EP. 193 — Work Bus

Jenna [00:00:04] I’m Jenna Fischer. 

Angela [00:00:05] And I’m Angela Kinsey. 

Jenna [00:00:06] We were on The Office together. 

Angela [00:00:08] And we’re best friends. 

Jenna [00:00:08] And now we’re doing the ultimate Office rewatch podcast just for you. 

Angela [00:00:12] 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. 

Jenna [00:00:19] We’re the Office Ladies. Hello!

Angela [00:00:25] Hey there. 

Jenna [00:00:26] We have an exciting episode today. 

Angela [00:00:28] Better climb on the bus and get started! 

Jenna [00:00:31] It’s Work Bus. Season nine, episode four. Written by Brent Forrester and directed by…  Bryan Cranston!

Angela [00:00:39] Yeah! 

Jenna [00:00:39] The Bryan Cranston. 

Angela [00:00:41] I mean, we were all so excited. 

Jenna [00:00:43] We have a lot to share about that. 

Angela [00:00:45] We sure do. 

Jenna [00:00:46] It’s going to spill into next week. 

Angela [00:00:48] Oh, yeah. Two Work Bus… pleasures. What? I don’t know. That sounded- Whatever. It’s, it’s a two weeks of Work Bus goodness. 

Jenna [00:00:57] Because there’s a lot to say. 

Angela [00:00:58] Yes. 

Jenna [00:00:59] Let’s start with a summary. It’s a good place to start. Here it is. 

Angela [00:01:02] It always is. It always is. 

Jenna [00:01:04] Jim tricks Dwight into believing the building is unsafe in order to give Pam a break. You know, Jim’s feeling guilty. Pam’s being so cool. 

Angela [00:01:14] Oh I have a whole thing. I have a whole theory. 

Jenna [00:01:16] You have a whole thing?

Angela [00:01:16] Uh huh. I’ll save it. Go on with your fast fact. 

Jenna [00:01:18] I was not going to rant about it this week. I was going to give everyone a break. 

Angela [00:01:22] Well, I did a little digging into- anyway, I’m saving it. Go. 

Jenna [00:01:26] All right. 

Angela [00:01:27] Mhm. 

Jenna [00:01:28] Well, Jim’s plan is thwarted when Dwight rents a bus for everyone to work from. Then Jim gets the bus moving with a promise of pie in an attempt to give Pam the best day ever. Nellie is going to seek a recommendation from Andy for an adoption application. If you had any feelings of goodwill toward Andy, they will be completely squashed today. I believe. This episode makes him fairly unredeemable. And finally, Dwight has a heart to heart with Jim. 

Angela [00:02:03] This is very off topic, but when you said thwarted, it sounded so funny. 

Jenna [00:02:10] Why? 

Angela [00:02:10] I don’t know. I just I wasn’t expecting you to say thwarted. It’s not a word I throw out very often. And when you said it, I don’t know. It got me tickled. 

Jenna [00:02:19] It’s one of my favorite words. 

Angela [00:02:20] Say it. 

Jenna [00:02:21] Thwarted. I don’t know, I think I use it a lot. Do a lot of my plans get thwarted? 

Angela [00:02:27] What? We have been best friends for a long time. I would never say, you know what one of Jenna’s favorite words is? Thwarted. 

Jenna [00:02:33] I feel like I use it all the time in parenting because parenting is just like best laid plans. But then everything gets thwarted and you have to- 

Angela [00:02:40] Maybe you say thwarted a lot to Lee. I’m going to ask them, you know what you say a lot to me? 

Jenna [00:02:44] What? 

Angela [00:02:44] In particular. 

Jenna [00:02:46] I say in particular? 

Angela [00:02:47] Mhm. In particular. 

Jenna [00:02:49] Really? 

Angela [00:02:50] Yeah. Not thwarted. 

Jenna [00:02:52] Hmm. 

Angela [00:02:52] Hmm. 

Jenna [00:02:53] Something to think about. 

Angela [00:02:54] Something to think about. Fast fact one. 

Jenna [00:02:56] Fast fact number one: it was during this episode that the cast learned that season nine would be our last season. 

Angela [00:03:05] Yes, we shared about this in our book, The Office BFFs, but I’ll never forget it. It’s such a clear memory for me. We were sitting in the bus, it was in the parking lot. We had all piled in there. And Greg came on the bus, and I wasn’t expecting to see him that day, and he asked if it could just be the cast on the bus. And there was a few crew members that were kind of getting the bus ready for us to hit the open road, and they all left. And when he asked the crew if they could step aside so he could just talk to the cast, I did- I felt like myself leave my body. I was like, uh oh, I feel like this is when your parents are like, shut the door. We’re going to have a big talk. Like what? 

Jenna [00:03:48] Yeah, Greg would do this sometimes. And usually he was going to tell us something like, we’d been nominated for an award. 

Angela [00:03:55] Yeah. 

Jenna [00:03:55] Or we were adding a new big cast member or some news. 

Angela [00:03:59] It was news. 

Jenna [00:04:00] It was always news. But we weren’t up for any awards at this point. And we were like, the show has been cast for this year, so- 

Angela [00:04:07] So what’s this news? 

Jenna [00:04:09] Yeah. 

Angela [00:04:10] And then he just explained to us that, you know, NBC was wanting to do maybe two more years of the show, but at that time people’s contracts were going to be expiring before then and we might lose some of our cast. And then what was the show if it wasn’t all of us? Right? 

Jenna [00:04:26] Yeah. 

Angela [00:04:27] He was like, do  we want to call our own out and go out our way? Or do we want to slowly peter out losing cast members? Right? 

Jenna [00:04:36] Yeah. 

Angela [00:04:36] And we all collectively were like, we want to call our out. We want to go out together. 

Jenna [00:04:41] I remember John Krasinski saying that this was such a great privilege to be able to call our own out. Because most of the time, if you’re on a TV show, maybe you’ve taken your summer hiatus and you’re all ready. You think you’re coming back for another year and you get a phone call that says, I’m sorry. The networks decided not to continue with your show. I mean, that’s what happened with my ABC show Splitting Up Together. We had this giant cliffhanger at the end of season two and all these plans for season three, and it just was over. 

Angela [00:05:12] And you get no goodbyes, you get no farewell moment. So the fact that starting from Work Bus, we knew, okay, this is our last season. And the writers could build towards that. And as a cast we all, gosh, it was really bonding. 

Jenna [00:05:30] Yeah. And Greg set a meeting with every single cast member and the writers and asked that cast member, What do you want to see for your character in this final season? And I remember, um, Creed said, I’d like to sing one of my songs on the show, and I would like Devin to come back. He had stayed in touch with Devin ever since the beginning. Remember back in the Halloween episode, Michael has to decide if he’s going to fire Devin or Creed? 

Angela [00:06:00] Yeah. 

Jenna [00:06:00] And that’s when Devin and Creed, who had been background performers, Creed ended up becoming a cast member and Devin moved on. He was going to do a play in New York. But Creed said, I want Devin to come back and I want to be able to play a song on the show, and we made both those things happen. But every cast member got to give their pitches for their characters’ goodbye. 

Angela [00:06:20] Yeah. 

Jenna [00:06:21] Which is another truly classy move and very, very Greg Daniels. 

Angela [00:06:26] I feel like the show started as a creative collaboration and it ends as one. 

Jenna [00:06:31] 100%. So just to paint a picture for you, at the beginning of this shoot for Work Bus, we found out that the show was coming to an end. 

Angela [00:06:43] We had a lot of feelings. 

Jenna [00:06:45] We did. That brings me to Fast Fact number two, which is about how this episode also meant the end of our lives. 

Speaker 3 [00:06:54] Well. It sounds dramatic, but it is true that the whole entire cast, as you guys all know, because we’ve brought this up before, refers to this episode to this day as, Jenna? 

Jenna [00:07:06] Death Bus. 

Angela [00:07:06] That’s right. 

Jenna [00:07:07] We got a fan mail flurry about this. Kendall W from Phenix, Arizona, and many others said, Death Bus. We want to hear all about it. Well, we wrote an entire chapter about this one episode in our book, The Office BFFs, because, number one, we had a lot of pictures from this episode. Thanks to you, Angela, you brought your camera on this shoot. 

Angela [00:07:30] I did. I was clicking away. 

Jenna [00:07:33] So if you get our book, you’re going to see some great pictures. But also because three very significant things happened. First of all, Ellie Kemper peed her pants. 

Angela [00:07:46] She did. 

Jenna [00:07:47] While we were shooting. 

Angela [00:07:48] She did. Now, Ellie wrote about this in her book, The Squirrel Days, so we feel very comfortable sharing about it. And! 

Jenna [00:07:56] I reached out to Ellie and she sent in an audio clip with the whole story, which we will be sharing later. But besides Ellie peeing her pants, the entire cast of The Office almost died twice while shooting this episode. 

Angela [00:08:10] Yeah. 

Jenna [00:08:11] Two giant calamities. Bridget S from Saint Louis, Missouri- how’s it going there? How’s it going, Saint Lou? 

