy snitch, not just a snitch, but a lousy one. Ryan's making a lot of color copies. It's going to tick her off for the whole episode. Yes, Pam, as office administrator, should care about this and should probably do something about it. She says, let it go. See, now this is when people started to turn on Pam's new job.

They were like, fine, you lied to get it. But now, hmm, well, she invested in Wolf. She really believes in it. She wants a bedroom set. Well, in Michael's office, Michael is talking to Ryan about an investor ski trip. Yeah, and Ryan says, someone's already offered to buy the company, but you know what? He wants to go bigger. He wants more money, so he's going to need more investors.

And he said, that's why he came in today. Michael says, don't you work here? And then Ryan just laughs. Yeah. Well, there was a Ryan deleted talking head where he's super cocky about all of this, and he breaks the fourth wall. Let's hear it. Last I spoke to you about Wolf.com, it was just a prototype.

Well, we launched the beta three months ago, and the response has been unbelievable. It's going to be huge. Looks like your little documentary finally found its star. Wolf! Oh, yeah. Yeah. Star of the documentary. Hmm.

Next up, we are going to learn a little bit about Dwight's childhood. He used to have a place called the Hay Place, and he's going to recreate it for everyone here at Dundermiflin. He's overseeing a bunch of Bales of Hay being unloaded in the parking lot. And Hay Place is going to have games and a maze, all kinds of stuff. Yeah. We had a fan question from HarmGenV in the Netherlands. HarmGen, you are so wonderful.

You send us questions every week. I know. And they're always very good. HarmGen would like to know, how many Bales of Hay did you guys have to get for this episode? Well, Randy was not exactly sure, but we rented them. That was an interesting tidbit. We returned these when we were done. Well, I'm glad.

I mean, what would we do with them? I don't know. But we got them from a farm in Palmdale, California. We had to pay a truck and a driver to deliver them. They came stacked in like 10 foot high stacks on this big trailer bed. And Randy's rough estimate is that we used around 360 Bales. And that it was our set dressing crew headed up by Steve Rothstein and lead man Jim McDermott are the ones who unloaded all of those Bales and then reloaded them onto the truck after

the shoot. But we had a fan catch. Many a fan catches. We talked about this in our interview with Erin. These were not Hay Bales. They were Straw Bales. Riley P. from Northern Minnesota said, I have been waiting for this episode ever since your podcast started.

This was sort of painful to watch as a farmer because those Bales are so clearly straw. And Shania R. from Sydney, Montana said, maybe you guys use straw because it's much lighter and easier to work with, but that's not hay. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, thanks to our associate producer Ainsley Bubba Co. here at Ear Wolf. I have a nice little breakdown to help you know if you are looking at hay or straw. Go Ainsley.

Here we go. Hay has seeds in it. Straw does not. Hay is usually more green in color. Maybe think alfalfa, which is a type of hay. Straw is dry and yellow. Hay is used as feed. Yes.

Straw is used for bedding. Straw is also what we used in hay place. That is right. I knew it was straw. As Jenna, you know, my family has a farm and I spent many hours on the tractor with my dad while he was baling hay. You baled hay? I baled hay.

Sometimes we did square bales. Sometimes we did big round bales. We had a little thing that picked up the round bales, this fork, because they're super heavy. But even the square ones are heavy, right? Yes. And we didn't have anything to pick those up. So we had to walk behind the flatbed trailer and throw them on.

I couldn't do it. They're like a hundred pounds. Well this is definitely why we had to use straw in the episode, because we had to have just our two crew guys piling all that stuff up. And stacking them. But I will tell you, when I watched this episode, I just got so nostalgic for my dad. I was really missing him because if we would have called him and said, Bill Kinsey, can you break down some hay stats for us, he would have had the time of his life.

I would have loved that. I know. Me too. Well, Angela, you are about to arrive to Hay Place. It's open. People are coming. They're buying tickets. I noticed that you're wearing a wool coat.

