After Steve Carell’s departure near the end of Season 7, and an uneven Season 8 marked by low ratings and much grumbling in our household about quality control, The Office returns for its final season on September 20th with original producer/showrunner Greg Daniels retaking the controls. I’m letting optimism get the best of me and taking this as a positive sign.
In a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, Daniels revealed some of the plot points in store for the last stretch of episodes, in which they’re free to go nuts and “blow things up.” Among other surprises in store, Season 9 will see Kelly’s defection to Fox’s The Mindy Kaling Project; two new characters taking over Customer Service; the return of Pam’s ex Roy (among other long-gone faces); an inevitable segue to Rainn Wilson’s Frasier-iffic spinoff The Farm, and at long last, a behind-the-scenes look at the documentary crew that sees, knows, and films all.
What about those other surprises in store? It’s too early to know for sure what ideas are locked in, what remains on Daniels’ wishlist, and what will end up as mere Season 9 DVD extras. It’s a good bet that whatever happens, it won’t be predictable, and in some cases it won’t be what we longtime fans want to see. Sometimes that’s a good thing, because we fans tend to imagine and ask for the safe, the easy, and the comforting from our favorite shows. When The Office is working as it should, it’s generally never safe, easy, or comforting — it’s the kind of awkward, messy, embarrassing series that can leave you laughing even while you cover your face in disbelief and keep peeking between your fingers at the TV.
If they really want to awkward things up, here are a few post-shark-jumping ideas for any number of episodes that will likely never be requested by fans, thus making them 50% more likely to happen than most of the typical fan wishlists currently viewable online:
* News arrives that Michael Scott has died offscreen. Totally, thoroughly, irrevocably, irretrievably dead, dead, dead, dead, DEAD. Thus is Steve Carell finally granted some semblance of peace, quiet, and reprieve from millions of fans who won’t stop pestering him to come back One Last Time to Save the Show. Carell instead relishes the chance to watch Season 9 from home as a fan while pondering his next dozen seven-figure-paycheck film roles.
* After buying the company, David Wallace gives Andy his blessing to run the Scranton office as he sees fit. Andy reassigns Nellie to the receptionist’s desk, has Erin take over the fictional role of office administrator, transfers Pam to Quality Control, and moves Creed down to the warehouse in the newly created role of Janitor Emeritus. Creed still never lifts a finger, except to devote more time to Creed Thoughts and its eight million imaginary followers. Most popular entries among the voices in his head include “Where’d All the White People Go?”, “What’s a Janitor, and How Does One Janit?”, and “I Must Kill The Baler Before It Kills Me”.
* Wallace also assembles his new officers. His new COO: Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration. Phyllis is subsequently appointed to an executive VP position.
* Pam follows up Cece and Philip with a set of healthy quadruplets. Pam can’t convince any of her coworkers to look at their cute photos. The writers never even bother to name any of them.
* Jan brings her li’l toddler Astrid in for a visit, but is dismayed to find out that He Who Is Not Coming Back no longer works there. She spends the day hanging around anyway, pays Kevin a thousand dollars to babysit for her, then goes out for a lovely, wild evening with Stanley.
* After a disastrous incident with Angela’s state-senator husband that no one ever describes onscreen, Oscar decides he might not be gay after all and tries flirting with Angela, just because he’s curious to see what happens. There is no conceivable TV universe in which this begins or ends well.
* Ed Truck’s ghost returns to haunt Dunder Mifflin, approaching each of our characters one by one and asking if they’ll be his friend. Everyone hems, haws, and finds excuses to say no. David Wallace drives his son to the office and has him capture Dead Ed with a Suck It. When fans ask if there’s a remote chance of a super-special cameo by Michael Scott’s ghost, the very next episode features a team of priests, rabbis, shamans, and Ghost Hunters taking turns doing whatever they can to Scott’s grave to ensure that he remains dead, dead, dead, dead, DEAD.
* Mose rides a jet-ski over a shark pool. Turns out it’s his favorite hobby. No one knows why, and they’re afraid to ask where he got all those sharks.
* Toby resigns to become a full-time crime novelist. His first book is poorly reviewed, but sells like gangbusters in Latin America. Several months pass before anyone in the office notices he’s gone.
* Ryan begins to freak out when he realizes that all of his coworkers have been slowly pairing up over the last several years, that sooner or later he’ll be required to pair up with someone else now that Kelly’s gone, and that the only remaining candidates are Meredith and Madge down in the warehouse. When a desperate Ryan finds out the hard way that Madge has already hooked up with Gabe, he spends the last three episodes in his office closet, curled up under his desk and crying till the cameramen promise to go away.
* Darryl goes back to being really cool, just like he used to be, once upon a time.
* Some genius superfan kicks all his social-media accounts into hyperdrive and organizes an international “Bring Michael Back” campaign by convincing several million fans to mail buckets full of cheese puffs to NBC. In answer to their demands, Greg Daniels appears in the very next episode in a special cameo, dressed as the Munchkin coroner from The Wizard of Oz, holding a poster-sized death certificate, and singing: “As showrunner / I thoroughly can now confirm / That he’s not only merely dead / He’s really most sincerely dead!” All of fandom agrees to stop asking if Daniels promises never to wear the costume again.
* Instead of filing for bankruptcy and closing its doors forever in the final episode, Dunder Mifflin becomes a new power player in the publishing industry with its brilliant innovation that takes America by storm: electronic paper that exists only in virtual form, but which the company sells in virtual reams of 500 and in virtual cases of twelve reams apiece. This proposal makes no sense whatsoever, but crafty ol’ Jim finds a way to sell millions of cases to hundreds of gullible companies whose management are all over age 80. It is the greatest prank of his entire life.
* Final sequence: for the first time in his life, Dwight accidentally kills someone with one of his stashed office weapons — a delivery boy who didn’t check in at reception and has more tattoos than Dwight would prefer. His retreat to The Farm is borne not of a desire to focus on a different career, but to escape the long arm of Scranton law. Dwight imagines he’s an excellent refugee. The reality is that the Scranton police know Dwight pretty well and never did like that delivery boy, who had a rap sheet a mile long and was more terrible at delivering than Fry from Futurama. According to their final police report, the evidence was all too circumstantial for them to build a solid court case, so they’re prepared to let it languish in permanent cold-case status. As a practical joke they let Dwight live the rest of his life in hiding instead of telling him all of this.
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