Angela [00:08:20] Is that what locals say? They call it Saint Lou? 

Jenna [00:08:22] They don’t. I just made it up here on the spot. Oh, we’re on the spot. 

Angela [00:08:25] Oh! Thank you for telling me. Because I could see myself going to Saint Louis being like, what’s up, Saint Lou? 

Jenna [00:08:30] You know what? Do it. 

Angela [00:08:31] Oh, no. 

Jenna [00:08:31] Okay. 

Angela [00:08:32] Okay. What does Bridget say? 

Jenna [00:08:34] Bridget said, Is it true that Jenna’s sense of smell saved the whole cast of The Office while aboard the Work Bus? Yes, Bridget. 

Angela [00:08:41] It’s true. 

Jenna [00:08:42] My nose did save the cast in The Office. I’m very proud of this. 

Angela [00:08:45] Yeah. 

Jenna [00:08:46] But we will dive deep into all of these stories as we break down this episode. But we also got a lot of questions about the bus. Turner L from Stillwater, Minnesota said, How many days did you use the bus? Was there only one bus or more than one bus? Angela, I feel like Turner listened to our breakdown of Speed. 

Angela [00:09:08] Oh, where we had the great debate of the 13 busses. 

Jenna [00:09:11] Yeah. 

Angela [00:09:11] Yeah. 

Jenna [00:09:12] Because Turner knew maybe there was more than one bus. 

Angela [00:09:15] It’s a good question. 

Jenna [00:09:16] Well, Steve Burgess said we only use one bus. We rented it for two weeks. We had to remove all of the original seats in the bus and put in the desks and the dividers. The description of how the bus should be laid out was pretty specific in the script. It noted that Andy should be in the back, that Erin should be at the front with a little reception area. It even noted that she should tape a candy dish to the front of the bus. So all those little details were scripted. And it even described who would be sitting next to who, because this would be important for the different moments of dialogue. 

Angela [00:09:50] I found the sketch and drawing of the bus and where we were all seated in it. 

Jenna [00:09:54] Oh my gosh. 

Angela [00:09:55] Yep, I don’t know how it was in my digital clutter, lady. I think they sent it to us with the script. You know? 

Jenna [00:10:02] I think you’re right. 

Angela [00:10:03] And I’ll put it in stories. Look, that was with our script. 

Jenna [00:10:08] Oh, yes. 

Angela [00:10:09] Now they moved us around. I feel like that was a rough outline because I was not seated next to you. And in that picture I am. 

Jenna [00:10:16] Yeah. This was an early. 

Angela [00:10:19] An early draft. 

Jenna [00:10:20] Because Darryl is on the bus here and Darryl doesn’t end up being on the bus. 

Angela [00:10:24] That’s right. 

Jenna [00:10:25] Yeah. Well, what’s interesting I’m noticing in the sketch was when we read this, I immediately said, If this bus is going to be moving, I’m going to need to be facing forward. 

Angela [00:10:35] Yes, I remember that. 

Jenna [00:10:37] And I remember there was like a little note in the script that even said Jenna will be facing forward. If I would have ridden backwards, there would have been a fourth calamity, which would have been me vomiting on everybody. I get really bad car sickness. 

Angela [00:10:51] Really bad car sickness. There’s one thing I wanted to point out in the sketch that I’m going to highlight in stories. On the bus sketch, it’s there’s in all caps it says note exclamation point, the AC unit above to be removed. They had to remove the AC unit to fit us all in there. 

Jenna [00:11:08] Mhm. 

Angela [00:11:08] That’s going to lead to some other issues later on. 

Jenna [00:11:11] It sure is. Let’s see. So Steve also said we shot on the bus for two and a half days, which we knew. The half day was when we were parked in the parking lot. We weren’t moving. 

Angela [00:11:20] Yeah. 

Jenna [00:11:21] Then we had two days on the road or we were parked at the roadside attraction. I will have you know that all of the peeing and near death happened on the final day of shooting. And Steve said after we finished shooting, they had to reassemble the bus to look like a bus and then return it. Those are all your bus facts. 

Angela [00:11:39] Okay, I liked them. 

Jenna [00:11:41] Thank you. This is the second time we have had bus facts on this podcast. 

Angela [00:11:46] It might not be the last. 

Jenna [00:11:47] I look forward to what that might be because I can’t think of it, but. 

Angela [00:11:51] I don’t know. 

Jenna [00:11:51] Never say never. 

Angela [00:11:52] Never say never on Office Ladies. 

Jenna [00:11:54] All right. Fast fact number three, Bryan Cranston as director. We got a fan question from Cassie D in Portland, Maine, who said, I need- all caps- to know all about Bryan Cranston directing. This was peak Breaking Bad days. So how did he come to direct this episode? What was it like working with him on set, especially since the set was a literal bus? Were you as starstruck as I would have been in this scenario? 

Angela [00:12:23] Yes. 

Jenna [00:12:24] Uh, yes. 

Angela [00:12:25] All of it? Yes. It was so amazing having him. He just like, man, talk about someone when he walks into a room just commands the room. 

Jenna [00:12:34] Yes, but in a very friendly way. 

Angela [00:12:35] In a gentle way. Yes. It’s like this gentle, amazing presence walks in. And his voice and- 

Jenna [00:12:44] Immediately likable. 

Angela [00:12:44] Likable and and just funny and doesn’t take himself too seriously. You know, like, just someone that you feel like instantly you know.

Jenna [00:12:52] And he’s such a detail oriented actor, you know, and so he has a passion and respect for acting. So he brings that with him as a director as well. He was very interested in us and our characters and our process. But then he had this incredibly technical job to do as director. And, you know, he had directed before. He had directed episodes of Malcolm in the Middle and Breaking Bad. And like Cassie said, this was peak Breaking Bad. This was between season four and season five of Breaking Bad. So yeah. 

Angela [00:13:27] And Cassie, guess what? The best person to tell you about what it was like to have Bryan on set is Bryan Cranston, and he is going to be with us next week. We have a whole interview with him about this episode. We’re really going to dive in, but he was just awesome. 

Jenna [00:13:44] Just awesome. And that should tell you what a great guy he is. When we reached out, he was like, yes, and I want to come into the studio and see you face to face and tell all these stories. 

Angela [00:13:55] And he came in the studio, told us all the stories, and then just hung out and we just like, hung out and chatted for a bit about life. 

Jenna [00:14:02] This rewatch podcast has reunited us with just the best people. 

Angela [00:14:06] The best, most awesome people. 

Jenna [00:14:09] It’s so great. 

Angela [00:14:09] We’re so fortunate. 

Jenna [00:14:10] We are really getting to relive all our glory. 

Angela [00:14:12] Yeah. 

Jenna [00:14:14] Well, Steve Burgess wanted me to add that Bryan Cranston was very detail oriented during his prep week. He was a big part of setting up the bus. He was very concerned with how tight a fit it was for the cast and the camera operators. The only people that could be on the bus were the cast, camera and Bryan. Everybody else had to ride behind us in a follow van. 

Angela [00:14:38] Yeah. 

Jenna [00:14:38] And that was, you know, a whole other consideration was that we had this caravan of crew following us as we drove. 

Angela [00:14:47] The bus truly wasn’t very big. I always think of it as like one of those smaller airport shuttle busses when you park in the far away parking lot. 

Jenna [00:14:57] Yes. 

Angela [00:14:57] Not the big airport shuttle bus, because there’s the big one. But then there’s the little guy that pulls up. Like that. 

Jenna [00:15:02] That’s a good description. Well, we also reached out to our writer for this episode, Brent Forrester. He’s always so fantastic about sending in behind the scenes details. And he shared with us about Bryan directing and how focused Bryan was on safety. Let’s hear what Brent had to say about Bryan directing. 

Brent Forrester [00:15:20] The irony of Death Bus is that Bryan Cranston was so safety paranoid in the prep. He was just coming off Breaking Bad, where they’d been shooting in the desert in an RV, and he was so aware of what could go wrong. He would say we’re shooting on location, in the heat, in a tiny vehicle, things can go very, very bad. And they did… On Death Bus. 

Jenna [00:15:49] It is truly what we call this episode. 

Angela [00:15:53] I know. Everybody, cast and crew called it Death Bus. And listen, we’ve all talked about this a lot as a cast and crew in our book with Bryan, that the irony that Bryan was working on a show that filmed outside in the heat in an RV, and then he gets this job. Woo hoo, on The Office. It’s going to be air conditioned. I’m going to be inside in a cozy set. And it’s the one episode where we are on the road, in a bus, in the heat. And he did it on his week off from Breaking Bad. 

Jenna [00:16:22] I know. That was supposed to be the week he got to be indoors. 

Angela [00:16:25] Air conditioned. 

Jenna [00:16:27] Oh my goodness. Well, that’s all I have for fast facts. Do we want to take a break? 

Angela [00:16:32] We do. But before we go, you should know the weather this week was going to be in the 90s all week. You guys. I mean, this episode started August 12th and it was hot. 

Jenna [00:16:44] It was hot. 

Angela [00:16:45] There’s my weather report. 

Jenna [00:16:46] All right. We’ll be right back. 

