Office Ladies - Viewing Party

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

This week we’re breaking down “Viewing Party.” Gabe and Erin host a “Glee” viewing party at their home and Michael can’t help but wreck the party due to his disdain of Gabe. Meanwhile, Pam discovers Dwight is the answer to help regulate Cece’s sleeping cycle. We learn the interior of Gabe’s apartment was built on the warehouse set, Angela uncovers what Stanley would rather be doing than attend Erin and Gabe’s viewing party and Jenna shares how surprisingly easy it was to shoot the scene where Dwight instantly calms Cece. We promise you, you do not need powdered seahorse to enjoy this episode. So please leave the seahorses alone! 

I'm Jenna Fisher and I'm Angela Kinsey. We were on The Office together and we're best friends. And now we're doing the Ultimate Office rewatch podcast just for you. Each week we will break down an episode of The Office and give exclusive behind-the-scenes stories that only two people who were there can tell you. We're The Office, ladies. Hello! Hey, you guys!

What's going on? How are ya? Wow, Angela, you're bringing the energy today. I just played an hour of tennis. So you're amped up. I'm like, someone throw a ball at me, I'm going to hit it, I'm going to do something with it. She's in her tennis uniform, so she really is ready.

She's in uniform. What is it? Tennis clothes? Outfit? I mean, you know, I'm not on a team. No, I guess that's true. That's true. I would wear a tennis uniform, I mean, sign me up.

Did you notice that all the men during the U.S. Open were wearing kind of the same tennis shirt, it was like a gray, burgundy thing. There was lots of burgundy and pink, and kind of a modern neckline. It reminded me of the shirts from Star Trek. Yeah. It felt very Trekkie to me. Very Trekkie. Look at you with a sci-fi reference.

I know, and tennis. What? Am I becoming you? Am I going to come in a tennis outfit next week? Oh, I hope so, maybe. Well today, we are talking about viewing party. It is season seven, episode eight, written by John Vidi and directed by Ken Whittingham. New writer alert, John Vidi.

He came to us after writing for The Simpsons and King of the Hill and was nominated for an Emmy Award for writing episodes of The Larry Sanders Show and he also wrote the Angry Birds movie, which is a favorite of my kids. My kids love that movie. Yeah, I love it too. He was new for this season and he wrote viewing party. Would you like a summary? So much.

Okay. Aaron and Gabe host a glee viewing party, but Michael's hatred toward Gabe threatens to ruin the evening. He is in such poor form. Michael is like a little kid. Andy has an adverse reaction after ingesting wine and crushed seahorses. Meanwhile, Jim and Pam are conflicted to discover that the key to soothing a crying sissy is Dwight.

Yeah, and they're going to interrupt part of the punch card action. Yes, I was going to say Angela spends a large portion of the evening nudy in a car. Fake nudy. I was going to ask you what you really had on when we get there. Well, fast fact number one was a fan question from Sarah M. and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Why did they pick Glee as the show to watch for the viewing party? I'm curious about that too. Do you know the answer?

Well, at the time Glee was, I believe it was, the highest rated scripted show of any network. And supposedly at the 2010 Emmy Awards, the office producers and writers were seated near the folks from Glee. And Paul Lieberstein told me that during the commercial breaks, he started chatting up one of the showrunners from Glee, Brad Falczyk. And Paul pitched this idea to him at the Emmy Awards. This idea of the folks from the office having a Glee viewing party. And Brad liked it.

He loved it. He said, I give my blessing. Amazing. Well, it wasn't that easy because, you know, Glee was on Fox, it was on NBC. The suits got involved. They did. Mm-hmm. Randy had a lot to say about how difficult it was to pull this off.

I bet there are a bunch of fun stoppers. Yeah. We had a couple of fan questions. Natalie Vee from Winnipeg asked, is there a process for asking one network to shoot an episode that promotes another network? And Leah Roberts from Downington, Pennsylvania said, did you have to get special rights to use the Glee content in your episode? I'd love to know the story behind all of this.

Well, Randy told us that the folks at Fox approved this episode, but they really pulled back on the amount of footage we could use. We couldn't run any unaired clips from Glee. We could only use clips from older shows that had already aired, but that kind of went against our idea that we had all gathered to watch this brand new episode. So we had to kind of, like, you know, scoochie, scoochie around it. Kind of make it work. Like, if you notice, there's very few clips.

That's also because it was very expensive. They had to pay large fees to any performer, writer, or director credited in the clip. Remember, that's what happened with the banker and ended up being a really expensive episode. They also had to pay any music licensing fees. So Randy said, we managed to go ahead with it. And what we did was, if you notice, a lot of times our characters are describing what they're seeing and you just see, like, a flash of a Glee character on the screen, but you don't really gather any plot from the actual clips.

So that's how we did it. Well, I think it was short-sighted on the suits. I do. Because guess what? Had they put some of their clips in our show, it would have been such a huge buzz. It would have driven more people to Glee. I don't think they needed more people to be driven to Glee, is their point. They're like, we already have a larger viewing audience than you.

They're like, we don't need you guys. They're like, here's a few puny clips. You're welcome. Yeah. It's like my friend, her honeymoon was in Hawaii and she kept thinking she'd get free stuff if she said she was on her honeymoon and they were literally like, take a number. Yeah. You and everyone else.

