Pam Beesly

Mare pretty.

And the writers, you know, Greg Daniels and Michael Coleman, they seem to want to dismantle the Jim and Pam cutesiness of the US office.

That one required a love narrative and they give us this toxic office romance instead.

So in the previous season, Ned and Mera, they've hooked up.

It's only six episodes.

So there's also Roy, who is going to be, who is engaged to Pam.

And he's kind of just been dragging his feet about planning the wedding for three years.

So they've been engaged for three years with no movement on the wedding.

And then there's Daryl, and he's just another warehouse worker.

He works with Roy.

And yeah, so Dwight, Pam, Jim, they're the salesmen.

There's the accountants, which are Oscar, Angela, and Kevin.

Let's hear it.

All right, who else is here? Pam and Jim are on their honeymoon, so there's not the usual balance between sane and others.

Toby has mentally checked out since June.

It's a very dangerous time.

"I am Bacchus, god of wine." Um, so good.

Okay, Jenna, what about you?

Well, I have a lot of favorite Oscar moments, but I love, for personal reasons as well, the Oscar-Pam-Angela dynamic in the cold open for season eight, After Hours.

Here is the clip.

Yeah.

Much like how Pam says at its best, the party planning committee planned parties.

Yeah.

I think Oscar's like, best case, this business trip is a business trip.

And that's when Oscar gives him a handshake.

Back to basics.

We can move on to Jim and Pam, I guess.

Jim is eagerly awaiting the return of Pam from art school.

Well, yeah.

But here's the thing: the sales team is resentful that Pam and Ryan came on as new salespeople and that they get to keep the clients that they stole from everybody else while they were working at Michael Scott Paper Company.

I mean, that's just awkward.

Yeah, so there's a bit of a rivalry that's gonna happen on this episode today.

[laughs]

Well, the thing that's like standing out to me are the number of people who came in for a role other than the one they wound up in.

Angela, you first came in for Pam, but then also Ed originally auditioned for Michael Scott.

John was brought in to play Dwight.

But anyway, this episode is – it's just classic season two.

Like this version of Dwight, this version of Ryan, this version of Jim and Pam playing a prank on Dwight that is like rather – no, I don't want to say it's harmless, but it is rather light in terms of, yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And this is, this is just pure uncut office, man.

Just the, just wish we knew how good we had it, you know, uh, even like the Jim and Pam, it's just, their romance is just, it's also, it's not like a heavy one in terms of like, I mean, Jim gets a little weird at the end about it.

Cause it kind of always does in this era.

Uh, But it's just them having fun together, pranking Dwight.

But one of my favorite books that I actually recommend to younger people coming up in this business is The Actor's Life by Jenna Fisher.

If you are a watcher of the show The Office, she played Pam on The Office and wrote a book about her plight to break into the world of acting.

And she has such great recommendations about building yourself as a brand, figuring out how to convey that message, persistence, when you need to shift and kind of re-strategize, regroup, reinvent yourself.

And I just found it to be a really interesting look behind the scenes in Hollywood because I know nothing about that, despite now being on YouTube.