Angela [00:16:59] This episode starts, we’re in a conference room. Andy is showing a highlight reel of the Dunder Mifflin softball team. Except it’s more of a blooper reel. And actually, it’s just Andy making fun of everyone. They’re not even bloopers. 

Jenna [00:17:13] Well, this storyline, not the part with the fail videos that Andy shows, but just the softball league was loosely based on our very own Dunder Mifflin cast and crew softball league. I was not in it, but we talked with Claire about it. 

Angela [00:17:28] Yeah, I do want to point out that the videos that Andy are showing of the softball team, they’re not fails. No one is failing. Like he just says the word fail. Like Darryl shares that was a triple. And he’s like, fail. And like, no, it’s not a fail Andy. These are not fails. 

Jenna [00:17:45] Yeah. He manipulated the video and put like funny commentary. 

Angela [00:17:48] Fart noises. 

Jenna [00:17:49] Yes, exactly. But then Jim is like, hey, what about that video I sent you that’s an actual fail? And Andy’s like, oh, I don’t have that…. 

Angela [00:17:59] Yeah, I don’t have it blah blahh… And Jim’s like, no, it’s right here. 

Jenna [00:18:01] And it is Andy trying to pick up the big Gatorade. 

Angela [00:18:05] Mhm. 

Jenna [00:18:06] What do you call that, jug? It’s bigger than a jug.

Angela [00:18:07] It’s a big cooler of Gatorade. You know like when you win the big game and they dump it on the coach? 

Jenna [00:18:12] Yeah. 

Angela [00:18:13] That thing. 

Jenna [00:18:13] He picks it up and then he ends up falling with it and dumping it on himself. 

Angela [00:18:18] Well Brent sent us a clip about this about how they filmed it and what a great sport Ed was. Here’s what he had to say. 

Brent Forrester [00:18:24] We were quite pleased with that stunt in the cold open where Ed Helms falls down with the Gatorade. How we did it was we dug a hole in the ground, put a mattress in it, and then covered the mattress with sand. And it shows you what a go for it actor Ed Helms is. We had no rehearsal and no stuntman, and we just said, Ed, we need you to kind of trip backwards and spill on your shirt. Ed went for it so hard in the first take, the Gatorade blasts out of the barrel and blows his hat off. That’s the first take. And that’s the one we used in the episode. 

Jenna [00:18:56] I am so glad he shared that, because when I watched that, I thought, how did that not hurt? 

Angela [00:19:02] So there was a mattress in the ground covered with dirt. 

Jenna [00:19:06] I had no idea that’s how they do that. 

Angela [00:19:08] Yeah. I can’t believe after that take they made him do another one. 

Jenna [00:19:13] I know! Just like- 

Angela [00:19:15] Just call it a day. We got it. 

Jenna [00:19:16] For sure. Well, listen. I’ve got two tidbits for this cold open. The first is, a quick location breakdown. We shot these scenes at the Balboa Sports Complex. The end.

Angela [00:19:28] And? 

Jenna [00:19:29] That’s all I have to say about that. 

Angela [00:19:30] Next? Second tidbit? 

Jenna [00:19:31] Second tidbit is that I remember that these fail videos were very popular at the time. I mean, they’re still very popular now. But I wanted to get more information on, like, the origins of fail videos. And in doing so, I ended up reading an article about the Psychology of fail videos, and I thought that Dwight might like what I found. 

Angela [00:19:54] Not only Dwight, but you know, who else would probably be interested is Zach Woods. 

Jenna [00:19:58] Yes, you’re right. 

Angela [00:20:00] Because in our interview with him, we talked about videos like this. 

Jenna [00:20:03] Yes. Well I guess the Germans have a word to describe the pleasure that we experience at the expense of other people’s failures. 

Angela [00:20:13] Building kinder. 

Jenna [00:20:15] No. That’s later. It is called schadenfreude. 

Angela [00:20:20] Schadenfreude. 

Jenna [00:20:22] Um, it loosely translates as harm joy. 

Angela [00:20:26] Wow. 

Jenna [00:20:27] Psychologists believe that this is at the root of why we enjoy watching fail videos. And they’ve actually done a bunch of studies. 

Angela [00:20:35] Yes, this is fascinating. You know, like… 

Jenna [00:20:36] People study everything is what I found out.

Angela [00:20:39] They study everything. Yeah. Well, that’s what we found out doing this rewatch. But also, you know, when you think of, like, little kids, like a toddler, if you want to make a toddler completely lose it laughing, pretend to trip and fall. 

Jenna [00:20:53] Yes. 

Angela [00:20:53] They think it’s hilarious. 

Jenna [00:20:54] Yeah, it’s in us from the beginning. 

Angela [00:20:56] Yeah. 

Jenna [00:20:57] Well, let me tell you, a scientist named Leah Bokor, who was a researcher at University of Cologne’s Social Cognition Center, did an experiment. 

Angela [00:21:08] That’s a tongue twister. 

Jenna [00:21:09] It is a tongue twister. Leah took German soccer fans and had them watch videos of their biggest rival, who is the Dutch, the Dutch soccer team, missing penalty kicks. And she tracked their response. Then she showed them videos of the German team succeeding at penalty kicks. And what Leah found was that viewers were happier watching the Dutch team fail than they were watching their own team succeed. 

Angela [00:21:38] Whoa!  

Jenna [00:21:40] Yeah. Watching your rival fail makes you feel better than your own success was the take away. 

Angela [00:21:47] Well, geez, Louise, that’s kind of dark. Huh. Well, I’m gonna have to think on that. 

Jenna [00:21:54] Yeah. 

Angela [00:21:55] I have questions. How do you measure that? 

Jenna [00:21:58] Yeah I didn’t. 

Angela [00:21:59] What boxes do you check off? Are they hooked up to a machine? How does this happen? 

Jenna [00:22:03] It didn’t explain in the article because I was curious about that too. Were we, you know, doing, like, receptors on the brain or whatever? I don’t know. 

Angela [00:22:13] Okay. 

Jenna [00:22:13] This was the experiment and the findings. 

Angela [00:22:15] It’s very interesting. 

Jenna [00:22:16] Yeah. So think about your own schadenfreude. 

Angela [00:22:20] Schadenfreude. 

Jenna [00:22:21] You know, I think the Jim Dwight relationship has a lot of schadenfreude. 

Angela [00:22:25] I would agree 100%. And a lot of siblings. 

Jenna [00:22:30] Have schadenfreude. 

Angela [00:22:31] Yes. 

Jenna [00:22:32] Yeah. It’s true. 

Angela [00:22:34] Speaking of schadenfreude… There is going to be a pretty epic Jim prank on Dwight coming up. 

Jenna [00:22:41] It’s true. 

Angela [00:22:42] Dwight and Toby are testing for EMF hotspots. Erin is marking them with big like red X’s and tape. And Phyllis walks into work. She’s like, what’s happening? She is very concerned. I was curious about EMFs. 

Jenna [00:22:57] Yeah. 

Angela [00:22:58] They are real. Electromagnetic fields. 

Jenna [00:23:01] They are for the most part believed to be non harmful, but I guess in large doses can cause problems. 

Angela [00:23:09] Well, you have high frequency emfs like radiation. Maybe some big medical devices that use x ray imaging machines, but then you have low to mid frequency emfs and that’s probably what’s in the Dunder Mifflin office. It’s like microwave ovens, household appliances, cell phones. And they are thought to be harmless to people. But Toby’s very concerned. 

Jenna [00:23:32] Well, Toby is a worrier. You know? He’s got his concerns about the radon gas, and now he has concerns about the EMF. 

Angela [00:23:40] Mhm. 

Jenna [00:23:41] Dwight says, listen, everything’s up to code and he has a talking head where he says, you know what? Maybe the wires need insulation but it’s a wire, people. I’m not buying it a fur coat. He doesn’t want to make any changes to the building. 

Angela [00:23:53] Well Stanley said, Hey I am not paid to work in a microwave oven. He wants out of there. 

Jenna [00:23:58] He walks out!

Angela [00:23:59] I know! Jim and Pam arrive to work and Jim is just, man, is he being extra sweet. He’s running ahead of her. He’s opening the door so she can walk through it. Then he runs ahead to the elevator and he hits the button for her. And he has a talking head. He says, you know what? I finally told Pam about this new side job in Philly. She was so cool about it. And now I really want to do something great for her. Like defend her… 

Jenna [00:24:25] In a bar fight?

Angela [00:24:26]  In a bar fight? 

Jenna [00:24:27] I don’t know. He wants to do something. He’s very motivated by his own guilt of keeping the secret from her for so long, and her graciousness in hearing him out. 

Angela [00:24:35] Well, I’m about to stir up a hornet’s nest here, but Jim is doing guilt gifting. 

Jenna [00:24:41] Oh. 

Angela [00:24:42] Yeah. He knows it was wrong to keep this secret from her. And now this whole episode is Jim trying to find a way to, you know, kind of woo Pam because she forgave him, right? 

Jenna [00:24:57] Yeah. 