It was so hot the two days we filmed this Hay Place. I don't know if you noticed, but the patrons all sort of have rosy cheeks. We were burning up. I looked at the call sheet. It was 93 degrees. This was the last week of September in 2010 when we shot this. We were having a heat wave as we always do in September. Yeah.

Late September, early October is the hottest time in LA. I know that because it's also around my son's birthday and we can never have an outside full sun birthday party for him. Also, you can't buy your pumpkins too early here. Oh, no, they melt. They melt and then they get real gross. So I saw you, Ange. I saw you in that wool coat.

If you thought I was hot, poor Brian, we'll get to that. Walking around that maze. Running in his wool jacket. Well, Angela's, she's hot to trot, guys. She sure is. She'd like a roll in the hay, please. Yeah. But that'll be $5.

That's not what she meant, Dwight. Dwight. There was more to this Dwight and Angela runner. He continues to blow her off and it really sets up nicely the senator. Well, Jim's very excited. He gives a big woohoo when he gets off the phone. He's on a sales streak. But when he goes to talk to Kevin about it, even though Kevin has done, his commission

is zero. Angela's going to say to Jim, you've met your commission cap. You don't get any more commission for the rest of the month. I'm going to say something now that is going to come across to most listeners than most every viewer of the office as a sort of like, welcome to the party, Jenna remark. What? But I just noticed, I just noticed in this scene with Kevin, how Angela has taken up all the space on the top of the partition.

Yeah. Every item is hers. Yeah. There's nothing of Kevin's up there. It's like the more thing she puts up there the less she has to see Kevin or something. Exactly. I noted two ceramic cats and two ceramic pelicans and then two stuffed cats. Yes.

And I know you talked about the one pelican before, but I didn't realize there were two. But I also noticed something else, which is, why are we storing saber paper shredders on the file cabinets behind Kevin's desk? Why is that where we're keeping them? Don't we have a whole warehouse? Why do we have four shredders on top of the file cabinets? What's that about? Sounds like a mom detective moment.

Yeah. I don't know. Sex. Do I have your attention? Money. Now I do. At six minutes, 58 seconds during Michael's yelling, did you notice the hay on Dwight's shoulder and hair?

I did and so did Sarah P from Fort Worth, Texas, who said, I love catching Dwight with hay in his hair and all over his suit when Michael and Ryan are in the bullpen looking for more investors. So did I. Well, we are going to learn in this scene who has invested in Wolf. Pam raises her hand, Stanley, Daryl. And I don't know if you noticed Andy kind of reluctantly raises his hand. He kind of sort of barely does.

If you clocked that, let me know. There was a whole deleted scene where Michael really just manipulates Andy into participating. He didn't want to and Michael just wears him down. I did notice that from Andy and I wondered what the hesitation was. But I find this group of investors very curious. I feel like these are some of the smartest people in the office. You know what I mean? Who have invested their money in Ryan?

Well, I think because there is a good idea in there, but it's just poorly executed, which Daryl says later. I want to talk about for a minute, though, this talking head that Stanley has. Everyone has different reasons for investing. Stanley wants a decommissioned lighthouse. He wants to live at the top and nobody will know he lives there. And then there's a button that he can press and it launches the lighthouse into space. He's serious.

He wants to live in a lighthouse. That is also a spaceship. What? Other people also share why they did or didn't invest. In the shooting draft, Phyllis had a talking head explaining why she did not invest. It read like this, Phyllis, I invested in Bob Vance and per our prenup, I'm just five months away from vesting. Wow.

Okay. And then in deleted scenes, Daryl has a talking head of why he invested. Let's hear that. Why would I invest with Ryan? It's a really good idea. Aggregators are one of the few things that produce revenue online. Also the internet has a history of rewarding annoying white boys. All the ingredients are there.