All right. Are you ready for FastFact number two? Yeah. This is a fan question from Fabie in New Hampshire. Was this episode filmed at someone's apartment and if so, who's was it? Well, Faye, it was not. This entire interior location, Gabe's apartment, was built by our crew, designed by Michael Gallenberg, built by our construction head, Tim James, and then decorated by our set decorating

team headed by Steve Rothstein. I mean, what a phenomenal job. I know. It was so well done. We're going to get to this in later seasons, but I felt the same way in Oscar's apartment. They built the whole thing. Well, I guess this was a really big endeavor because they had to build multiple connecting rooms as well as a drop ceiling with a ceiling fan in the kitchen.

Because when Michael tosses the pizza dough, that was scripted that it would hit the fan. So they had to really figure that out. Because imagine this apartment being built inside like an aircraft hanger. Yeah. Like the vast and tall the ceilings are in a studio. Yeah. They built this on our warehouse set. The exterior, however, was real.

You know, when Michael goes outside and he's messing with the cable box and then Pam meets Angela at the car, we filmed that on location at an apartment building in Sherman Oaks. We had one evening. Hmm. Are you ready for FASPEC number three? I am. FASPEC number three is that James Carey shared all of the call sheets with me for this episode and you know I love a call sheet.

Oh, no, you do. That's so much information. You get so excited. So much. It's just a chart of so many times and so many moving parts, your brain's like buzzing. Oh, yeah. I don't even want to look at it. They tell you what time sunset is.

Yeah. They tell you, you know, the weather of the day, all kinds of things. Well, these call sheets reminded me that while shooting this episode, this viewing party episode, we were also having the nepotism premiere viewing party as a cast. It was Thursday, September 23rd and as a result, the next day we had a later call time of 1.30 p.m. so that we could all stay up and watch. Oh, that's so fun. Isn't that so cool?

And it worked out perfectly because that Friday night was the night that we had to shoot all of the stuff outside in the evening. I loved our cast viewing parties. They were so fun. I know. I also just love that we were seven years into this show and we were still so excited to get together and watch an episode together. Yeah.

And this wasn't like, I feel like we should say, this wasn't one of those like publicity viewing parties. No, no. This wasn't... Someone would volunteer to host. We did it often. It was a tradition with our cast starting from the very beginning. We had so many photos of viewing parties for our book that we couldn't even include because

we ran out of space. People ask us a lot. Was there anything that you didn't get to talk about in your book? And more depth. Yeah. And for me, it's always the viewing parties. We couldn't figure out where to put them. Yeah.

Because they were just such a big part of, I think, what, I don't know, what made us feel like a family. I'll never forget the one I hosted. I did not have enough places for people to sit. I had that one couch everyone gets from Ikea. What is it? Ektorp or whatever. You know what I mean?

Sounds about right. And so a lot of people had to sit on the floor. And I have this great picture of like, you know, Steve and Mindy on the floor and everyone, I ordered pizza and I love it. Steve always took the floor. He did. We did get one picture in the book. We're talking about our book, The Office BFF, which, by the way, we are signing copies

of right now. Yes, because we're going to have them as part of a really fun holiday bundle on OfficeLadies.com. Yeah. But there is one picture in there of a viewing party and it was at my house and Steve is on the floor. Yeah. I'm going to post the one at my place. Yeah.

Yeah. You should. I'll put it. Yeah. Well, listen, that's all I've got. Should we take a break and then come back and break down this episode? Yes. I have some fun stuff.

Me too. All right, we are back. Gabe is going to arrive to work and there's no one in the bullpen. Aaron rushes out and says, they got the Scranton Strangler. There's a chase. And everyone is back in the annex around Toby's desk. Did you notice? Who isn't there?

Who isn't there? We never watch videos at Toby's desk. It's always at Oscar's desk. Well, what's crazy is in the script, it said we were all gathered around Kelly's desk, but we must have changed it because we're at Toby's desk and he's not there. Dwight says he doesn't think these kind of chases should be televised because it will only encourage copycats. Angela says, just say copies.

Why do you have to drag cats into this? That got a laugh at the table read. And it's interesting, because when I think back to these episodes, I remember the table reads. Yeah. And if something got a laugh, you knew it was going to make it in. So I was like, oh, I know I'm going to have that cat line. Well, we're watching all this footage and I asked Randy, how did we get this footage?

He said that the footage of the standoff was a real standoff. What? Yeah. That was like a real thing that happened on the news. Are you allowed to do that? I don't know. We borrowed it. We got that from the actual WBRE, the local NBC station in Scranton.

So that was an actual standoff that happened in Scranton and ran on the local news. Yeah. Wow. But then we did film all of the car chase stuff ourselves. We used rented police cars, precision drivers, and we added the voiceover of the newscaster, obviously. And Randy was really bummed. He couldn't find any information on who did that voiceover.

He really looked for it. And then what really made me laugh was when the one single cop car goes down our street because we all run, we realize it's coming by us, the chase. That street is a dead end. I know. So I was imagining like, I know that that cop car had to slam on its brakes right after it went past our window. There's nothing there.

There's nothing there. Well, I have a few background catches. At 12 seconds, did anyone else catch that Toby has an adorable coffee mug on his desk that is a candle? I don't understand. How can it be a mug and a candle? Because Jenna, the candle is in the mug. It's so cute.