Angela [00:24:58] It’s called guilt gifting. I went down a little bit of an internet rabbit hole about it. It’s usually associated with partners who cheat and then buy their wife or husband gifts afterwards. It’s a pattern of behavior. 

Jenna [00:25:11] Yeah, I think this tracks. 

Angela [00:25:13] Yeah. And, Jim, you know, there wasn’t a lot of time left for him. The camera crew knew. Darryl knew. He was running out of time to be the one to tell Pam. 

Jenna [00:25:22] Yeah. And now he’s going to guilt gift her a week off of work, which doesn’t work. And then he’s going to try to guilt gift her some pie. 

Angela [00:25:30] Some pie. Oh, also, this website that talked about guilt gifting said that ultimately, the partner that’s getting the guilt gift knows what’s happening. 

Jenna [00:25:40] Mhmm. 

Angela [00:25:40] And then they can have resentment and feel like their partner is then further trying to manipulate them. 

Jenna [00:25:45] Okay, I’m glad you brought this up because I have watched the next episode, which is Here Comes Treble. 

Angela [00:25:52] Yes, I have too. 

Jenna [00:25:53] And there’s a little bit of a whiplash because in this episode of Work Bus, Pam is being very easy going about this information. But all of a sudden in the next episode, she brings out a little bit of like, sarcastic snark. And I was like, wait a second. Last week she seemed cool with it, but now all of a sudden. So I wonder if maybe it’s some of this built up resentment from the guilt gifting. Maybe it does track. 

Angela [00:26:20] Yeah. You can start to feel manipulated, they said. 

Jenna [00:26:23] Yeah. Well, I think what Jim did was manipulative. So there you go. 

Angela [00:26:28] Well, I found it very interesting. You know, the whole- 

Jenna [00:26:30] I find that very interesting. 

Angela [00:26:32] Yeah. It was. 

Jenna [00:26:33] Well, next up, Nellie’s going to go into Andy’s office and he’s a total meanie. I was trying to pick my word there. And he’s going to give her one minute to talk. He has a little- 

Angela [00:26:45] Hourglass thing. 

Jenna [00:26:45] Yeah. Like you’d find in a Boggle game or something. There were some earlier drafts of the script where it was made clear that this hourglass is only used for Nellie, but people thought that was a little bit too mean. And so they decided to let us believe that Andy has a new one minute policy in speaking with him. 

Angela [00:27:06] I was curious why she had the line, Not the hourglass again. 

Jenna [00:27:08] Yes, because apparently it’s just for Nellie. She tells Andy that she wants to adopt a baby, and the agency needs a character reference from her employer, and she’ll write it all. She’ll do everything. All she has to do is sign it. 

Angela [00:27:23] Andy has a talking head where he’s like, sure, you know what? I’ll read the letter if she’s honest about how evil and unfit of a mother she is. Yeah, I’ll sign that. So we know this isn’t going to go well for Nellie. 

Jenna [00:27:35] No. So Jim is going to stir up some trouble here. He’s trying to rile up the group and get everybody to get on Dwight’s case about these rays. Dwight says that he would have to shut down this office for an entire week in order to fix the problem. And Jim’s like ooh.  

Angela [00:27:51] Pam’s like, that’d be nice. 

Jenna [00:27:53] Yeah. So Jim wants to make this happen. 

Angela [00:27:56] He sees his gift. 

Jenna [00:27:57] That’s right. So he’s going to make some popcorn in the kitchen, but he’s only going to let one kernel pop. 

Angela [00:28:02] Yeah. 

Jenna [00:28:03] And then he takes that popcorn bag. He puts it under Dwight’s desk. Right underneath an x. 

Angela [00:28:09] One kernel popped right under Dwight’s desk. Right under a big red X in the ceiling of the EMF rays. Right? Dwight finds the bag and is like, oh, no. He thinks there’s enough electromagnetic fields by his desk to make it only pop once. So this must mean he’s sterile. 

Jenna [00:28:28] Yeah, he’s going to run into Andy’s office, and Jim is like, yes, I did it. Week off for you, babe. He’s like, let’s go on a drive out to the lake with the kids. And Pam says, ooh, can we stop and get pie? And Jim says, yeah, Laverne’s Pies Tires Fixed Also? Of course. I have a little tidbit for you about that. 

Angela [00:28:45] Okay. 

Jenna [00:28:46] The legal team at NBC had to clear the name Laverne’s Pies Tires Fixed Also, before we could say it, they had to make sure that there was not a real place. 

Angela [00:28:55] A Laverne’s Pies Tires Fixed Also?

Jenna [00:28:57] Yes. And just in case, they also cleared three other options; Laverne’s Apple Pies, Laverne’s Apple Pies and Others, and Laverne’s Pies No Cakes Don’t Ask. All four cleared. We had our choice and we went with Laverne’s Pies Tires Fixed Also. 

Angela [00:29:15] That one’s my favorite. 

Jenna [00:29:17] Totally my favorite. 

Angela [00:29:18] We should mention that in the kitchen while Jim was making that one kernel pop, Darryl is asking Clark to teach him PowerPoint. And Clark’s like, dude, just watch the tutorial. And Darryl is like, you are my tutorial. This is going to set up a whole Darryl Clark storyline that got deleted from the episode. 

Jenna [00:29:37] Of Clark teaching Darryl PowerPoint? 

Angela [00:29:39] Yes. 

Jenna [00:29:41] So now Dwight and Andy are going to emerge from Andy’s office. They have a big announcement. They need to leave the office for one whole week, but Dwight has arranged for a temporary workspace, which will be delivered shortly. Cut to everyone outside in the parking lot and a large bus arrives. Here it is, everyone. The work bus. 

Angela [00:30:03] Mhmm. 

Jenna [00:30:04] Brent Forrester sent us in an audio clip about the origin of this work bus idea. Let’s give it a listen. 

Brent Forrester [00:30:12] Where the story came from. We were in the writer’s room, and we found this story online about a Microsoft office in China that had introduced something called the Enterprise Bus, which was just a bus with work desks in it. So the laborers had to continue working even on their way to work. And it just seemed so demoralizing. And we thought, God, Dwight would love this. And Work Bus was born. 

Jenna [00:30:44] I love it. 

Angela [00:30:45] The Enterprise Bus. 

Jenna [00:30:46] Mhm. 

Angela [00:30:47] Wow. I didn’t know that all these years. I didn’t know that’s where this idea came from. 

Jenna [00:30:52] Me neither. 

Angela [00:30:53] I do have a question. 

Jenna [00:30:54] Yes? 

Angela [00:30:54] As I watch this bus pull into the parking lot and the Dunder Mifflin crew walks out to see the bus and get on it, I thought, what about the other businesses? Is Vance Refrigeration going to have to operate on its own work bus? 

Jenna [00:31:06] Well. You have something in common with Liz A from Grantsville, Utah, who said, Why didn’t Dwight have to provide a work bus for the five families? 

Angela [00:31:16] I thought that immediately. 

Jenna [00:31:18] I had a question, which is, why is it Dwight’s call whether or not we keep working while he fixes this problem? Wouldn’t it be Andy’s? 

Angela [00:31:26] Yes it would. 

Jenna [00:31:28] Yeah. Andy’s too distracted being mean to Nellie, I guess, to really think about it. 

Angela [00:31:33] Yeah. Andy could just say everyone go remote this week. 

Jenna [00:31:36] I know remote work wasn’t really a thing. 

Angela [00:31:38] It wasn’t. 

Jenna [00:31:39] Like it is now. 

Angela [00:31:40] Like you could forward your calls, right? 

Jenna [00:31:43] I think that technology existed. Could you forward it to your house? I know you could forward calls within your phone system in the office. Like if Pam wanted to go work back by H.R. she could forward her calls to a desk back there. But can you forward them to your house? 

Angela [00:32:02] Oh, I don’t know. There was all those things. Remember how if you hit star 86, you could see who just tried to call you? Like if someone called you and hung up? 

Jenna [00:32:08] Oh, yeah. On your landline? 

Angela [00:32:10] On your landline, you could hit, like, star something. I remember that was like a big thing in high school. Hit star whatever. 

Jenna [00:32:15] Speaking of landlines, I had this whole thing with my phone company. I said, I want a landline, and I wanted a true landline because, you know, if you call 911 from a landline, they know your exact address. 

Angela [00:32:28] Location. 

Jenna [00:32:28] Yes. Like, exactly. And you know, my prepper brain, I was like, what if I’m dialing 911, but I can’t speak. They’ll know my location, right? 

Angela [00:32:38] Yeah. 

Jenna [00:32:38] So I was having all this static on my home line whenever I tried to use it. We never use it. It’s literally there for my anxious brain’s. 

Angela [00:32:49] Yes. 

Jenna [00:32:49] Gloom and doom oriented future thinking of this time when I’m going to need to call 911 and not speak. This- we pay for this landline. I need it, that’s all I can say. I sleep better at night with it. 

Angela [00:33:01] I also wanted us to have a landline. We had it for years. We never used it. 

Jenna [00:33:05] Yeah. 

Angela [00:33:06] And Josh got rid of it. 

