The Office has endless amazing gags that fans recall to this day. In some episodes, such as the brilliant "Dinner Party" or the episode that changed The Office forever, the entire story is what fans remember. Other times it's a sort of collage that fans make in their heads of all the best moments of Pam and Jim's relationship or all the times Michael Scott uttered, "That's what she said." However, in the case of Season 5's "Stress Relief", most fans seem to recall the first couple of minutes.
Of course, The Office has had many great cold-opens, such as the lip-dub. But the opening of "Stress Relief" is one of the most full-on, chaotic, and utterly hilarious moments in The Office's illustrious history...
Dwight's "fire drill".
The truth is... making this opening memorable was VITAL for the creators of The Office... Here's why...
It Aired Right After The Super Bowl
Nearly 100 million Americans watched Pittsburgh V.S. Arizona in Super Bowl XLIII, back in February 2009. So it's was an absolutely massive opportunity to air an episode of The Office directly after the show...
According to an amazing oral history of the making of the episode by Vulture, the producers were given a chance to air an episode right after the Super Bowl. Ben Silverman was running the network (NBC) at the time and pushed for The Office, which was already averaging 9 million viewers a night into its fifth season, to be given the chance to pick up even more viewers after the live sporting event.
"This was a chance to introduce it to a new mass audience," Ben Silverman told Vulture.
"We wanted people who didn’t know about The Office and who were watching the Super Bowl to enjoy it," writer Jen Celotta said. "That caused us to think a little differently than we normally would about the show. We ended up throwing out a bunch of story ideas and we never did that before or since."
NBC tasked the writers of The Office to come up with a stand-alone episode that new fans could enjoy as well as old fans. The main thing was people tuning in for the first time have to be engaged. This meant a "grabby opening" according to writer Halsted Sullivan.
However, creator Greg Daniels had it in his head that he wanted an episode about Jim losing to Pam in a poker game. Therefore, his entire writer's room was tasked with 'breaking' the story for that episode knowing full-well it wasn't going to be what NBC wanted.
Giving Up Poker For Fire
Eventually, Greg Daniels changed his mind and realized that the opening needed to be absolutely massive... At least, in terms of the confines of Dunder Mifflin. This is when the idea of Dwight staging a fake fire drill came about. This cold open was utterly hilarious, easily grabbing viewers' attention, but it also served as the catalyst for the main story, which was Stanley having a heart attack.
But before things got slightly serious (for a moment), there was absolute mayhem in The office.
"The fire drill was insanity," Ben Silverman said. "Greg and I talked about it and were like, 'Okay, let’s make this one hundred percent like a movie, like a stunt.' When it happens, how do people not change the channel?"
Of course, it involved all of the characters at their best (AKA their worst), trampling over each other to get to safety... even though Dwight had secretly staged the whole thing to teach them a lesson about the importance of learning fire safety.
"That scene was a big deal," Kate Flannery, AKA Meredith, said. "It was so fun, but I also knew that it was expensive, so it’s like, 'Don’t f*** this up.' It was definitely like a little nerve-wracking because you just didn’t want to be the one that messed it up for everybody else."
Writer Anthony Farrell added, "We knew it would start with Dwight setting off the fire alarm and Greg was in a place where he was like, 'We need it to be bigger and crazier.' So we just started adding all sorts of crazy s*** happening with the mayhem and the melee, like them using the photocopier as a battering ram and cats falling out of the ceiling. A lot of it wound up getting shot."
Of course, all of it was extremely expensive, by Office standards. Even the fake cat that was thrown into the ceiling and then came crashing down cost the production about $12,000. After all, they needed to match the real-life cat (Bandit) as closely as possible for the gag to work. However, that ended up being scratched by director Jeff Blitz who managed to hire some cat trainers to do the stunt safely with real cats.
Regardless, it was hilarious!