Wanna feel old? The Office came out 20 years ago this year, and its series finale on NBC is somehow 12 years in the past. Still, thanks to streaming and syndication, The Office is as popular today as it was then. It truly feels like a timeless series, and no matter how good the reboot, The Paper, is, we’ll keep returning to the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin. We might know how the episodes end, but we want to see Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam (Jenna Fischer) fall in love over and over again. We can’t get enough of the self-involved but lonely and well-meaning Michael Scott (Steve Carell) misreading every situation in his life to the cringiest of levels. And Dwight K. Schrute (Rainn Wilson) will never fail to make us laugh, even if we’ve seen him ruin lives because of his own stupidity. The Office is arguably the best sitcom ever made, and no example highlights this more than the first five minutes of the episode “Stress Relief”.
‘The Office’ Is Filled With Memorable Cold Opens
TV shows love their cold opens. For dramas, they can be used to show the opening murder, setting the stage for the mystery to follow that will begin after the opening credits. Comedies are different. The cold open could be a hint of what’s to come, but just as often it’s used for a short funny bit to keep the viewer engaged. It might have nothing at all to do with what comes next, but we’re hooked.
No sitcom did both examples of the latter better than The Office. It’s equally hilarious and heartbreaking to see a proud Kevin (Brian Baumgarnter) bring in his famous chili, only to dump it all over the floor. It became a popular meme when Michael Scott screamed “No!” when he saw that his arch nemesis, Toby Flenderson (Paul Lieberstein), had returned to Scranton. And how many times did Jim prank Dwight, like when he dressed up just like his frenemy, or had an Asian man (Randall Park) trying to convince Dwight that this is who Jim had been all along? But then came the ultimate moment to draw new fans to The Office. With the Super Bowl being a lead in, the series creators knew they had to go big. This led to the off-the-wall fire drill scene in “Stress Relief”.
‘The Office’ Pulled in Millions of New Viewers Thanks to the Super Bowl
The Office lasted for nine seasons and is a classic now, but during its run, it was never among the biggest shows on television. In an era of reality TV and detective shows everywhere, The Office was a solid performer, but never a ratings juggernaut. This was going to change — for one night only at least — in February 2009. NBC was set to air Super Bowl XLIII that year. Even if you’re not a football fan, you know this is the biggest TV day of the year. Every year, the championship game for the NFL draws in more than one hundred million viewers, and it’s a coveted spot if you can be the show that comes on right after. So what was The Office to do when they were given the biggest opportunity imaginable?
The moment was discussed in the book The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s, with an excerpt published by Vulture. According to Ben Silverman, who was running NBC at the time, a lot of people wanted The Apprentice to get the coveted spot after the big game, but Silverman wanted to use this to grow a show. He wanted to highlight The Office, telling everyone,“Let’s do this and let’s figure out how we stunt it and make it big.”
Network execs wanted to go big with celebrity casting, suggesting that The Office cast Matt Damon or Ben Affleck for a cameo, but that wouldn’t have worked. If you’re a fan, you know that was never what The Office was about. We loved it because the faux documentary approach made everything seem real. Throw in celebrities to increase ratings, and you create something desperate that The Office never was. Stunt casting was out. Instead, The Office needed to create the most insane scene in its history.
Nothing Tops the Fire Drill Scene in “Stress Relief”
Writer Warren Lieberstein admitted that they wanted to get everyone’s attention to stop people from changing the channel. Another writer, Halsted Sullivan, spoke about the need to draw in new viewers, but also stay loyal to the viewers they already had by creating something plausible. This led to the creation of the cold open for “Stress Relief”. If you need to go big, you have to do it with the most over-the-top character in the series. Whatever happened had to involve Dwight K. Schrute. He could do anything and have it be plausible, because Dwight did whatever he wanted.
Dwight Schrute lives life as if he knows all and is surrounded by idiots. So in “Stress Relief”, since no one showed any interest in the talk he gave about fire safety (“PowerPoint is boring”), he’s going to reach his co-workers in another, more immediate way. He’s going to teach them through experience. Dwight goes around breaking the locks on all the doors, heats up the doorknobs themselves with blowtorches, then, after dousing a trash can with lighter fluid, he lights a cigarette, utters, “Today, smoking is gonna save lives,” and tosses it into the trash. Within seconds, a cloud of smoke spreads, and everyone, understandably, freaks out.
Dwight tries to teach through the mayhem, but with the phones down and the doors not moving, utter panic takes over in the most predictable and hilarious of ways. Cat lover Angela (Angela Kinsey) goes for the cat, Bandit (she snuck in) and as Oscar (Oscar Nunez) climbs into the ceiling to escape, she shucks her feline right at him, leading to the sight of the cat falling through the ceiling tiles. Meanwhile, Kevin loots the vending machines, smashing the glass. Stanley, scared to death, begins having chest pains. Dwight interrupts to say that this has all been a test, but it’s too late. Stanley has collapsed. If you were a new viewer on that night and this scene didn’t get your attention, nothing would.
The fire drill scene is effective because, although it’s ridiculous, every reaction is plausible. Of course, Angela would bring a cat to work and try to save it. Of course, Kevin is going to think of food in his final moments. And, of course, the lazy Stanley is going to physically be unable to handle it. Every character lives, thankfully, including the cat. Bandit is played by a real cat being thrown up to an animal trainer in the ceiling, but wanting the action to be as accurate as possible, $12,000 was spent to create a stuffed animal that looked just like it.
The first five minutes of “Stress Relief’ are pandemonium, but it’s the moment that encapsulates what The Office is. The work at Dunder Mifflin might be drudgery, but the lives of the employees sure aren’t. In Super Bowl XLIII, the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Arizona Cardinals in a thrilling game, but none of that excitement compares to seeing a $12,000 stuffed animal being chucked through a ceiling tile in a set filled with smoke and actors running in circles.
All episodes of The Office can be streamed on Peacock in the U.S.