Jenna [00:33:07] Oh, well, I couldn’t live like that. That also surprises me because I think Josh and I are wired similarly, so I am surprised. I don’t even know my home number. It’s in my cell phone under “my home number” so that if I ever need to know it. But it never rings. If it does ring, we don’t answer it because no one has the number. Anyway, I’m getting off topic. I talked to my phone company because the line was scratchy. 

Angela [00:33:32] Mhm. 

Jenna [00:33:33] And it turns out they had put in a digital. It wasn’t a true landline. And they tried to tell me they couldn’t give me a real landline. And I argued with them for days. And finally… 

Angela [00:33:47] You got a true landline? 

Jenna [00:33:48] I got a true landline. But it was with much effort. Because they want to like bundle you or they want to, like, put it with your cable. They want to get part of your cable line. I was like, you are not understanding me. I need a true landline for the day that I may for whatever reason need to call 911 and not be able to speak. Okay? What if the zombies are coming, right? Or something? And I cannot make a noise. 

Angela [00:34:15] Yes. 

Jenna [00:34:16] I just want to dial it. 

Angela [00:34:17] Uh huh. 

Jenna [00:34:18] And you come. 

Angela [00:34:19] Yes. Mhm. 

Jenna [00:34:22] How did I get on this topic? Oh, we were wondering if you can forward calls. Oh my goodness. Wow. Oh we don’t know if you can forward calls. 

Angela [00:34:34] I told Josh I don’t want a cell phone. I want a landline like a rotary. I want one of those. And I want a beeper. I want a beeper. 

Jenna [00:34:45] No, but you are like. You’re like, I don’t want a cell phone. I want a landline. Then I want a beeper. And then I want a camera. And then I- 

Angela [00:34:54] Like an old camera where I take it to the mall, to the kiosk. 

Jenna [00:34:56] I know. And I was like, Angela, you are replacing this one device with like four devices. 

Angela [00:35:02] I well, it’s because Josh made me get a new phone and I am so mad about it still. Everything is different on it. I don’t like it. 

Jenna [00:35:09] I know. I know. 

Angela [00:35:11] Okay, sorry. Where are we? 

Jenna [00:35:13] I don’t know, I think where we are is that we are about to start working on this bus. 

Angela [00:35:19] Yes. 

Jenna [00:35:20] It’s very tight quarters and everyone’s trying to get work done, but they’re bumping into each other. 

Angela [00:35:25] There is the best scene. It is my favorite scene from this whole entire episode. It made me laugh so hard. It’s in deleted scenes on the DVD. I can’t play it for you because it’s visual. It’s a sight gag. But while the work bus is parked in the parking lot and everyone’s trying to get work done, Phyllis comes on the bus with a takeout food container that clearly is the worst smelling food anyone has ever smelled. 

Jenna [00:35:51] I remember shooting this! 

Angela [00:35:53] Everyone’s reactions to this stinky food is so hilarious. John is so funny. He ultimately takes the container away from Phyllis and, like, shoves it into the microwave and shuts the door. Everyone is like, blechhh. I’m going to put it in stories because it’s really funny. 

Jenna [00:36:10] Well, something I remember from these scenes shooting in the parking lot were how funny John Krasinski and Bryan Cranston were. Because we should note, Bryan is a very funny guy. 

Angela [00:36:21] Yeah, he’s very quick witted. 

Jenna [00:36:22] And the two of them were doing bits and it was really lightning the mood because it was very hot on this bus. When we’re on that bus and we’re all cramped and we’re like pretending like we’re being hot and like annoyed, we were pretty much hot and annoyed. Because there was no air conditioner. 

Angela [00:36:38] They removed the air conditioner. We were just in a hot tin can. 

Jenna [00:36:42] Yes. 

Angela [00:36:43] To give you an idea of what all they put inside this bus to make it a, quote, work bus, I want to paint a picture for you guys of how many things were inside this little tiny, basically airport shuttle bus. We had desks, rolling chairs, lamps, a water cooler with real water in it, a printer, computers, papers, pencils, pens, notepads, tape dispensers, staplers, little mini fans, a microwave, a giant screen TV, a coffee maker, coffee pot, coffee mugs, 14 actors and four crew members. 

Jenna [00:37:19] Yes. 

Angela [00:37:19] Yeah, that’s what was all in the bus. And I have to share one other thing. When I was going through documenting everything that was in the bus and I looked at the chairs, I got a lump in my throat because I still have one of the work bus chairs that you see us sitting in. It’s the chair that I sit in whenever we podcast from home in our closet. And the reason I have it is I was moving and I did not have a chair for my desk at home. And Phil Shea was like, Ange, at the end of Work Bus, I’ll just snag one of these chairs for you. He always was looking out for us. And I still have that chair. 

Jenna [00:37:56] Yeah. You guys know Phil passed last year, and, um, that story is making me emotional. 

Angela [00:38:02] I know. 

Jenna [00:38:03] Because he would- 

Angela [00:38:04] I had to share it, though, but, you- 

Jenna [00:38:06] Oh, of course. And that’s the thing about Phil was that, like, you’d just be having a conversation with him. You’re just telling him I’m moving and this and that, and you’re talking, and then he’s filing that away and he’s thinking… 

Angela [00:38:19] Do you need a chair? What do you need? 

Jenna [00:38:20] Yeah, I’ll get you a chair. 

Angela [00:38:22] You can take one of these. That’s exactly what he did. And then I at the end of the day, I was walking to my car and he was like, Ange, here, I got you a chair. 

Jenna [00:38:30] So cool. I did want to point out something that you mentioned here in your list, Angela, and that you know about your chair, which is that they are rolly. 

Angela [00:38:39] Yes. They roll. 

Jenna [00:38:40] So just something I want us to note. 

Angela [00:38:43] As we’re moving in a moving vehicle. 

Jenna [00:38:45] Right. 

Angela [00:38:46] Yes. I did have a thought as well. I don’t know if anyone else watching had this thought. Much in the way my brain goes to the conference room of, like, who’s setting this up? Who’s moving all this out there? Who set up this work bus? How long did it take? 

Jenna [00:38:58] I think the idea is that Dwight rented it as-is. 

Angela [00:39:01] Fully loaded. 

Jenna [00:39:02] Yeah. 

Angela [00:39:02] Oh. 

Jenna [00:39:02] That this is an item that you can get. 

Angela [00:39:05] It rolls in like that. 

Jenna [00:39:07] That’s kind of a pun. 

Angela [00:39:09] Yes. 

Jenna [00:39:10] It is a pun. It’s not kind of a pun. It is a pun. All right, well, next up, Erin notices that Nellie has an adoption application form. And Nellie says, maybe you can give me some help because you were once adopted. But Erin says, oh, no, I never ended up getting adopted. I got close a few times, but it didn’t happen. I don’t know why. Maybe just because I’m unlovable. Oh my gosh, break your heart. 

Angela [00:39:34] So sad. I know. 

Jenna [00:39:35] But she agrees to help Nellie on the application, just with, you know, her general knowledge. But she says, please don’t tell Andy I’m helping you. 

Angela [00:39:43] And Nellie knows instantly why, because I guess he refers to her as the Loch Ness Monster. 

Jenna [00:39:48] Yeah. 

Angela [00:39:49] So everyone is already starting to get grumpy being in such tight quarters with one another. Angela is going to go and in the overhead compartment is a printer. I don’t know if you knew what she was doing. It said that there was a printer in there that she’s supposed to reach for, and all these papers come down. It spills a drink into Pam’s lap. In the meantime, Clark has been pacing because he, I guess, has to stretch his legs, and Stanley gets really pissed off about that. Things are coming to a head. 

Jenna [00:40:18] Yeah. When the paper falls down, it falls on Pam, knocks her coffee on to her lap. She has to get off the bus. Jim is freaking out because the whole point here was that he was going to make Pam’s week better. And now Pam is covered in coffee and she is working on this tiny bus. So her week has gotten worse. And his what is it called, guilt gifting? 

Angela [00:40:39] Yeah, it’s not working out. 

Jenna [00:40:41] It’s not working out. So he decides to convince Andy that they should fire up this bus and go get some pie. Andy agrees. 

Angela [00:40:53] Yeah. 

Jenna [00:40:54] Next stop, Laverne’s Pies Tires Fixed Also. 

Angela [00:40:57] Pam was getting on the bus when she hears this. She’s happy. All right! Pie! 

Jenna [00:41:02] So the bus pulls out of the driveway, but it reveals that Clark and Darryl have been left behind. We had a fan question from Laura A in South Jordan, Utah, who said, did Darryl and Clark get left behind for some reason? 

Angela [00:41:16] Okay, so earlier in this episode when we had Darryl and Clark in the kitchen and Darryl is asking Clark to teach him PowerPoint, that was actually a whole extended storyline. So, Laura, you are right. Something did happen. A lot of this plays out in the deleted scenes on the DVD, but there were also some nuggets in the script. I’m going to share both. There was a scene where Darryl walks up to Jim and says, hey, I’m learning PowerPoint for my new career. You know, kind of like wink wink. Here’s how it starts. Let’s hear it. 