What? The candle is in the mug. I took a picture. Is it a functioning coffee mug or a functioning candle? No, it's a functioning candle. I don't understand. Oh my God. I'm going to show you.

I feel confused. Look at it. It's so cute. What a cute gift. Okay. It's a coffee mug candle. Oh, I get it now. Okay.

So it looks like a white diner coffee mug, but the mug is filled with wax and has a wick coming out of it. Okay. I like it. Now I want it. Now you want it. I have another background catch. I'm going to call it Kinsey busted.

What is that? At one minute, three seconds, I am behind Pam next to Creed. Then I am standing and reaching towards John, passing him something behind everyone's back. Hmm. Busted. In the next frame, I am seated. What's going on? Yeah.

What is going on? I was passing something to John. You're all over the place. I'm all over the place. And then I have an overall, what I called a what the heck moment. Okay. Which we've discussed, which is, where's Topi? Yeah.

Did you get a fan mail flurry about that? I didn't. What? Not a single letter. Nothing. I was so sorry. I'm so sorry. Ella B from Ontario did mention it.

Well Ella, you and I were clearly thinking the same thing. Where the heck is Topi? I did look at the call sheet. Thanks to James Carey. I mentioned, and there was a person listed as the Scranton Strangler on the call sheet. Who? Who? It was one of the precision drivers who was driving the Scranton Strangler's car.

We almost solved the mystery of the Scranton Strangler. I know. We were so close. Yeah. But on the call sheet, it says police driver number one, police driver number two, police driver number three, Scranton Strangler. That's what it said. Well the episode is going to start with Michael walking through the office at kind of a brisk

clip and Erin is like scurrying behind him. She wants to invite him to Gabe's party. There was an alt beginning to this. It's in deleted scenes where Gabe is passing out the invites to his party. Oh. He gives one to Stanley and Stanley's reaction was so funny to it, Jenna. I wanted you guys to hear it. Crossword clue.

Ten letters means time of your life. Gabe's party. Well, look at this. Thank you for thinking of me. Why the hell? I got my own crazy idea for tonight. I'm going to watch a TV show. I want to watch with people.

I want to watch it with NCIS by myself. It was really funny. He's talking head. He had the invite in his hand and he's like holding it up like, are you kidding me? I did zoom in on the invite. Okay. It was a pink invite with purple writing looked very festive. It said the party was taking place Tuesday at 7 p.m. and it has a make your own pizza

bar. Hmm. Michael starts out by pretending like he doesn't have time for TV shows. He's never heard of Glee. He's walking in a circle and then it's a prank. He does know what Glee is and he'd be happy to be there. Erin has a talking head where she basically says she's really glad Michael's coming. She's not sure if Michael likes Gabe very much.

And then she talks about the Glee mashups where they mash up two songs that don't really go together to make a really great song. Do you remember how big those mashups were that Glee would do? People loved them. Yes. I looked it up. Glee did 43 mashups in total. And there are websites that rank them like what's the best mashup?

It looks like for the most part everyone agrees that the best one was the thriller heads will roll mashup. Oh, please tell me you have a clip. I want to hear it. I have a clip and it's pretty amazing and I wish you could see the visuals because it's like the football team on the field and they all look like they're from Thriller. Oh, cool. It was great.

Here's the clip. There you go. That's so cool. It's so catchy. They all are. I watched many, many of them to prepare for this episode. I'll tell you what, if I could sing like that, I'd be trouble. Oh, yeah?

Mm-hmm. It's like something I would love to be able to belt out a tune like that. I'd have so much sass in me, I'd be a sassy singer. You would? Mm-hmm. Well, if you were on Glee, I would be a full on Gleek for you. Thank you. You're welcome.

Well, you know, there was a deleted Michael Talking Head where he shared his thoughts on Gabe. There's part of this Talking Head that made me laugh so hard. I rewound it and rewatched it again. I just want you to hear this part. I don't really know Gabe. I know that whenever I hear his name or see him, I am surprised and then I remember who he is.

The story that made me laugh, it just cracked me up. Whenever I hear his name or see him, I'm surprised. Who is this guy? Oh, yeah. Like every time. Oh, that's pretty amazing. Well, Kelly has a pretty great Talking Head where she gives all her thoughts on Glee. Oh, yeah.

We got a fan question from Abigail R. in Niceville, Florida, who said, I feel like Kelly's opinion on the plot of Glee is actually Mindy's opinion. Is that accurate? I think there's a good chance of that. Uh-huh. Right. Blurring of the line there. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We've got a little Dwayangela in the kitchen. We do. Angela wants to know if Dwight's going to go to the viewing party. Mm-hmm. Dwight said not because I want to, with all the feeling to base a show around Glee, thirst. Now that's a show I'd watch.

You know, there was a show called Thirsty. What was it about? Here's their logline. What does modern courtship, sex, and love look like between damaged individuals? Oh, my God, this is horrible. Thirsty. Oh, no. Yeah.

It was a comedy. Oh. It came out. I thought it was a reality show for a minute. No. And I got really nervous. No. No.

No. It was a scripted show. I think it came out in 2020. It was, um, might have just been a pilot episode. I didn't see a number of other episodes, but there are lots and lots of movies called Thirst. I mean, Dwight and Angela could have a real, you know, movie night around the word thirst if they wanted.

