Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and welcome to your second drink of stress relief part one. This episode has the famous fire drill cold open. We got so many wonderful tidbits from our crew on how that all went down. And you know what? I'm really proud of how we broke down this episode.
Lady, it's one of my favorite podcast moments that we did because we really dug into it.
Chapter 2: What iconic cold open from The Office is featured in this episode?
We got so much good stuff. We got a message from Arena S in Russia who wrote us about the fire drill scene. Arena said, this is one of my favorite episodes ever, naturally, because of the funniest ever cold open. When I watched it the first time, I couldn't stop laughing. I think I even teared up. That's how funny I found it. Now, here is the amazing thing.
Irina went on to say, I work as an English tutor, and whenever I feel like my students need cheering up or we need to lighten the mood, I ask them, have you seen The Office? And most of them say they haven't. And so I say, I'm going to show you a little clip. Just watch. And I turn on this cold open. and they just lose it. It's my favorite thing ever.
I see how they light up watching something with authentic language, and it's just hilarious. I keep count of how many people began watching the show after my lessons, and so far it's about five. So my point is, besides being one of the most iconic series ever, your show opens the window into the American culture and fantastic English language for many students who are learning it.
Thank you so much. Oh, that is so fun. It's very funny to me thinking that this cold open is like an introduction to American culture. Oh, no.
Actually, any any like clip of the office. Exactly. Well, this episode also has the super cringe CPR training session, which we've also heard is used as a teaching tool. Mike R. from Portland, Oregon, said it was my birthday and a small group of friends got together to celebrate at a local restaurant. Everyone had recently experienced some setback or bad luck, myself included.
One guest had just lost her job. Another guest found out her first round of IVF treatment didn't take. A couple of people shared that one of their kids was having some serious issues, and I was having my own medical issue at the time. As we sat sulking at my sad birthday, a man at another table, unrelated to our group, was showing signs of choking. Luckily for him, one of my friends is a doctor.
My friend sprang into action and performed the Heimlich maneuver. After what seemed like an eternity, a piece of steak was dislodged from the man's throat. My friend was exhausted mentally and physically after his heroic deed. The incident was scary and I felt helpless.
Realizing that no one else was trained to help that man, I organized a CPR day at my office where many office references were made. Our trainer commented that the office is referenced in nearly every workshop she facilitates. Score one for the guy who lived, and score one for the office for making the world a safer place.
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Chapter 3: How did the fire drill scene in The Office come to be?
Well, in our breakdown, Lady, we talked a lot about how people who have seen this episode have gone on to save lives because of the stayin' alive tip that the instructor gives. The song. Stayin' alive. Stayin' alive. Exactly. And speaking of the CPR instructor, we got a letter from Robin Lynch, who plays Rose. In our breakdown, we said, hey, Robin, we're trying to get a hold of you. Hit us up.
And she did. Here's what her letter said. Hi, I just listened to your podcast about stress relief. Thank you so much for your kind words. I'd love to answer any questions and talk about our day on set. It was such an amazing experience. And lady, I was digging around and there are like four minutes of extra footage from those CPR scenes in the super fan episodes. So it got us thinking.
Actually, Ange, it got you thinking.
Yeah, I said we should do an Office Lady 6.0 where we talk with Robin and we can unpack some of the extra scenes and just hear all about her time on set.
I said I love it. So that's what we're going to do. We've reached out to Robin and we can't wait to share more in an upcoming Office Lady 6.0.
And now, here's your second drink of Stress Relief Part 1.
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. Hi, everyone. Good morning, you guys. It's early here today for us.
It's early here, and we have a lot to cover. So much. We came in early. We have so much to say today, but I have to point out an observation before we get started.
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Chapter 4: What was the significance of the CPR training scene?
So then I was like, damn it. It's nine o'clock at night. A good hack. There you go. Hack. Go into your kid's room, get their notebook, rip out the pages. Your printer will print on it.
I feel like we might have helped some people today.
We might have.
All right. Well, let's talk about why we're here today. It is Stress Relief Part 1, Season 5, Episode 14, written by Paul Lieberstein and directed by Jeff Blitz.
Exactly. You might be thinking, ladies, it's stress relief. That isn't that big. Except it had the cold open to end all cold opens.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We'll be breaking that down. Oh, yeah, we will. It's going to take a while. This episode originally aired as an hour-long episode. We're going to have to break it down in two parts. So today we're covering the first half of stress relief. Would you like a summary?