Darryl [00:41:47] Hey, if you don’t want to teach me PowerPoint, just say so. 

Clark [00:41:49] I don’t want to teach you PowerPoint. 

Darryl [00:41:51] Come on, just show me the PowerPoint. 

Clark [00:41:53] Just do the tutorial. 

Darryl [00:41:54] You’re the tutorial. 

Clark [00:41:55] No, dude. I’m not. I’m not the tutorial. 

Darryl [00:41:58] You could be. 

Clark [00:41:59] Okay, listen, I know Quicken and AfterEffects, Photoshop and AutoCAD, which is like the equivalent of owning a pickup truck. Hey, are you free this weekend? Yeah, man. Let’s hang out. Oh, how about instead of hanging out, you design my website? Well, let me just delete you out of my phone real quick because you suck. That’s what I’m dealing with with Darryl right now. 

Angela [00:42:16] So that would have set up their whole runner. 

Jenna [00:42:19] Yes. 

Angela [00:42:19] And then when the bus pulls away, this is how the scene read in the shooting draft. 

Jenna [00:42:24] Okay. 

Angela [00:42:24] The camera whips to Caffeine Corner, where Darryl and Clark are sipping cocoa and reading magazines. Darryl, without looking up, says, stop. Clark says, come back. Darryl says, too late. And then Darryl turns to Clark and says, so, ready to teach me PowerPoint? Clark says, nope. Darryl goes, I’ll take that as a yes. And Clark goes, can’t we just play video games? And Darryl goes, we can play PowerPoint. Then Clark is going to have a talking head where he’s getting really frustrated that Darryl is just driving him crazy, wanting to learn PowerPoint. And then there’s another scene where Darryl is trying to copy and paste an image. And anyway, he just drives Clark absolutely bananas. But it was a whole runner. That’s what was happening back at Dunder Mifflin. I can’t believe they didn’t just go home. 

Jenna [00:43:11] No kidding! Well, I think we should take a break, because when we come back, all of the mishaps will be occurring. And we have a lot to say about those. 

Angela [00:43:22] Oh. We do. 

Jenna [00:43:35] We are back and it’s time for a roll call. 

Angela [00:43:38] Yes! 

Jenna [00:43:39] We are traveling down the road. We’re happy. We’re all singing this song. 

Angela [00:43:44] Everyone’s going to get pie. This is a happy time. 

Jenna [00:43:47] Writer Brent Forrester said that this was inspired by the scene in Spike Lee’s movie, Get on the Bus, when they do a Shibuya roll call. We got a lot of fan mail about this. Taryn E from Chicago, Illinois said, Were there any calls to the Shibuya roll call song? And Laura A from South Jordan, Utah, said, Were there more roll calls that didn’t make it in? 

Angela [00:44:09] Oh, Taryn and Laura, do I have stuff for you guys? There were so many extra shibuya roll calls. Okay, there’s a ton in the candy bag alts. I also want to play you an extended part of shibuya roll call that’s in the deleted scenes on the DVDs. Let’s start there. Then we’re going to dive into the candy bag. 

Jenna [00:44:29] I am so glad you’re sharing this, Angela, because we shot this for so long. This was stuck in my head for weeks. 

Angela [00:44:37] Oh yeah. 

Jenna [00:44:38] I mean, we spent hours on this and so little made it into the episode. I cannot wait to hear this. 

Everyone [00:44:45] Shibuya roll call. Shibuya-ya-ya shibuya roll call. 

Phyllis [00:44:50] My name is Phyllis. 

Everyone [00:44:51] Yeah. 

Phyllis [00:44:51] I’m married to Bob. 

Everyone [00:44:52] Yeah. 

Phyllis [00:44:53] Let’s see, uh… 

Everyone [00:44:54] yeah. 

Phyllis [00:44:55] I like television. I’m not very good at this… 

Everyone [00:45:00] Roll call! Shibuya-ya-ya shibuya roll call. 

Oscar [00:45:03] My name is Oscar. 

Everyone [00:45:04] Yeah. 

Oscar [00:45:05] Why am I here? 

Everyone [00:45:06] Yeah 

Oscar [00:45:07] I’ve clearly chosen. 

Everyone [00:45:08] Yeah. 

Oscar [00:45:09] The wrong career. Whaaaat! 

Everyone [00:45:10] Roll call! Shibuya-ya-ya shibuya roll call. 

Jim [00:45:13] Dwight, your turn! 

Dwight [00:45:14] I’m not doing it. 

Everyone [00:45:16] Yeah. 

Dwight [00:45:16] You’re wasting your time. 

Everyone [00:45:17] Yeah. 

Dwight [00:45:18] No, this doesn’t count. 

Everyone [00:45:20] Yeah 

Dwight [00:45:21] I will not rhyme. Damn it. 

Everyone [00:45:23] Roll call. 

Angela [00:45:26] First of all, just listening to all of that just made me smile. Phyllis really did lose it laughing. 

Jenna [00:45:30] She did. 

Angela [00:45:30] That’s her real laugh. 

Jenna [00:45:31] It is. 

Angela [00:45:32] And that was just such a fun day. 

Jenna [00:45:35] And we were all really having fun. Angela, it must have been hard for you because your character was not supposed to want to do this. 

Angela [00:45:42] No. 

Jenna [00:45:42] And you must have felt the energy from the rest of us. I mean, this was probably the happiest we were on this shoot. 

Angela [00:45:48] I know!  

Jenna [00:45:49] With the bus moving. 

Angela [00:45:50] And I was not allowed to participate. 

Jenna [00:45:52] I know. 

Angela [00:45:52] I had to sit there and roll my eyes. So there were a few characters in the shooting draft that didn’t want to participate. They just want to work. When they’re at work, they want to work. 

Jenna [00:46:01] Yes. 

Angela [00:46:02] Stanley, Angela and Dwight. 

Jenna [00:46:04] Yes. 

Angela [00:46:05] There is a deleted Angela talking head where she’s just like, listen, uh, this is nonsense, you know? And then Stanley actually in the shooting draft, has a shibuya roll call. 

Jenna [00:46:15] He does? 

Angela [00:46:16] Yes. And a few other characters do, too. And there’s fun alts. I want to read them to you. Okay, before I start reading all of these candy bag alts for shibuya roll call, Cassi, Sam, Jenna, I’m going to need your help. 

Jenna [00:46:29] Oh, dear. Please don’t make me do this again. 

Angela [00:46:31] You have to do the yeah. 

Jenna [00:46:32] Oh gosh. 

Angela [00:46:32] You don’t have to do shibuya roll call. I just need you to go yeah? 

Jenna [00:46:35] Okay. 

Angela [00:46:35] Okay? 

Jenna [00:46:36] Okay. 

Angela [00:46:36] All right, guys? 

Jenna [00:46:37] I fear this is already going to be in my head for days. 

Angela [00:46:39] Sam? Cassi? So we’re going to start with Stanley. 

Jenna [00:46:41] Okay. 

Angela [00:46:42] Stanley is doing his crossword, and this is what he says. You can call me Stanley. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:46:47] Yeah. 

Angela [00:46:48] It wouldn’t hurt. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:46:49] Yeah. 

Angela [00:46:50] But what I really need. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:46:51] Yeah. 

Angela [00:46:52] Is a three letter word for shirt. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:46:55] Roll call! 

Angela [00:46:58] Okay, here’s the Jim candy bag alt. You can call me Jim. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:01] Yeah. 

Angela [00:47:02] Or Doctor Fly. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:03] Yeah. 

Angela [00:47:04] Step on the court. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:05] Yeah. 

Angela [00:47:06] I’ll show you why. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:07] Roll call! 

Angela [00:47:09] Okay, so Andy had a few. For the first one, Andy is sitting next to Erin, and it went like this. My name is Andy. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:17] Yeah. 

Angela [00:47:17] Her hair is red. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:19] Yeah. 

Angela [00:47:19] I’ll be her Mandy. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:21] Yeah. 

Angela [00:47:21] Until I’m dead. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:22] Roll call. 

Angela [00:47:24] Here’s a second one for Andy. My name is Andy. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:27] Yeah. 

Angela [00:47:27] I’m regional manager. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:29] Yeah. 

Angela [00:47:29] My favorite bird type. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:31] Yeah. 

Angela [00:47:31] Is the scarlet tanager. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:33] Roll call. 

Angela [00:47:35] Okay, here we go for Nellie. My name is Nellie. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:38] Yeah. 

Angela [00:47:39] I drank quite a large Mountain Dew. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:41] Yeah. 

Angela [00:47:42] Now I’m on a bus. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:43] Yeah. 

Angela [00:47:43] And there’s no loo. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:45] Roll call. 

Angela [00:47:46] Another one for Nellie. My name is Nellie. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:49] Yeah. 

Angela [00:47:49] You can buy me a drink. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:51] Yeah. 

Angela [00:47:51] I’m a single lady. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:53] Yeah. 

Angela [00:47:53] Wink, wink in the clink. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:47:56] Roll call. 