If they wanted. All I could think about in this moment was the fact that Creed, a few years ago, insisted that Josh and I watch alone. He was like, you got to see it. You got to see it. And now we're like hooked on a loan and Creed was like, it makes you look at animals different, huh? Why?

Like you're going to eat them? Because you're like, they're starving. They've got to eat. And Josh was like, yeah, totally. No. And like you look at a squirrel differently. Oh, my goodness. Well, Aaron is going to extend an invite to Andy and it's a little awkward.

They're so awkward. The two of them are so awkward. Yeah. I mean, obviously Andy doesn't want to spend an evening in Gabe's apartment watching him be a couple with Aaron, but he can't say no. He says he'll be there. This moves us to the kitchen and really one of my favorite looks from Oscar at four minutes and 29 seconds.

I don't know if you noticed it in the background. Is it when Kevin refers to Gabe as the boss? Yes. It's so amazing. So like you have Daryl and Oscar and they're making sandwiches on the kitchen counter. And then Kevin makes this faux pas of referring to Gabe as Michael's boss. Yeah. And he's like, backpedal, backpedal.

Yeah. And then when Michael goes to ask Daryl and Oscar's opinion about this, they're gone. They've exited. There is a tiny moment before that where over Michael's shoulder, you just see Oscar clock what's going on. And it's perfect. It is so, so good. We're going to travel now to Gabe's apartment.

It's the evening. Aaron is giving Michael a tour. She's so enamored with Gabe's apartment. It's like a fancy grown up apartment. There's big wine glasses, Jenna. Very large wine glasses. Which Phyllis is going to enjoy. I had a fun background catch at this entrance moment at four minutes and 45 seconds.

You start by seeing an exterior shot of the building and you hear a door close. And then it cuts to Aaron and Michael and the apartment door is already closed. It says if they'd entered, but that way we didn't have to show what was behind the door. You will see what's behind the door at the end though. Movie magic. So Gabe is going to walk Michael through all the toppings for the make your own pizza bar. There's a really fun thing in deleted scenes, Jenna. What is it?

Michael wants his own ingredients for the pizza. He doesn't like all of these amazing ingredients that Gabe has laid out so nicely. He goes into Gabe's pantry and he picks out spaghetti-os. And Gabe says, I was saving that for one of the children I mentor. I remember shooting this. Yeah. So I remember because I was, I remember being worried for Steve. So Michael makes a pizza with spaghetti-os as the topping and he takes this huge bite.

I remember this. Yes. Steve had to take a huge bite out of this pizza topped with spaghetti-os. It looks so disgusting. I thought he was going to gag. And then as Michael, he spits it out into the trash. It looks so nasty. It led me down a pizza rabbit hole.

That's a pizza rabbit hole. Pizza rabbit hole is, and I barely scratched the surface. But here are a few things I found about how people eat pizza around the world. What are they? Let's start with Australia. There is a Aussie pizza that is topped with barbecue sauce. That's the base. Yep.

Mozzarella, cheese, little bits of chopped bacon, sometimes ham, and a few eggs. Whoa. And the last one surprised me. What about barbecue sauce though? No tomato sauce. Well, I often eat a like barbecue chicken pizza. Oh, well there you go. And it's very good.

So why was I so surprised by barbecue sauce? I don't know, but I would eat that Australian pizza. With the egg on it? I would. Okay. Would you eat this one? In Russia, there is a popular pizza known as the makba, if I'm saying that correctly. It contains the following sardines, tuna, mackerel, salmon, onions, and it's traditionally

served cold. No. Pass on makba. Finland has a funny pizza topping story. They have a pizza called Pizza Berlusconi, and I'll tell you how this pizza came about. I guess there was an Italian Prime Minister named Silvio Berlusconi, and he made a jab at Finnish cuisine. He said the Finnish food usually consists of marinated reindeer.

Well, guess what the Finnish did? Did they put marinated reindeer on a pizza? They named a pizza after him, and they included a bunch of Finnish stereotypical food, including smoked reindeer, mushrooms, and red onions. And this pizza is now served in restaurants across the country, and is called the pizza Berlusconi. I would try it. I might feel bad about eating reindeer because it makes me think of Rudolph, but I guess

I'd try it. I think I would try it. Okay. Here's just a fun tidbit, a pizza tidbit. Every pizza in Sweden is served with pizza salad. It's a tangy coleslaw salad with red pepper. Some people eat it as a side, others eat it on top of the pizza. I would eat that, and I would put it on top of my pizza.

Okay. California Pizza Kitchen does a pizza, they do a BLT pizza, and there's kind of a salad on top of it. It's really good. Quick pizza fun fact, Norwegians are said to consume the most pizza per capita in the world. Not America? Norwegians.

What? I know. New Yorkers. You're letting us down. I know. Lastly, according to the internet, Korea might be the most adventurous pizza makers out there. Basically, anything goes.

Toppings on pizzas can range from kimchi to snails, potatoes, t-bone steak, and calamari. Some pizzas even have stuffed crust. But guess what it's stuffed with? What? Sweet potato. Oh. Hmm. There you have it, guys.

That's just scratching the surface. There's a lot of pizza content out there. I want you to know. Have you ever had a St. Louis style pizza, Ange? I really wish I'd brought one in today because it's so on theme. No. I've never had St. Louis style pizza. What is that?

