Not the actual documentary about the Dunder-Mifflin paper company of Scranton, Pa., that a fictional camera crew shot for what turned out to be nine years, he decided — but a reunion show, in the fashion of the post-competition cast rehashes familiar from reality shows like “Survivor.”
“At one point I actually approached Jeff Probst,” the host of “Survivor,” Mr. Daniels whispered as the big reunion scene unfolded here in the auditorium of an ATT office building. Standing in for the Scranton cultural center, it was one of many locations for the ambitious one-hour finale, to be shown on May 16 on NBC.
Onstage at the reunion were most of the prominent characters — minus the biggest one, Steve Carell’s Michael Scott — arrayed in a long arc of folding chairs. They were answering questions about how the documentary, supposedly recently presented on Scranton’s PBS affiliate, had changed their (fictional) lives.
Why PBS? “I tried to think what outlet would shoot something like this and take nine years to do it,” Mr. Daniels said.
That idea is almost as improbable as the notion that a comedy adapted from a British sitcom and initially poised for oblivion (after NBC’s screening of the pilot, it was headed for exile on Bravo, one executive related) would become a bellwether of many of the changes that have overtaken television today.
As the anchor of NBC’s once-heralded Thursday-night lineup, it played a role in pioneering alternative entertainment forms like TV offerings on iTunes and Webisodes on the Internet. It helped executives recognize the value of delayed viewing. Equally important, it opened broadcast television to a new concept in humor: the sitcom that makes you uncomfortable.
“The Office,” never qualified as a blockbuster hit (though it attracted one of the most affluent audiences in television). Yet it clearly paved the way for a style of filmed comedy — smart, multilayered and subtle, sometimes so much so that a portion of viewers never understood its humor. The genre has since been embodied by other highly regarded comedies like “30 Rock,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Community” and “The Mindy Project” (starring an “Office” graduate, Mindy Kaling).
The show also had striking worldwide appeal. The original British version, starring Ricky Gervais, has been copied in places as disparate as Chile and France, proving that office life under a bumptious boss is apparently universal. “ ‘The Office’ was like a high-wire act,” said Ken Kwapis, the show’s first and last director. He cited, among other things, the absence of a laugh track, the exclusion of any kind of background music and a completely untraditional filming style.
“Some of the things most compelling about the show aren’t even funny,” Mr. Kwapis said. “But they make you cringe. Now I go to pitch meetings where executives say, ‘I want that cringe-worthy comedy.’ ”
That any of this happened is mind-boggling for almost everyone who was involved at the show’s inception, beginning with Ben Silverman, the executive producer (and later, head of NBC’s entertainment division), who chased Mr. Gervais all over London to secure the American rights. “What was required to get this show on was almost herculean,” Mr. Silverman said.
The NBC chief executive at the time, Jeff Zucker, had proclaimed that no single-camera comedy could ever be a hit show. (Single-camera shows are shot on sets and locations and feel like movies; three-camera comedies like “The Big Bang Theory” are shot on stages in front of audiences and feel like theater.) Mr. Zucker was not an initial fan of NBC’s version of “The Office,” and he wasn’t alone. “A lot of people didn’t get it,” Mr. Daniels said.
John Krasinski, who memorably inhabited the show’s male romantic lead, Jim, recalled that during the shooting of the first six episodes, a network executive would show up every Friday and say, “This episode is so good — unfortunately, it’s the last one we’re going to do.”
Expectations among critics were also low because the British version, created by Mr. Gervais and Stephen Merchant, had been deemed an instant classic, and NBC had misfired two seasons earlier in a remake of the British comedy “Coupling.” Mr. Daniels recalled watching the British “Office,” with its ironic tone, and thinking, “Oh my God, how did they pull this off?”A breakthrough came when Mr. Daniels realized that between Americans’ newborn fascination with reality shows and their growing habit of recording even mundane events in their own daily lives, “being in front of a camera and talking to a camera became a most relatable experience.”
The idea of allowing characters to speak directly to the camera, another device straight out of “Survivor,” also opened up possibilities, Mr. Daniels said, because “you can tell stories in a first-person point of view.” That technique is now commonplace on shows like “Modern Family” and countless commercials.
With his own experience in the reality genre, Mr. Silverman reached out to camera operators with reality-television credits to film the pilot. To direct, Mr. Daniels hired Mr. Kwapis, who had cut his teeth on observational single-camera comedies like “Freaks and Geeks,” and especially “The Larry Sanders Show.” And Mr. Kwapis brought in Peter Smokler, who had worked on the beloved mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap,” as director of photography.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 1, 2013
An earlier version of this article misstated after which season Steve Carell left “The Office.” It was after Season 7, not 5.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/arts/television/the-office-finale.html?partner=rss&emc=rss