I really would.
All right. It starts with that cold open you were talking about, Angela. Dwight takes matters into his own hands when his co-workers fail to pay attention to his fire safety seminar.
He used PowerPoint. Big mistake.
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Chapter 5: How did the use of music impact the CPR training?
Well, I have a shot. Can you guess what our second most watched episode was?
Hmm.
Oh, no. Of the whole series? Of the whole series. This was number one. What do you think number two was?
The finale?
The pilot. What? The pilot. Really? It had 11.2 million viewers.
The pilot that I wore my own clothes in?
Yeah.
From Target. Wow.
11.2 million people saw your outfit.
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Chapter 6: What challenges did the cast face while filming the CPR scene?
Oh, yeah? What'd he have to say? He said this. Oh, yeah. This was a big deal. Yeah. Quote, we threw our biggest guns at it, which is why Paul Lieberstein wrote it. That makes sense.
It's a fantastic script. I texted Paul yesterday, just a few couplets of dialogue. I was like, this is perfection. I'll tell you what I texted him later.
Well, Paul had been with us since the very beginning. He is one of our best. It made total sense that he should write this episode. Right. I got curious.
Okay.
And I started doing a little digging. Angela, the script for this episode was 95 pages long.
I know. I looked through it and I was like, what is this phone book I'm reading? Oh, my God. It's stress relief. The Candy Bag. Okay. The Candy Bag. Our alts. All of our alt dialogue.
Yeah. All the extra jokes that they didn't put in the script, but that they want us to maybe shoot.
Oh, my God. How long was it?
Lady, it was 207 pages long.
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Chapter 7: What fan questions were raised about the CPR class?
We do. It's going to be good.
All right, you guys, let's get right to it. First of all, you should know we reached out to a ton of people to share with us how they made this cold open happen. It was fascinating actually finding out.
We knew our part, right? But we're like, well, how did camera do it? How did they, like so many things.
So many things to capture. So Randy Cordray, you guys know we love Randy. He told us they had several ideas. planning sessions, right? With all the department heads. We had our director, Jeff Blitz, cinematographer, Randall Einhorn. They had to walk through this whole dance that we did with the camera stunts, animal trainers, script supervisor, Veda, like tracking the continuity.
And then our rock star, first AD, Kelly Cantlie, she then broke it down into smaller moments.
Dean Holland, our editor who edited this sequence, he told me he was also brought in on those planning sessions. He said he got so much footage, but that it was actually really, really well organized and pretty easy to edit because they planned so well.
Oh, way to go, guys. Randy told us that we spent an entire day shooting this, one whole day. To be exact, it was Thursday, December 11th. Oh, yeah. And we had tons of safety meetings, all the safety stuff. I remember we did not shoot this in order.
Right. We shot it out of order, and some of that was for safety reasons. Yeah. Let's describe it, and then we'll go back, and we will break it down piece by piece.
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Chapter 8: What can we learn about CPR from this episode?
All right. Here's your overview, everybody.
Here's your overview of the cold open. The first shot is Dwight opening his desk, and he sort of motions to the camera all sneaky, and he's got lighter fluid and what looks like to be a blowtorch. Yeah, so you know something's up. Something Dwight-ish. He goes in the hallway, and he's kind of hiding out, and he's whispering to camera, and he starts, like, jamming the doors. He puts a key in.
He hammers it shut. He puts his little wood wedges under and, yeah, blow torches the door handle and starts his speech.
Yeah. He says that nobody paid attention to his fire safety seminar. He blames himself for using PowerPoint. Right. And that experience is the best teacher. So he will teach his co-workers proper fire emergency procedure the hard way.
And you guys, today cigarettes are going to save lives. Yeah. As he smokes a cigarette and then tosses it into a trash can and immediately a fire starts.
But no one notices at first.
No one notices. There's just smoke piling in under the door. And everybody's just quietly working. And it's really frustrating Dwight. So he's like, do you guys smell something? And Angela's so snarky. He's like, did you bring your jerky in today? I know. And then Pam notices it. But Jenna, Pam notices it the way I react in moments like this. You notice she didn't say fire.
She was like. There's a. Oh, my. It's a. She freezes. Yeah. Michael starts yelling for everyone to stay effing calm. Dwight is kind of shouting proper safety procedures, but people are panicking. It's suddenly total chaos.
This is what it sounded like.
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