Okay. We have a pizza place. It's called Emo's Pizza. They're most famous for serving the St. Louis style pizza, but other places do it as well in St. Louis. It's a very, very thin crust, and it's crispy. Ooh, I love thin crust. Ooh, I love that.

So when you bite it, it's crispy. Ooh. But the topping is sort of a cheesy sauce that then hardens into a kind of a plastic. Plastic? Plastic. This isn't selling it. Well, it's made out of a made-up cheese called Provelle. So it's...

It's not real cheese? No. It's in sort of the Velvita category. Okay. You know, it's a processed kind of made-up cheese. Okay. So St. Louis style pizza, and then you put the other traditional toppings on, sausage, pepperoni, whatever you want, but it's the crispy, crispy crust with this Provelle cheese

on top. And BJ Novak went to St. Louis to do some stand-up, and he was like, tell me about your local cuisine. Where should I go? Yeah. And I said, oh, you have to get toasted ravioli. You have to probably go get some Ted Drews frozen custard, and then you've got to try a St. Louis-style emo's pizza.

Still to this day, he gives me trouble about this pizza. Anybody who's not local St. Louis does not appreciate this pizza. It's interesting. He talked to me when he was filming in New Orleans, and I told him where to go to get good gumbo. Oh, yeah. He's really cool. He likes to eat like the local cuisine when he goes places, but oh, shoot, what a missed

opportunity. I could be eating some emo's pizza right now. I'd be so happy about it. Well, next up, Michael's going to have this talking head where he's kind of, I don't know, he's going on and on about how Gabe likes to entertain versus how he likes to spend an evening. It was total sad sack. He just has like a bag of steamed vegetables from the microwave and a sangria.

Yeah. Well, we had a really fun fan catch from MR in Hoboken, New Jersey, who said, I noticed that in the background of Michael's talking head at Gabe's apartment, you can see Oscar out of focus, and he's doing what looks like charades. It starts around five minutes and 17 seconds, and I think he's acting out the film back to the future. No way. Yeah.

Emma watched it a couple of times just to be sure. He only does the first two words, but it really does seem like that's what it might be. I checked it out and he does. Oscar does the charade for movie four words, first word, back, and then he does second word, and then he does like the number two, but then it cuts off. Was that in the script? It was not in the script.

This was just some amazing background performing that we came up with on the day, but it's really fun to watch. Well, Michael is going to insist on tossing his own pizza dough, and there was a blooper. You know, my daughter loves the bloopers. Oh, yeah. And she watched this episode with me and she goes, oh, mom, mom, there's this great blooper where Steve is tossing the pizza dough and it flies up and lands on the boom operator's mic.

Yes. And so we went and watched it. It cracked me up. Michael, who's doing the boom for this scene, and he got a microphone full of pizza dough. Randy sent us a really cool video of them testing out this pizza dough hitting the fan bit. Yeah. And it was really cool.

You see all these guys, all our crew guys, like just in the warehouse throwing pizza dough at a fan to see like, where does it go when it hits the land? Like, how fast should the fan be going? It was cool. Gabe is going to welcome Pam and Jim into his man cave. We find out he spent his senior year abroad in Japan. And also he loves to play some soundscapes on the keyboard. Yes.

We had a fan catch from Halsey in the UK who said, Gabe said he spent his year in Japan, yet for the rest of the episode, everything in his room is from China. Hmm. Good catch, Hal. Nice catch. Yes. Also in this scene, you know, Cece is awake. It's evening.

She's reverse cycling. Yes. She's up all night, which means Pam's up all night. We got a lot of mail. Did we really? Yeah. I want to hear it. First of all, from Andrea D and Chattanooga, Tennessee, why does Pam get upset about Cece

waking up at night when she has her out at a party with the lights on? Oh. Caitlyn A from Westfield, New Jersey says, as a mom of three babies under two and a half, if your baby is reverse cycling or having any type of sleep issue that's causing stress to your family, why would you bring said baby to an evening party? We got some fan mail sass. We did. Basically, people said they didn't understand the logic.

If she didn't care, they could understand why she brought Cece, but if she's stressed out about it, stay home. Yeah. And then people wondered, is it because it was her boss's party? Did she feel obligated to come? And so, yeah. I sort of think if it were me, I would have welcomed the excuse to stay home and just have Jim represent us at the party.

Yeah. Here's the amazing thing. When you become a parent, you have an instant out that is acceptable and lean into it. If your friend is like, oh, you guys, please come over. I'm going to try different fondues. And you're just like, I don't want to go over there and try a bunch of fondues tonight. You're like, you know what? We're actually getting the baby down earlier.

I should probably stay home. There's always... Yes. We're introducing a new sleep routine and it's not great timing. Or as they get older, you're like, you know, it's school night, so there's just so many ways to lean into the acceptable parent, I can't make it excuse. This is our advice. Have children so you have an excuse not to go to things.

So you have an excuse not to be social. Well, the show is starting. Erin gathers everyone in the living room. Let's watch Glee. I could have watched Kelly and Phyllis on that couch all night. I know. Their dynamic was cracking me up. Phyllis is driving Kelly crazy, asking her all these questions.

Well then, Oscar starts annoying her because he keeps pausing to discuss and she's got a great sass line. She says, oh, I'm sorry, is this a Glee watching party or a Glee pausing party? I'm with Kelly. I agree. Don't keep pausing it to chat me up and if you're going to come to a viewing party, know the show. Phyllis.

