Jon must have had a long day cause he misspelled through

And Bluebleeder observed the 5-minute rule!

1 - Fixed - thanks.

This means I will definitely have to catch up on the show this summer, I hope that it opens huge in season 2 when all the people who felt they were too late to jump in mid-season are on board. NBC, and all of the critics who love the show, should really pimp the DVDs and/or I-Tunes as a way to catch up.

Is this an open chat thread?

Friday Night Lights was on my wanna-watch list last fall. But I have soccer Tuesday nights and for the first nine weeks or so, I was DVR-ing every episode. But, never got around to watching it due to keeping up with the existing shows that I watch.

Wish I had watched it instead of trying to follow 24 this season. Like Benaiah, I will have to play catch up this summer... or hopefully Season 1 will be on DVD before start of Season 2.

6 - It usually is. They try to allow people to catch up. I will netflix it, or worst case scenario, download it.

7 Yeah, I just added it to my Netflix Save List.

By the way, The Office going to a full scheduled hour doesn't really make sense to me. I can't see why they would break from their success of expanding at will, in order to lock themselves into the obligation (and the costs) of producing a full hour each week. And the idea of 37 half-hours almost seems more outrageous. Half the cast has blossoming film careers - the idea that they would lock themselves up even more seems strange. It's going to be all they can do to keep Carell on the show at all (though my pet theory is that Jan could get demoted and replace Michael if Carell really decided to bolt).

So I don't have any inside information on this, but it just seems weird. I would think they'd stick with their current approach.

9 - I think the Hour long episodes are more feasible, since the case is so big that they could just expand the smaller character's story lines and they already seem to throw away a lot of laughs every week with the deleted scenes. 37 episodes is a lot though. I have heard that everyone is best friends and they all love each other to death, but Krasinki, Fischer and Carell all have blossoming film careers (especially the guys) it seems impossible that they would do that many episodes past the end of their contracts (how long is everyone under contract?).

9 I too am a little wary about this. Logistical issues aside, this could easily become a quality issue, if not in Season 4, in Seasons 5 and beyond. I love my half hour of The Office... I would rather they leave it be.

10 - case = cast

Alert

The Office, previously scheduled to air tonight at 8:40 p.m., will start at 8:42 p.m. We ask you for strength as you make this adjustment.

Unless I've just been watching the wrong ones, the cast of The Office have blossoming careers in bad movies. Jim was in about thirty seconds of Dream Girls (which I finally got around to watching; I'm glad I didn't see it in the theater--I would have regretted not having the fast-forward button), and the lamentable The Holiday. Pam has been in movies I've known better than to even try, plus Employee of the Month, which was bad. Dwight was in the one where Uma Thurman was a manic depressive Super hero, which everybody knew better than to try. And Sahara.

Oscar also is on the show Halfway Home and I think the show has done well, it may get another season.

14
Jim does a voice for Shrek the Third, in this film called Smiley Face (which is getting good indie press), later this summer he is in a movie with Robin Williams and Mandy Moore, and he plays a main character in George Clooney's new film that he is filming right now.

He is pretty much as good as gone in a little while.

13 Will it end a couple of minutes late too? My DVR always messes this up.

12 comments at Screen Jam since 4:30 p.m.

1 comment at Dodger Thoughts since 4:30 p.m.

Screen Jam is happening! Screen Jam is where it's at!

14 - They're just getting started. I interviewed Jenna today - she has three movies coming up, including the lead in Walk Hard.

What would be interesting is if they showed the cast of the Office watching a live Dodger game. The Toaster unverse will spin out of control.

Doing a Robin Williams movie is not a good way to turn around an ugly trend. And with a Mandy Moore kicker? What, Pauly Shore was unavailable?

21
lol the poster speaks for itself

http://tinyurl.com/278bn9

Mmm. Jenna Fischer and John C. Reilly. I could get behind that. And the director is the guy who did Orange County, which I liked.

22- Do you think they were contractually obligated to organize the billing the way they did, so that the wrong name was under the wrong actor? Looking at the poster makes me feel like Monk.

Screen Jam is where it's happening because the majority of baseball games today were matinee affairs.

In any case, the quality of the movies doesn't relate to the original point - the point is they're doing movies, and they probably don't plan to stop.

24
This movie plays by no rules!!!

I love The Office, and I HATE (yes, I feel that strongly) the idea of the show going to a one-hour format. Like Jon said, comedies are not the same as dramedies, and there is a reason why comedies have always been half-hour affairs. A TV comedy needs to be "tight," narratively, or it starts seeming over-padded, gratuitously drawn out. Dramas and even dramedies can get away with taking a more anfractuous path in telling a story. Easily the worst episode of this season was the one hour Christmas episode, for just the reason I state.