Well maybe we should take a break because when we come back, Oscar is going to do the thing he does best. He's going to piss on their parade. Well we are back. Ryan is bragging that Washington University wants to buy Woof, but he's not going to sell. Instead he's going to open a second round of investment to family and friends. And the first person that they're going to try to hit up for money is Oscar.

Mistake. Yeah. Now, Oscar says something really interesting. He says, have you ever considered making Woof like an emergency notification system? So smart. So smart. What a great use of Woof. Ryan's not interested.

He's like, no, this is about fun. Oscar is going to press Ryan about where they're at financially. And we find out that they can sustain their business for nine days. Nine days. And then they're bankrupt. Michael is bummed because what about the investor ski trip he bought polls? All the investors are going to meet in the conference room. Ryan presents a colorful investment chart, which Erin gives like side eye about.

But was that printed there? That looks like something you send out for. Her printer didn't make that. I know. I agree. She's just still so mad about it. I tried to zoom in on it to see what it said, but I couldn't quite tell. Well guess what?

Randy sent it to us. Oh my gosh. What did it say? Well, it's the profit projections. Okay. And it's so ridiculous. It's clearly all that Ryan is obsessed with. Lady, you got to see this.

Look at this chart. Oh my gosh. Okay. So according to this chart, it is November right now. They're going to break even any minute. They're going to become profitable before December. They're going to be millionaires by January and billionaires by February. Yeah.

They're going to break into his projection based on no actual numbers though. Well, on the other side, if you look at the other side of the chart, it looks like we have investors to the tune of $1,500 and something. So $1,580 is going to turn into $1 billion in a matter of months. Yeah. In a matter of months. Wow. This is quite the chart.

Oh, I'm glad I said something. I really enjoyed that. Well, Randy gave us more fun graphics for this episode. Of course, they were all made by Henry Sane and I'm going to put them in stories. Oh, great. Well, I know that the condom wrappers were made by Henry Sane as well. Henry Sane and Phil Shea were very busy this episode. They really were because Ryan's going to start throwing out merch.

50,000 condoms. 50,000. It's all about the merchandising. And that is when Kelly is going to enter and be like, what are you guys talking about? Hold on a second. This was my idea. Yeah. We had a fan question from Fiona L. in Melbourne, Australia, who said, what actually happens

when television writers come up with an invention like Woof? Who legally owns it? Who's able to make money off of it? Does the network own it? The show? The writers who have their names on the episode or the exact writer who came up with the idea? Is it trademarked? Copyright protected?

Woof is a great idea and I'm surprised it doesn't really exist. I thought these were all very good questions from Fiona. Yeah. Here's what I was able to find out. I believe it is owned by the whole network. It is not the property of the writer who came up with it. It is the intellectual property of NBC Universal. That's right.

That's what I would have guessed. Here's the other thing I learned. Whenever any website is mentioned on a television show, it has to be fictitious. It cannot be a real dot com. So way back on nepotism when this idea first came up, they had to go through the process of purchasing the domain names Woof.com, Woof.net, Woof.org. They did it through GoDaddy and the whole thing cost under $100. Randy said that we were required to register the names for two years.

There used to actually be a Woof website. Yes. Like they had it go live. Yes. I reached out to Joy about who was working at NBC.com at this time and she shared with me some of the digital media they built for this episode. First of all, she thought it was really fun that Ryan set up a beta site first where he just gathered information and that would have been set up after nepotism.

Okay. And the idea was that Ryan was collecting as much data as he could on everyone before launching his official website a few months later. Sounds scammy. I don't even know what a beta website is. All sounding scammy to me. There was also a component, you get to build your wolf dog avatar. So here are your choices.

You can be a pit bull, a terrier, or a golden retriever. Your fur color can be black, brown, white, or tan. Your tail length can be long, medium, or short. Your ear style can be floppy or pointy. And the collar type can be leather or nylon. Joya said people actually went to the site and they tried to sign up. No. Yes.