Oh boy. Michael is in rare, rare Michael mode. He's acting like a bratty kid. He's going to say, hey, I'm going to have my own Glee watching party in the bedroom, where we can crank up the volume and he tries to recruit people to Gabe's bedroom. Yeah. But the only person who's there is Pam, who's trying desperately to get Cece to go to sleep. In fact, in the next scene, when Gabe is showing Ryan all of his stuff, his stereo from the

1970s and his five Chinese virility herbs, you can see Pam at eight minutes and 34 seconds in the background, still holding Cece's carrier, rocking it back and forth. By the way, there was a baby in that carrier. Oh, that's heavy then. I know. But you know what? Babies were sometimes lighter than the jelly babies. I think they were always lighter than the jelly baby.

Yeah. We are going to learn that one of the virility herbs Gabe has is powdered seahorse. And apparently they say that 15 Chinese soldiers fought off the entire army of Genghis Khan, just using the powdered seahorse. We got a fan question from Abigail R. in Niceville, Florida. Please tell us everything about the Chinese virility herbs. Oh, get ready. Abigail, I will.

Abigail, should I tell you what Jenna texted me when she went down this rabbit hole? I'm going on my phone. This is what happens when you search. These virility herbs, wait, wait, just that phrase brings up a lot. Abigail, here's the text Jenna sent me after researching the Chinese virility herbs. Hey, Ange, working on viewing party. I decided to Google five Chinese virility herbs. It's mostly websites with photos of giant dicks trying to sell you but her herbs.

Oh my God. I've seen so many dicks today. Oh my gosh. It's true. It's really true. Oh man. But here is what I learned. Minus all the picks.

Yeah. These herbs, particularly dried crushed seahorses, are believed to have Viagra-like powers, meaning that they're mainly used to treat erectile dysfunction. But they're also believed to give the body more energy and they can also prevent premature ejaculation. These are the claims. They are also sometimes used in a tea to treat asthma, but here's the thing. According to the director of the School of Chinese Medicine at the University of Hong

Kong in 2019, there is not any scientific evidence that consuming dried crushed seahorses will do any of these things, and there have been literally no clinical trials carried out on humans that examine these results. Yeah, thank you. In addition, Sarah Foster, who is the program manager of Protect Seahorse at the University of British Columbia in Canada, said about 37 million seahorses are caught wild every year because people think that they should dry them and eat them, and seahorses have dropped by 30% and 50% in the past 15 years.

In response to this, Thailand and the Philippines and Indonesia have banned the export of seahorses, but there's a lot of smuggling that still occurs. But you know, Sarah Foster would really like you to stop eating the crushed seahorses. I'm with Sarah Foster. When I was a kid in Indonesia, we'd go out to the Thousand Islands, and when the tide would go out and there'd be little tide pools, you could walk out pretty far between the islands and you would often see a little seahorse in a tide pool, hanging out on some seaweed. That sounds magical.

It was magical, and I was a child, and that was a magical memory for me. Stop eating seahorses. They don't help your penis. They don't. Let them live and thrive, and then maybe there can be less pics on the internet, too. Oh my gosh. Dwight is going to join Pam and Michael in the other glee-viewing party room. And he's really annoyed that other people aren't coming over, but what really starts

to annoy him is Pam's crying baby. Yeah. Did you see, though, I was doing the bounce move? I did. I didn't even have a kid yet, and I felt like I was doing a killer bounce move. We got a lot of fan mail from people who noticed that the baby in this episode looked very different from last week's baby from the christening. That is because it is a different baby.

This baby's name was Violet. I noticed it right away. Yes. The babies who had been playing CC were Bailey and Sienna, and they were there, but they would not fuss. Aw. Yeah. You know, Bailey and Sienna were just really chill babies.

I think they had also gotten very used to you being on our set, and Violet was new to all of it maybe, and it just was more unsettling. Yes. That's right. Well, Dwight is going to pick up baby CC and instantly comforts her. She completely stops fussing. Lady, that really happened. I was going to say, you can't cheat that.

There is no movie magic from the moment Rain picks her up. We don't cut away, and the baby stops fussing. I was like, what happened? I wanted to know. It was just real. Well, it was scripted that Dwight would have this magic touch with babies, and we kept saying, how are we going to do that? We got like, what if it doesn't work?

What if the baby keeps fussing? So we had this whole plan where we're going to have Violet who is fussing, and then Dwight will take her, and then we'll cut away to a different baby somehow in editing. The first take, Rain walks over to me. He picks up Violet, she immediately stops fussing in his arms. Oh my gosh. And it happened every single take. She loved him.

She loved him. He was a natural. She completely calmed down in his arms every time. And we were just like, this is amazing. That is so wild. Rain had a special touch with the baby. Well, the fact that Dwight is the baby whisperer is the best news Pam has had in a long time. Oh yeah.

She won't let him put baby CC down. Yeah. She's like, CC can sleep. I'm going to get my life back. Yeah. And Dwight is like, you know what? I don't need to hold the baby all night. Here's what you need to do.

You just need to go to Gabe's fridge, get any suet or congealed animal fat, tie a piece of string to it, and then tie the other end to CC's toe and pop the suet in her mouth and she'll be happy for hours. Instantly he's like weirdo Dwight. He went from being like amazing baby whisperer to what, tie it on the toe. What are you talking about? I had to know what is suet. What is suet?