I don't have a real understanding of how acting gigs are apportioned. Are movie acting careers really predictable enough to say that these particular actors will certainly (or even very likely) continue working as much or more than they are already? Even if the movies they're in don't do well at the box office?

Everything I know about the business of show business I learned watching Entourage. Vinnie doesn't seem to work that much, but I guess I don't have a good sense of the period over which the series has taken place, so I could be wrong about that too.

29
Well, I think ego plays the biggest part in actors leaving a successful TV show for a film career. Most actors would prefer to be labeled a movie star than a TV star.

28 -- If I can point out an exception to the rule about TV comedies being over-padded at an hour length, the one-hour final episode of the first season of the Canadian series The Newsroom is the ONLY comedy episode I have ever seen that I didn't think suffered by being double-length, but The Office, as great as it is, is not going to suddenly achieve The Newsroom's level of brilliance.

The original Office pulled off the hour long finale as well.

28 - The christmas episode was extremely funny. An hour isn't too long for anything.

We've disagreed about the success of hour Office episodes in the past - I think they've been great - but I think it's a very big risk to ask for it week to week.

28
I have heard a lot of good things about the Newsroom. I should try to get a hold of it.

28 - Yet, the single best episode of any show I have seen maybe ever was the hour long season finale to Season 2 of The Office. Plus, the Christmas Special was very good, not as good as the first one, which was nearly perfect, but it was funny from start to finish.

I would cancel a date to watch "The Office" tonight.

37 - I should note, I say that having just saw tonight's episode.

35 -- All three seasons of The Newsroom, plus the movie special Escape From The Newsroom, are available on DVD from Amazon.com. I've tried to get Jon to get at least Season 1, and I think he said he would check it out this summer once the current TV season is over. Trainwreck, I know you like Trailer Park Boys (which I also recommend to people here, and it too is available from Amazon), and I can say that The Newsroom is even better. I also recommend, from Amazon, the complete series DVD (13 episodes) for Twitch City, a Canadian comedy about an agoraphobic man named Curtis who relates to the world pretty much entirely through watching television, yet seems to have pretty exciting -- and some downright bizarre -- things going on in his life. (Favorite Twitch City episode: "Planet of The Cats," which features a world ruled by cats in which humans are slaves and Curtis, wearing a flea collar and name tag, is the "pet" of the leader of the cats, Lucky. The story is a metaphor for Curtis' house-bound, sedentary life of sleeping, eating and trivial amusements, which really is a lot like the life led by a house cat.)

38 - Obviously the episode was so good that it robbed me of the ability to speak properly. "seen" not "saw." I disgust myself, though I spent my formative years in Alabama so at least I have an excuse.

39 - You're trying to get me to get Season 2. I already adored Season 1 when PBS aired it.

The Office as it currently airs is only about 20 minutes of actual content. There have been many times this season when I feel the episode ends prematurely and have increasingly enjoyed the longer 40 minute cuts. Also, comedies like Curb Your Enthusiasm and even the BBC Office run about 30-35 minutes of content and don't seem to suffer at all. With commercials, NBC will probably be running only about 40-42 minutes, and as stated in a previous post, the deleted scenes should more than make up the difference.

Curb almost never ran over 30 minutes, if ever, for what it's worth.

I wrote for Variety this year about all the extra content the Office has. I just don't know that it's the smart bet to commit to it - because, after all, if they do, they're still going to need a surplus for editing purposes. Each week. It's a huge deal.

41 -- Oh, I must have misunderstood: I thought you were just casually aware of The Newsroom on PBS until you watched the first season's finale, about the political campaign, which I remember you saying you really liked. Well, okay, just order season two and see how you like that one. I don't know if you are big on collecting DVD's (some people just aren't), but I can't imagine not having the whole series in my DVD collection. By hook or by crook, I'll get you to that point, but baby steps first.:)

I believe "Curb" has had two one-hour episode, both of which ended the last two seasons, one of them being Anne Bancroft's last acting role as well.

Ugh, you guys don't even start "The Office" for another hour right?

Screen Jam, like The Griddle, exists primarily in the Pacific Time Zone, aka God's Favorite Time Zone.

39
I will try to check that show out too.

39
I will try to check that show out too.

39
I will try to check that show out too.

I tried to enter my post and then the server went down and that it somehow triple posted.

It's always the server's fault, eh?

Another season of Last Comic Standing? Not one single winner on that show ever got a sitcom deal.

New post up top.