Online ‘Office’ enriches viewer experience

Here’s an interesting article in Variety about the producer’s cut of ‘The Return’:

“When I’m locking the (broadcast) cut,” [Greg] Daniels said, “I call up (the network), and I say, ‘Can you give me any extra time?’ And sometimes they can; sometimes they’ve got an extra 15 seconds or an extra 30 seconds.”

For the Jan. 18 episode, entitled “The Return,” no such luck.

“The tag (would have) answered the question of where (Andy) went, but you can still enjoy the show without the tag, and I didn’t know how to take another 36 seconds out of the show.”

Every second counts …

Link: Online ‘Office’ enriches viewer experience

Tipster: Vish

15 comments

  1. you know what would be wonderful? i wonder if there’s a way we can communicate to greg (or nbc) that it’d be a great idea to make every episode on the dvd a producer’s cut.

    i think the deleted scenes hold up a lot better inserted back into the episode.

  2. except i dont get why we have deleted scenes for the return–they must have left so much out to get it to about 20 minutes…deleted scenes even when we have a producers cut?!? nbc is ripping us off!

  3. They definitely need to add in some of the deleted scenes into the cuts on the DVD, there have been so many cut storylines this year. Maybe they could have the option on the DVD of watching the original or the extended versions?

  4. Yes, they REALLY need to put the full cuts on the DVDs. There’s no time constraints on DVD. Larry Wilmore said he made a producer’s cut of a Season 1 episode that was 40 minutes long. Why didn’t they put all 40 minutes on the DVD? What could possibly be stopping them?

  5. I appreciate the care Greg D puts into this stuff and I hope that his longer cuts will be on the season 3 DVD set, and will be the “canon” versions of episodes.

    And in case any network dudes are reading this, I’m sure people would watch this show for 40 minutes every week if possible.

  6. Yes, they will be:

    “Eventually, the producer’s cuts will be the versions sold on iTunes and time-capsuled for DVD posterity, meaning that the original version of the episode seen on broadcast won’t go down in history as the de facto official version.”

    Righteous.

  7. Hour Office! Hour Office! Hour Office every week!

    Okay, that was a really lame impersonation of Kelly…

  8. I love the Producer’s Cuts that we’ve had so far, but there’s only one qualm I had about it all.

    They cut out the line during Branch Closing where Jim mentioned Michael selling the branch for some magic beans. I’m afraid that comic moment may be lost forever.

    Aside from that their great.

    (BTW, that was a great Kelly impression)

  9. I wish I could express my opinion on the producer’s cuts but since I live in Canada, I havent been able to see them. So in that respect I think that the DVD, when it does release, should have both versions of the extended episodes. As much as I love hearing that there will be a producer’s cut online the next morning, it pains me to hear that because it seems like even more of a tease. (After all I am that person who will suck up anything Office-related). I think I’d pass the line of being mildly upset and begome flat-out angry if NBC doesn’t include the extended cuts on the DVD.

  10. There’s another interview with Greg on TVGuide.com

    One interesting excerpt:

    TVGuide.com: What do the fans say about the relationship between Pam (Jenna Fischer) and Jim (John Krasinski)?

    Daniels: I think right now all they want is for Pam and Jim to cuddle in every episode. But if they got that, they would be disappointed. They would be like, “Well, that’s the end of that.”

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