It is the raw hard fat of beef, lamb, or mutton found in the loins or the kidneys. Yum. But here's why I thought I had heard of it before. Great British baking show. Do they use suet? They use suet. Oh. Because it is an ingredient in many British recipes like their Christmas puddings and

pastry. This week is Patisserie Week. We'll be going home with Nigel. Nigel lives with his mom in Devonshire. I love this. They'll be making orange marmalade biscuits. That's right. I love great British bake off.

Well the common American substitute is shortening, like Crisco, but it's the sort of thing where like if you use suet in your pie crust, it's really good if you're making like a meat pie or it has a wet filling and then you want to use butter for a sweet pie. This is like when you come to my mom's house and you try her cornbread and you're like, Birdie, why is your cornbread so good? And she's like, first you get some bacon, put it in your skillet, you're going to cook that bacon. Yes.

Then take the bacon out but leave the grease in there. Then you put it in your mix. That's right. That's similar. Now I want my mom's cornbread. Well, maybe we should take a break because when we come back, Darryl is going to get a little tour of the man cave and Andy's going to do something really dumb. Oh, Andy.

Sarah Foster would not be pleased. No. We are back and like we said before the break, Andy's going to make an unfortunate decision. He pours the dried seahorse into his red wine and chugs it, like all of it. Yeah. This is going to turn out bad for Andy. But meanwhile in the living room, during a commercial break for Glee, Jim decided to change the channel to get kind of a sports update.

What's happening? But guess what happens when he turns the channel back? Erin wasn't recording. So it jumped ahead. And Kelly's very upset because they missed a huge performance. Lady, do you remember when Steve and Nancy invited us all over to watch the Oscars at their house? I can't, and Nancy, like this happened.

I remember now that you're saying it, I remember it. It was literally the last award of the night. It was like the best movie of the year and all of a sudden it jumped ahead and we missed the final moments and we were like, what, what just happened? And then Nancy was like, oh no. Yeah. And we had to look it up. Yeah.

We missed the final speech. It was so funny. We all started crafting up. Yes. I remember that. I really enjoyed the scene with Andy and Phyllis. So much. She smells like white diamonds.

Wow, you really know your perfume. And then he says his nanny used to wear that. Yeah. He's acting weird. This is just the beginning of Andy's strange behavior and a little bit he's going to walk up to Erin faking a phone call to UPS. Yeah. He's waiting on the five minutes with Erin he ordered.

But then he starts to get sick. I need to point out something in this scene. It is how brilliant Ed Helms is. Look, I know that there's a lot of serious awards out there for dramatic performances and comedic performances, but I would like to introduce a new category to the Emmys called best about to puke scene because it's really hard to do and he sells it so well. And it made me laugh every time. I think we need to hear it.

Oh, you having a good time? Did you wear my favorite outfit on purpose? You look awful. You're four seasons in a day. You got the autumn thing going on. But if you put on baby, but if you put on a blue, it's freaking hot. I mean, it makes me start to like gag when I hear him doing it. It's so visceral.

So good. It's so hard to do and really sell it and he did such a great job. He did. I would like that to be a category please the next award show. While that's going on, Gabe and Michael are attempting to make pizza dogs and Erin enters and it's so clear that she just really wants Michael to like Gabe. Yeah. She needs Michael's approval on this guy and it is not going to happen.

No. In fact, it doesn't go well and Michael ends up storming out of the whole apartment. I know. Jim and Angela are now going to find Dwight and Pam in the bedroom. Cece is still loving Dwight and guess who is completely turned on by that? Yeah. Well, Angela whispers in his ear outside in her car two minutes. It's on.

It's on. Someone wants a baby. But Pam is like, you cannot leave. You cannot go. It's so awkward too because Jim and Pam are like stuck there is Dwight and Angela have this weird conversation about their punch card, sex card, so awkward. Well it gets more awkward because of all the things that Dwight makes Jim do in order for him to stay.

Dwight makes Jim feed him a piece of pizza. Crust first. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Do you eat your pizza crust first? How do you eat your pizza? I hold the crust as it was meant to be done. That's the handle, right?

It's the handle. It's your bread handle that you then get to eat at the end and maybe if you have some ranch dressing, you dip it in there. Well according to an article on marthastewart.com, oh Martha, what you got? Here's how people eat their pizza. Okay. So 28% of people eat their pizza tip to crust. Only 28% eat it, how we're saying, but your pizza handle.

It's not very much. Also, it's a term I never knew that I needed to know, but now I know it, tip to crust. 18% eat it crust first. Come on. Then how's everyone else eating it? 17% fold it in half. That's a calzone people. 14% sandwich two slices together and eat it like a pizza sandwich, 14%.

I respect that. 8% eat it with a knife and fork. No. So dignified. I don't know. But watching Jim feed Dwight this pizza and Reigns chewing, it was a lot. It was a lot. And then also he made him like gently pour beer into his mouth.

It was all, it was very, this sound. It was so gross. I'm sorry. I apologize for making the sound. It was gross. But someone needs to go out and talk to Angela. And Dwight says to Pam, she is in heat and she will eat your face off. Well, Pam's going to go.