Joya said that NBC did not save their data because it was too much for the NBC privacy team to deal with. Oh my gosh. So when people entered their information, they just got a wolf sound. That's it. On the website, it's got several different features. When you click on them, they make a noise, like the shop button, bio button. Oh.

Are they all different forms of barking? They're all different forms of Ryan thanking you and trying to sound cool. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Rye thanking you. How much time did BJ Novak spend on this very odd little subplot recording his voice? Joya went on to share that Ryan Howard also had a Twitter account that they created along with Kelly Kapoor and Aaron Hannon, and the three of them interacted for years.

On real Twitter? On real Twitter, she gave me their account names. All of these Twitter accounts were written by the office writing staff, and the characters had full-blown conversations between 2009 and 2012. Ryan of course tweeted about wolf.com. This was his tweet. Check out, and it's the check symbol, not the word. Check out the new wolf site, wolf.com.

Sign up. Hopefully soon, you'll hear a wolf next time I tweet at you. Wolf. I just found the Ryan Howard Twitter page, and yeah, he hasn't posted since September 2012. Yeah. Incidentally, Creed also had an official Twitter account, but he didn't interact with the other people in the office.

It was more like Creed Thoughts, but on Twitter. I did not know any of that. Thank you so much, Joya. I have a lot of fun stuff to share in stories this week, all of that website stuff. Well, we should go back to the hay place because a lot has been going on. For example, the hay ride, which was in the back of a Dunder Mifflin paper truck, has returned, and we got a lot of mail about it. You mean the truck with kids inside with the door shut, and they were all really rosy-faced

when they got out? Yes. We had a fan mail flurry, Anne Peay from Minnesota and many others noted that the little boy who gets out of the back of the hay truck, he goes on to play Dwight's nephew in the farm. Oh. What a good catch. Yeah.

Angela has given up waiting in the warehouse at their spot. She confronts Dwight, and he blows her off again. Yeah. So she's bummed out. She's sitting by herself on some, I guess they were straw bales. Yeah. A nice man is going to walk up. Yeah.

And he's going to say, do you mind if we share this bale? And she says, sure, there's no charge to sit on the hay, is there? Yes. And that man is a major guest star in the house. Oh, no. Was he also in house? He was in house. This is Jack Coleman.

And lady, I got the most wonderful tweet from a fan of our podcast. The Filthy Ape sent us a link to every crossover between the office and house. Come on. There were 148 cast and crew members. How happy are you right now? Who worked on both the office and house. And Jack Coleman is one of them. I had just watched the show Heroes.

And so when he got cast to play the senator, I was like, oh, no, he's a scary guy on Heroes. He plays a lot of villains. He was also a villain on Castle, but he is very well known for also playing the role of Stephen Carrington in the 1980s primetime soap opera Dynasty. Jack is a delight to hang around. He has so many good stories and he's so nice. Well, according to Wikipedia, he's a sixth generation descendant of Benjamin Franklin. What?

Mm-hmm. It's true. It's on Wikipedia. But then another guest star alert, the little boy, who's with the senator, was played by Griffin Gluck. And we got a fan catch from Jessica S. from Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada, who said, I spotted Griffin Gluck, who went on to find success in many TV series and movies, including Tall Girl with Angela Kinsey.

Yes. So listen to this, Tall Girl is so much fun. You know, it's a movie I did for Netflix. But I played Dorky Mom. Steve Zahn and I are like the dorky parents. Our daughter's very tall. But there's this sweet boy that has a crush on her in the movie played by Griffin Gluck. The character's name is Jack Dunkelman.

Griffin is so good in this movie. And in the first movie, we didn't really have any scenes together, but we crossed paths just once and we were hanging out and talking and he said, we've actually met before. And I was like, when, and he said, well, it's just a brief moment. You probably don't remember, but I was the senator's son in Hay Place. And I was like, oh my God, I totally remember they gave him this huge candied apple that he had to try to eat. Uh-huh.