Angela [00:47:56] And then Oscar, by the way, Brent Forrester shared with us, the one that Oscar does in the actual episode was his favorite of all of them. 

Jenna [00:48:06] Yes. 

Angela [00:48:06] But here was Oscar’s candy bag alt, and it really made me laugh. My name is Oscar. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:48:13] Yeah. 

Angela [00:48:14] I like to read. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:48:15] Yeah. 

Angela [00:48:15] Mostly nonfiction. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:48:17] Yeah. 

Angela [00:48:17] Because when I read modern fiction, I always wind up disappointed. There’s too much focus on innovating the form at the expense of a good story well-told. And frankly, good stories are what readers want, and the publishing industry needs. 

Jenna, Sam, Cassi [00:48:29] Roll call. 

Angela [00:48:32] All right, Taryn and Laura, there you go. All the candy bag alts and the extras on the DVDs. 

Jenna [00:48:39] Well, I love that, Angela. And like I said, we had so much fun shooting this. In fact, we were laughing so much. This is the scene where Ellie wet her pants. 

Angela [00:48:53] Yes! 

Jenna [00:48:53] This was the third scene we shot this day. We’d been shooting on the bus for two days now. This was our last day on the bus. We were all a little bit goofy. You know what? I’m going to let Ellie tell you the story. Here it is. 

Ellie Kemper [00:49:08] Hello, Jenna. Hello, Angela. Hello, Office Ladies listeners everywhere. This is Ellie Kemper. I am here to share with you the chilling tale of when I, a grown woman in her 30s, wet my pants. That is, I went peepee in my pants during the filming of The Office episode called Work Bus, which you ladies may recall, we had nicknamed Death Bus because a lot of things kept going wrong during that episode. Things out of anybody’s control. It was just one of those weeks where life happens and things, things kept going wrong. One of those things was my incontinence. Here’s what happened. John Krasinski was leading a, um, song called Shibuya Roll Call and something that John was doing, and I can’t recall what it was, it was making me laugh so very hard off camera. And I think it’s just a face he was making and I don’t know, I had- there was no bathroom on the work/death bus. There was no restroom. And, uh, this is not the first time this has happened to me. It’s like the most wonderful thing and the most excruciating thing because I’m laughing so hard at something so therefore I’m filled with such joy and it’s such a nice moment, immediately followed by sheer horror, as I realize I’ve laughed so hard that I’ve lost control of my body and I’ve wet- I’ve gone peepee in my- well actually in my skirt. And that’s happened to me a number of times in my life. And that was one of them. That was one of the occasions. And I had sat- I was sitting down on the bus seat when that happened. And as it I realized what had just happened, I thought, well, I won’t be able to get up until wrap. I will just sit here, um, in my mess until we wrap for the day. But of course that wasn’t realistic. They had to change the lights, they had to do things with the bus. And I got up and, um… Yeah. And Brian Baumgartner was the first person to say, um, Ellie, did you wet your pants? And I said, yeah, I did, Brian. And I just want to say, none- not one of the ladies on the bus was in any way fazed. Uh oh. You wet- okay, well, does anybody have an extra pair? Does- do we have a wardrobe change? Everybody took it- all the ladies took it in stride. And the men? We’re grossed out. Okay? I don’t know if every single one was. I just remember the men unsure at all what to do with this. And all of the women thought, well, that’s just another day of being a woman. So that is the story of me wetting my pants on The Office Work Bus. Um, thank you for, uh, for letting me share this cautionary tale. And I hope all of you will be able to sleep tonight knowing this, this haunted, haunted story that happened in real life. Okay, bye. 

Jenna [00:52:27] Uh, my goodness, Ellie, I’ll just never forget it. She was still laughing so hard. 

Angela [00:52:33] Yeah. 

Jenna [00:52:34] Then at the fact that she had peed. 

Angela [00:52:36] Had peed. Yes. 

Angela [00:52:38] I’ll never forget when, um, when she got up, the wardrobe van came up to help her get a change- and when she got up, we had grabbed paper towels and put it on the pee spot on her chair. 

Jenna [00:52:49] Yeah. Yeah, there wasn’t much. There were some little napkins and then, like, papers. 

Angela [00:52:55] We just put it on top and dried to dab it. 

Jenna [00:52:57] Yeah. Mhm. Oh my goodness. 

Angela [00:53:00] Oh my gosh. 

Jenna [00:53:01] Well I remember this too because I remember we were like oh my gosh. We’re always going to remember this episode because it’s the episode where Ellie peed her pants. 

Angela [00:53:09] Yeah. 

Jenna [00:53:10] We thought this was going to be the memorable thing about this episode. 

Angela [00:53:13] Peed her pants Work Bus, not death bus. 

Jenna [00:53:16] We could not have imagined what was to come. Thank you Ellie so much for sending in your story. 

Angela [00:53:22] I know. Ellie, it was fantastic. 

Jenna [00:53:23] I also want to point out if you watch us during the song, just how very sweaty both John and Brian are in this scene. Just note it. We were so hot. 

Angela [00:53:34] So hot. And the guys had on their blazers and oh Lord. 

Jenna [00:53:38] This was the first time we were comfortable. I don’t recall being hot. I have to say.

Angela [00:53:44] I do remember feeling kind of it was like stagnant. 

Jenna [00:53:48] Stuffy. Yeah, it was- 

Angela [00:53:49] Like no air moving. Yeah. 

Jenna [00:53:51] Yeah. We’ve got a little one off joke coming up. Dwight notices a hitchhiker on the side of the road, and he goes to pick this person up and guess what? It’s Creed. 

Angela [00:54:00] Yeah, Creed’s like, turns out he’s playing hooky for work. I thought Creed did such a fantastic job. His expression when he sees everyone on the bus was so good. 

Jenna [00:54:12] We’re going to have a moment now where the bus is clearly pulled over. Everyone is posing for a group photo in front of a big rooster. Location alert. We filmed these rooster scenes at Woodley Park. This was actually the same day that we shot all the baseball field stuff. This happened on our first day on location. It was really lovely. We had a beautiful base camp with our trailers and changes of clothes and great lunch. This was a wonderful day. 

Angela [00:54:40] I brought my football because the park was right there so we could toss the ball. This was a wonderful day. 

Jenna [00:54:46] But Pam is going to notice that Dwight has kind of wandered off on his own, and she’s kind of planting the seed. Like, what’s going on with Dwight? You know, Pam is always pretty attuned to Dwight’s, I guess, emotional life. 

Angela [00:54:59] She really is. 

Jenna [00:55:00] She has a soft spot for him. 

Angela [00:55:02] Well, now I think it’s time for us to have a get to know your cast and crew moment from the call sheet. 

Jenna [00:55:06] Oh. All right. 

Angela [00:55:07] This is about John Eggett, who worked in special effects. Three things you didn’t know about John. He has too many favorite books and cannot pick just one. If it is written, he will read it. The prettiest place he has ever been is Lake Tahoe in the 1960s. He was once a deejay in a French bordello, and his favorite midnight snack is cold Colonel Sanders. 

Jenna [00:55:32] Huh? 

Angela [00:55:33] I think they’re adding a new question. What’s your favorite midnight snack? I’ll be adding that the next time we have a guest. 

Jenna [00:55:40] You all know mine. 

Angela [00:55:42] Oh. Cereal. Lucky Charms.

Jenna [00:55:44] Lucky Charms. Yeah. I think that’s a great question to ask people. You know, Angela, since we’ve gone off topic here for just a moment, over the break I started realizing that I’m probably going to get a bunch of, like, mail from people about my landline 911 paranoia about knowing my location. I feel like people are going to tell me that actually my cell phone can pinpoint my location, and I just want everyone to know that I don’t turn on my location on my cell phone. And the reason that I don’t do that is very important to me, and it is because I don’t want to get framed for a crime. 

Angela [00:56:23] You don’t want to get pinged in the cell phone, yeah-  

Jenna [00:56:26] Yeah. I don’t like the idea that, like, I might get framed one day for a major crime because the location thing was on on my cell phone. And so, you guys, I just need you all to know that I really need that landline. Because my cell phone is not pinpointing my location. And now, listen, I don’t know if it can still ping like when you use it. Maybe it pings the towers. I’m going to need to look into this. But my mind has been on fire ever since I brought it up. 

Angela [00:56:55] My kids just did mock trial at school, you know, they learn a trial, and then they go in front of a real judge and they try a case. 

Jenna [00:57:03] Mhm. 

Angela [00:57:03] And their case, there was a murder in a hotel. 

Jenna [00:57:06] Did they use the cell phone pings? 

Angela [00:57:08] The investigators used the cell phone pings, and they did a radius that the defense thought was too broad. 

Jenna [00:57:16] Mhm. 

Angela [00:57:16] And they contested it and got it expunged so that the jurors never even heard about what cell phones were there. 

Jenna [00:57:25] Okay. 

Angela [00:57:25] But the radius was really big. It covered the hotel, the street corner like it was really big. And they had everyone’s cell phone information from that area. 

Jenna [00:57:37] Now I think you have to turn on airplane mode to stop the pings. 

Angela [00:57:41] But then you can’t get calls. 