She has no choice. She has to keep Dwight there. Pam goes. And Angela, I remember shooting this with you. Jenna, I was going to say the same thing. I remember every beat of this, everything. Well, it was one of those scenes with just the two of us. It wasn't a scene with us and then people in the background.

It was just us. It was late at night. We were the last scene of the day. Yeah. I remember it so clearly. Same. But what were you wearing? Because it looks like you're wearing nothing.

Well, no. I had on like a, like a spandex strapless nude like thing. What do you call it? Like a Bando. Is it a Bando? No, I don't know. I don't know. A bustier?

No, a bustier kind of pushes everything up and out. Yeah. This was just like a nude like undergarment. Right. I mean, and jeans. I had on like jeans because you couldn't see. I was shocked when I watched the scene that Angela had undressed already. She was ready.

Yeah. Her man is quieting a baby. Yeah. She skits Angela's clothes off clearly. Yeah. Do you know what I noticed that I didn't think about when we were filming it and then I watched it and it cracked me up. In true Angela fashion, she asked Pam her advice and then doesn't like what Pam says

and then is mad. Right? Yeah. And then she hits the button and the window slowly goes up, which led me to think she's been sitting in a running car. Oh yeah. She's in the back seat of a running car. Oh, that's such a good observation.

I didn't notice that. I didn't clock it. Well also outside is Michael, who was messing with the cable box. Yeah. He like unplugged everything. The TV goes off. People are really upset. I would like to point out a continuity moment at 17 minutes, 57 seconds.

Kevin yells, you can hear him in the background. He's like, what's going on? But he was in a bedroom eating pigs in a blanket in a blanket. Oh, you're right. Uh-huh. Yeah, he's in two places at one. His magic, Kevin. He wasn't yelling from the bedroom.

Was he? The cable went out. Could he still be in the blanket? Eating pigs in a blanket? They didn't have a TV on in there. Oh, they did have a TV on in there. Yeah. Okay.

Well then my theory doesn't work. Forget it. He's not magic, Kevin. He's just loud, Kevin. Yeah, I guess so. Michael pretends like he doesn't know what's going on. You know what I love? Creed gets off the phone and tells everyone like what happened.

I know. Michael says he has an idea of how to fix it. He doesn't know if it'll work, but he'll try. So he's a saboteur and then he's going to be the hero. I guess that was his whole plan. And then Michael and Aaron have the scene outside that is so sweet and heartbreaking and funny and tender and odd because, you know, they kind of have this odd dynamic. When Michael realizes he's hurt Aaron's feelings by saying, you know, I'm not your dad.

Then he leans into it and he's like, go to your room and she's like, I won't go to my room. She like so quickly gets on board and it's really sweet. We had a fan question from Bennett C in Jersey City, New Jersey who said, Aaron confronting Michael as he's fixing the cable box is one of the most powerful moments of the entire series. Oh, when she says she cares if Michael likes Gabe and he responds, why I'm not your father. Ellie does not have a follow up line, but in the next few seconds you can see Aaron's

entire life story move across her face and eyes. It's an amazing scene. And then Wyatt D from Kentucky said this scene with Michael and Aaron in particular is incredibly tender and genuine and really exemplifies the role Michael plays in Aaron's life. This really touched people and me too. This was the thing about our show where, you know, we cast these people who we're always just going to for the comedy moment. And so when they dig deep and give this dramatic performance that's based in this real kind

of heartbreak, you know, Brian Baumgartner does it as Kevin and then Ellie does it as Aaron, it just, wow, it just, it takes you by surprise. And it grounds the show. It's one of my favorite things about our show. We say it all the time, but it is. So many characters over the course of the nine seasons have a moment like this and it's always so powerful. And of course, Ellie and Steve just crushed it.

But you know, as much as Aaron needs Michael to be her father, Michael just wants a daughter. So it's very sweet. Yeah. Well, and when Michael's saying goodbye to Gabe at the door, he says, I'll kill you if you hurt Aaron. And it's a figure of speech, but he will literally kill him and his entire family. And then he says, that girl's going to turn my hair gray. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's really sweet. You know what we haven't mentioned? What's that? Is the fact that Andy puked on a maid bed in Gabe's house and covered it with a pillow. Gabe is going to find that. That's so gross. And then Andy's going to end up throwing up at a toilet as Gabe rubs his back. And Gabe's like, you know what we need right now?

Yeah, we need a little soundscape. Mm-hmm. Yeah, he's going to get out his keyboard. He's going to start playing Earthrise on the moon. This was an original piece of music. Our editor, Claire Scanlon, had a friend named Roddy Bottom, who composed this song just for us and we licensed it for $500. Well, I really think we need to hear that as we end this episode, but before we do,

that was viewing party. There it was. A big thank you to Randy Cordray and James Carey for helping us get lots of fun tidbits for this one. And to you guys for listening and sending in your questions and comments. And now you guys, here is Gabe's Earthrise on the moon. Have a great week. Bye.

Thank you for listening to Office Ladies. Office Ladies is produced by Earwolf, Jenna Fisher, and Angela Kinsey. Our show is executive produced by Cody Fisher. Our producer is Cassie Jerkins, our sound engineer is Sam Kiefer, and our associate producer is Ainsley Bubicoe. Our theme song is Rubber Tree by Creed Bratton. For ad-free versions of Office Ladies, go to StitcherPremium.com. For a free one month trial at Stitcher Premium, use code, OFFICE.