It was like massive. And I was like, I cannot believe Griffin that you were in Hay Place. But his performance is so good in Tall Girl and Tall Girl too, if you guys haven't seen it. Well, I'm sure he must have looked so different. I mean, he had grown. Yes. I mean, yes.

He had been so like, like, I felt old, you know what I mean? I was like, oh, right. But he's a great actor. Now you said something just now, Angela, where you said he played the senator's son. Yes. Fan mail flurry. Lots of people want to know, hey, what happened to the senator's son? Um, guess what?

I would say this every year on the show. Because later, there's no son. Never. I think I've solved that mystery. Well, I had my own character idea that I would talk to the writers about, because it was a joke between me and the writers. At one point we had a new writer that came on at the end of the series. And I'm going blank on who all was in this conversation.

But I remember them saying something about Angela and the senator having a baby. And I was like, well, you know, he's already a dad. And one of the new writers was like, what? And I'm like, yes, he had a son. Evan T. from Bremerton, Washington thinks he didn't have a son. Ah, Evan, this is very different than my backstory that I created. Evan says, if you watch the scene, the senator never says the boy is his son. It could be his nephew.

It could be child of a friend. Let's take a listen. Do you mind if we share this bail? Sure. There's no charge to sit on the hay, is there? Probably. Wouldn't you think the $10 to build your own room would include the hay and not just the instructions?

I mean, I'm starting to think this guy is just trying to make money off the holiday. Yeah, instead of hay place, it should be pay place. Don't laugh at me. No, no, no, I wasn't, no. Just laughing at your joke. No. Pay place. Yeah.

So we can celebrate Thanksgiving Me Your Money Day. That's humorous. Thank you. That's it. Mm. It doesn't say, can my son and I have a seat? Right. No, you're right, Evan.

My theory that I used to say was, as soon as the senator and Angela got married, she sent him away. Like to military school or something? Yeah, like some kind of boarding school. Well, if it was his son, I believe that's exactly what happened. But I was intrigued by Evan's theory. Evan will have to keep clocking that as the episodes progress with the senator. We've all just made an assumption.

We should also point out before we leave hay place that Kevin has just entered the maze. Yeah. It's not going to go well. It's not. We have some malaise in the break room. Malaise in the break room? I love it. Yeah.

Michael is sorting the trash, and Pam is going to have to have like a intervention, I guess. She's doing the Pam thing that Pam does with Michael, where she's the voice of reason and sort of holds up a mirror to what's really happening. And that's usually the only time he can see it. And he's going to say, you may be right, I may be crazy, about Ryan, yeah. Which means Pam knows he wants to break into song. Randy said that we had to pay $25,000. Just for that little moment?

For Steve to sing that one line of the Billy Joel song. Whoa. Yeah. What if we sang the whole song? I don't know. Is it like per line? That's a good question. I'll get to the bottom of that.

After this talk with Pam, Michael's going to go find Ryan in his closet office. This scene broke my heart before we discuss it at 15 minutes 30 seconds when Michael opens the door. Did you see what was on Ryan's screen? Some sort of game. Like a baseball game. And he quickly changes it to woof.com. But it was like a video game.

Yeah. But he quickly changes it to look like he's busy. Exactly. Yeah. It's really sad because it's very clear that Ryan does not have Michael's best interests at heart. No. And he wants Michael to take out a second mortgage on his condo.

And Ryan says, we're going to do so much together. We're going to have trips and dinners and Michael's like, well, we've never even had a dinner. How about tonight? And Ryan's like, yeah, I'm busy. Yeah. Well, Darryl is going to be less subtle. Darryl is going to literally remove, yeah.

By his shirt. And everyone is going to really put the pressure on there in the kitchen and they're all sitting saying they want to sell, except Michael still doesn't want to sell. He still gets Ryan's back. By the way, something we forgot to mention was why Washington University wants to buy woof. Oh, well, this is pretty important. They realize it's just for the domain name.

