The Office's Creative Team Had An Episode Written Just For Emergencies

Michael holds a meeting with his employees in The Office

NBC

NBC’s hit sitcom “The Office” goes in a lot of directions over the course of its nine-season run. Michael Scott ends up in a koi pond. Dwight fires a gun in the office. Meredith is very realistically attacked by a bat. Despite the litany of comedic gold, some hilarious scenes from the show never saw the light of day until they were included in deleted scenes and superfan episodes. At other times, writing ideas were revealed from the cast and crew. For instance, we learned the names of Michael Scott’s children when an axed scene was revealed on the “Office Ladies” podcast.

And then there’s the really deep stuff — the stuff the writers’ room dreamed about and never had the guts (or approval) to put on the screen. Most of this was lost in the television production ethers, that is, until several of the writers offered up some juicy “could have beens” in the book “The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s.” In that sacred Scranton tome, we get a ton of what-if scenarios, some of which boggle the mind. In their midst is a wild story about an entire episode that was written and never shot as a “break glass in case of emergencies” backup plan.

What was The Office’s unfilmed episode about?

Angela holds up a picture of herself with her cat in The Office

NBC

Here’s what writer Justin Spitzer had to say (via EW) about the standby installment that the writers had ready to go in case of emergencies :

There was one whole episode in season one that Greg [Daniels] wrote that they never shot. We always would talk about it as our “break the glass episode” that we’d do if we ever were totally in trouble.

Spitzer recalled some details about the theme of the episode and why it never saw the light of day, too:

It was called “Pet Day,” where everyone took their pets to the office. I can’t remember much about it, but it was funny. I think Michael had a parrot named Jim Carrey. There was a moment at some point in the run where we realized, “Okay, the characters and their situations have changed so much now that we can never, ever do ‘Pet Day.’ The show has changed too much now. It wouldn’t play.”

Despite the eventual inability to use the “Pet Day” script, the writers took solace for a long time in the fact that they had an emergency episode up their sleeves if they needed it. Spitzer said as much, finishing his summary by saying:

There were a few seasons where we were like, “There’s always ‘Pet Day’!” whenever we’d get into trouble.

There were a ton of other ideas that never made the final cut, too

Michael, Jim, and Dwight look concerned in The Office

NBC

While the “Pet Day” episode is a big idea that never got off the ground, there were many smaller (and often wilder) ideas that didn’t get traction either. Writer Halsted Sullivan talked about trying to integrate a “rebel” high-end stationery company into the Five Families of the Scranton Business Park. Aaron Shure shared about repeatedly pitching a scene where Michael gets caught in his opening garage door and ends up looking crucified (complete with a basketball hoop as a crown of thorns).

Writer and brother of Toby Flenderson actor Paul Lieberstein, Warren Lieberstein, also shared about an undeveloped idea for an episode called “Premonition” where someone has a dream that someone in the office died on the way home — and then no one wants to leave work that day. Other ideas span the gamut, from Phyllis going through menopause (and freezing the office in the process) to Michael coming down with a bad case of ennui and even a reveal that Andy was unwittingly part of a murder silence pact in relation to a deceased member of his a cappella troop “Here Comes Treble.”

While each idea has its merits and would have been fun to see, there’s no doubt that the editorial team did their job well. The final cut of most episodes (even the least popular entries, like season 8’s “Get the Girl,”) clearly contain the strongest concepts, edited down to size and presented in a punchy, rapid-fire, talking-head mockumentary format that has kept this iconic show on repeat for a generation of television and counting.