The Office gets one more hour-long episode, right after the Superbowl
By fred | August 10, 2008
Well, I guess this is kind of a good news. The original plan for NBC was to have, in the beloved post-Superbowl slot, a combo of The Office, and the series premiere of that Office “spinoff” for which they had no idea whatsoever besides putting it there, in the post-Superbowl slot, and link it to The Office so that it should sell. *sigh* I hate NBC.
Anyways, after the whole mess surrounding this infamous spinoff “project” (which still hasn’t entirely dropped, even though the new Amy Poehler sitcom project is a different thing completely), things have changed and there will be only one show in the hour after the Superbowl, meaning the hit-sitcom The Office will have a special hour-long episode on February 1st !
Now, I’m not sure this is really the best thing ever, because last season the hour-long episodes were quite frankly not a success, with a second half-hour usually not as good as the first one was, or the show usually is.
Executive producer Paul Lieberstein (Toby) seems to like the idea, as he explained : “It lets us get deeper into some of the other characters that only have very small stories generally. So I always enjoy ‘em. I think people like to see what’s going on with some of the characters who only get grunts or reactions when Michael says something stupid.”
Yeah, except if last season showed anything, it’s that instead of more character development and diving into some characters’ background, we saw Michael driving his car into a lake and kidnapping a pizza delivery boy. Just saying.
Of course, Lieberstein is the one who wrote Money last season, the last hour-long episode and, in my opinion, probably the best one of those extended episodes. So if he’s taking the pen for this one, I’m sure it’ll actually be good.
The Office returns September 25th, at 9.00 on NBC with yet another hour-long episode. (Click here for the 2008 Complete Fall Schedule with Premiere Dates)
Posted in News
Shows: The Office