It's the Washington University Public Health Fund. Yeah. And that should really show you how much this business is suffering. That just someone wanting to buy the domain name back. Right. That is enough to get out. Well, while this is going on, Jim has decided to spend the rest of his day manipulating the audiobook of Joe Bennett's book.

Yes. Yes. Basically pranking Gabe. Yeah. So he manipulates this message that sounds like Joe telling Gabe that she's going to read her audiobook to him and he has to follow along to make sure she doesn't make any mistakes. Do you know what I thought Jim was going to do?

What? I thought he was going to edit the audiobook to say, let Jim have his commissions back. Oh, that would have been good. We did have a fan catch from Louisa L in Massachusetts who said, wouldn't Jim's extension number have come up and not Joe's when like, quote unquote, Joe calls Gabe? So busted. I know Gabe was not paying attention. Dwight is now going to crown himself the Haking.

Yes. It's something he's always wanted. For years he was looked over. I guess most kept getting it. He's super happy about it. And there was a deleted scene between Angela and Dwight that I think was the nail in the coffin for her to really warm up to the senator. Oh, let's hear it.

Dwight, it's time. Sorry, women aren't allowed to address the Haking directly. Go away. It's okay. I've been waiting for you all day. What are you talking about? Right. The thing.

Okay. Just get yourself ready and cleaned up and I'll meet you there when this winds down. Be gone, woman. Yeah, be gone, woman. And while he says that, he's gnawing on a giant like turkey leg and wearing a fake crown made of straw. Well, I believe that was meant to be a goat leg because, remember, the petting zoo? Oh, it was roasting goats.

Yeah. It was closed right before the goat roast. Yeah. Alicia Raycraft, our costume designer, made the whole Haking outfit. It's really great. She sent me some of the sketches when she was sketching it out. It's pretty perfect. Clearly though, Dwight was always meant to win because that crown was never going on

a child's head. No. I mean. It was a huge head in real life. And it fit him perfectly. Kevin is still stuck in the maze. Poor Brian. Poor Brian this day, running around 90 degrees, full sun.

What we do for our craft. I know. Well, you know, in the kitchen, Michael was not going to sell. He said he believed in Ryan, that he would give Ryan the full nine days to turn woof around and then they would sell. It's kind of cool. He says, you know, the world sends people your way. Sometimes you don't know why, but he always sticks with his people, basically, I'm summing

up. And I actually thought it was, it was very Michael. And he goes through and he kind of likens everybody to a playing card. He's the Joker. Yes. And it's true that Ryan is a two, but sometimes twos can be wild. Yeah. Mm hmm.

He really doesn't give up on people. But Ryan's going to give up on woof. Thank God. He spent about two hours in his closet and the episode ends with Michael getting a final woof. Yes. It said, woof from Ryan Howard, decided to sell company. Thanks bro.

Hell of a ride. So it's like a few days together. And one last thing we have to address is that the Hay King goes looking for Angela. Mm hmm. And taped to the warehouse door where they hook up is a voided contract and the punch card. And as Angela is leaving, the senator asks, if I were to call Dunder Mifflin and ask for Angela Martin, would I get through to you?

And she says, yes. And if I were to call your home and ask for your wife, would I get her? And he says, no, my wife died. He's the widower. Mm hmm. It's a tiny smile from Angela on that one. And that, my friends, was woof.com. Thank you so much for sending in your questions.

Thank you so much to Aaron Scherr for stopping by and letting us chat his ear off. Thank you to Randy Cordray for all your behind the scenes info. And Ainsley, thanks for that breakdown on Hay versus Straw. All right, you guys have a great one from Two Office Ladies. We wish you the best. See you soon. 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 Kiefer. And our associate producer is Ainsley Bubicoe. Our theme song is Rubber Tree by Creed Bratton. For ad-free versions of Office Ladies, go to stitropremium.com. For a free one month trial at Stitropremium, use code, Office.