Jenna [00:57:42] I know. 

Angela [00:57:43] You should get a beeper and a landline just like me. 

Jenna [00:57:46] Yeah, because then you’ll know my location if I’m at home and you can’t frame me for a crime. 

Angela [00:57:51] That’s right. And if someone really needs to get ahold of you, they can call you and type something in for your beeper. And then you can read your beeper, and then you can drive to a phone somewhere and call that person back. 

Jenna [00:58:04] That sounds convenient and really easy to fit into my lifestyle as I know it today. 

Angela [00:58:12] Yeah. 

Jenna [00:58:12] All right, back on topic. 

Angela [00:58:14] Because there’s payphones everywhere. Not. There’s no payphones anymore. Good luck finding a payphone. What? 

Jenna [00:58:21] Should we move on? 

Angela [00:58:22] Yes. 

Jenna [00:58:23] All right. Next stop, pies. Kevin is really worried that they are not going to make it on time. Laverne closes at five, which is only 20 minutes from now. 

Angela [00:58:36] Kevin is all of a sudden a math genius. 

Jenna [00:58:39] Yeah. All of a sudden, Kevin’s like, if we drive this fast in this many minutes, then we’ll make the pie. And Angela’s like, wait, you’re suddenly you can do math as long as it applies to pies? 

Angela [00:58:51] Yeah. Oscar switches the scenario and changes it to salad, and then Kevin can’t do the math. 

Jenna [00:58:57] We got fan mail about this. First off, we have a compliment from Lizette A in Houston, Texas, who says, I love this pie joke from Oscar when he pulls out the calculator and asks Kevin to do math. Super smart for whoever wrote that. But Jacob O from Seattle, Washington, has a counterpoint. Jacob is a mathematician. 

Angela [00:59:18] Uh oh. 

Jenna [00:59:19] Jacob says, this has bothered me for years, and every time I watch this episode, I am irritated by this.

Angela [00:59:25] Oh, no. 

Jenna [00:59:27] At 13 minutes and 38 seconds, when Oscar asks Kevin, how much is 19,154 pies divided by 61 pies and Kevin answers 314 pies, while the number is correct, the answer should not be in units of pies. The quotient of two quantities which have the same units is unitless. So the answer is just 314, not 314 pies. However, Jacob says it gets worse. 

Angela [00:59:58] Oh, no. 

Jenna [00:59:59] Pies come with their own canonical division problem. Oscar should have asked how much is 19,154 pies divided among 61 people? 

Angela [01:00:13] Huh? 

Jenna [01:00:14] Yeah. 

Angela [01:00:14] Jacob, you’ve given us a lot to think about. 

Jenna [01:00:16] Yeah. Jacob would like to know why did the writers have Kevin attach the wrong units? Why did they decide to divide pies by pies instead of dividing pies among people? 

Angela [01:00:28] Jacob, I can tell you right now, there wasn’t a mathematician in that room, and they should have called one. 

Jenna [01:00:33] Yeah, you’re right. But I see Jacob’s point because Oscar is a mathematician. So Oscar would have asked the question correctly. 

Angela [01:00:42] He would have phrased it correctly. Yes. 

Jenna [01:00:44] It’s true. 

Angela [01:00:44] He would have caught that, Jacob. That was a good catch. 

Jenna [01:00:47] It was a good catch. Lisette, you are still allowed to love this scene. 

Angela [01:00:51] I have a catch for this scene as well. It has nothing to do with mathematics. 

Jenna [01:00:56] Does it have to do with Meredith’s screen? 

Angela [01:00:59] At 13 minutes and 45 seconds, Kate had been playing solitaire. 

Jenna [01:01:02] I saw it too. I love it that her character. 

Angela [01:01:05] Is so committed to solitaire. 

Jenna [01:01:07] She gets on this work bus and just plays solitaire all day. Well, now Dwight is going to inform everyone that they’re almost out of gas anyway. He refuses to get gas, and then he climbs up through the sunroof and is going to go sulk on the top of the bus. Because he’s on the top of the roof, they now cannot safely drive away. 

Angela [01:01:26] Even though Phyllis says, just drive away. 

Jenna [01:01:28] Yeah. 

Angela [01:01:28] Phyllis… Pam is now going to say, Jim, just go check on him. Just- something’s up. Go check on him. 

Jenna [01:01:35] Yeah. You know, in the table read draft of this episode, when we all sat down to read this as a cast, this was actually a scene between Dwight and Pam. Pam was going to go up on the roof and check on Dwight. But after the table read, we had a big discussion about how we thought that it might play better as a Jim Dwight moment. 

Angela [01:01:53] I agree with that actually. 

Jenna [01:01:55] I do too. This is something I haven’t shared yet, but since me, John, Rainn, and Ed were producers this season, something that we now did was we would stay after the table reads for the notes sessions. 

Angela [01:02:06] Yeah. 

Jenna [01:02:07] And so this was something I remembered was that, oh yeah, it was decided in the notes session that this would change from Dwight and Pam to Dwight and Jim. Oh, oh!  Also, before we go on the roof, Angela, I have to note at the end of this scene, Andy’s really mad that they’re not going to get pie, because it probably means he’s not going to get banana cream because it’s the first go. 

Angela [01:02:29] Yeah. 

Jenna [01:02:29] And then he swishes his curtain. 

Angela [01:02:31] Yeah. 

Jenna [01:02:31] It’s the same as the one in our studio! 

Angela [01:02:34] Oh, the same shower curtain? 

Jenna [01:02:35] It looks exactly the same. It’s like a shower curtain on the top and the bottom, but then in the middle, it’s like a plastic see-through thing. 

Angela [01:02:42] A clear patch? 

Jenna [01:02:43] So, everybody, if you wonder what our shower curtain thing looks like in our studio, it looks like what Andy has on the work bus. 

Angela [01:02:50] You know what? I’m going to do a side by side. 

Jenna [01:02:52] Oh, great! 

Angela [01:02:53] I wanted to tell you guys that this heart to heart that Jim and Dwight have on top of the bus was much longer in the shooting draft. And let me tell you, Jim really lays into Dwight. This is how it was written: Jim climbs up on top of the roof. He gently says, Dwight? Dwight: Yeah. Jim says, Why do you have to be such a cheap prick? You’ve got four sources of income; a farm, a bed and breakfast, your job, and you own the building. You’ve got no dependents. I spend every penny on fricking diapers and all I wanted was to buy my wife a pie. With everything you’ve got, you couldn’t throw me a little bone? 

Jenna [01:03:33] Wow. 

Angela [01:03:34] I know he calls him a cheap prick. Dwight responds and says, Hey, idiot. You’re the one who’s rich and you don’t even appreciate it. I’m barren. And then Jim says, What? And the scene continues as it aired. And then Jim tells him that was a prank. 

Jenna [01:03:52] Yes. And then Dwight says, Well, prank or no prank, I’m still barren. 

Angela [01:03:58] Mhm. 

Jenna [01:03:59] Well, Steve Burgess said it was kind of complicated to shoot these two guys up on the top of a bus, as you can imagine. They had Rainn harnessed to the top of the bus, but they couldn’t harness in John because he had to climb up and move around. So John’s just walking around on top of a bus. And then they had our camera operators, Matt and Sarah, were up on ladders to make them as high as the bus. Very tricky shot. 

Angela [01:04:25] Well, we learned a little bit of that kind of on top of the bus footage in Speed. 

Jenna [01:04:30] We sure did. If you are going to shoot anything on a bus or on top of a bus, you might want to give us a call because we… 

Angela [01:04:38] We can help you map it out. 

Jenna [01:04:39] We sure can. 

Angela [01:04:41] Well, Nellie and Erin have finished her adoption forms. Nellie is going to walk up to Andy and ask him to sign it for her, and he says it’s unsignable. And he wishes her luck with her impossible dream. Erin watches all of this and it really hits her hard. 

Jenna [01:05:00] Yeah, we’re going to hear some crying at the front of the bus, and Andy assumes it’s Nellie. And he’s kind of ready to go shame her about it. 

Angela [01:05:09] Yeah. He says British women are famously overemotional. 

Jenna [01:05:13] And Pete says, It’s not Nellie. Very pointedly. 

Angela [01:05:18] Yeah. 

Jenna [01:05:19] And it’s revealed that it’s Erin who’s crying while Nellie consoles her, saying, listen, it’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. 

Angela [01:05:27] Brent shared with us a little bit about the scene and about how they filmed Ellie crying, and we want you to hear it. 

Brent Forrester [01:05:34] There’s a scene at the end of Work Bus where Ellie Kemper has to cry. I was on set with Bryan Cranston when Ellie came up to him and said, Hey, I just want you to know, as an actress, I cannot cry on cue. And Bryan said to her, It’s actually a lot easier than you think. And he told her about how he had been a soap opera actor on the show Loving in the 1980s, and he would see the soap opera actresses when they had to cry in a scene, they would drink two liters of water in the morning. And Bryan said that if you were hyper hydrated and you just got sad, the water would pour out of your eyes. Now, I don’t know if Ellie took his advice, and I don’t know if she cries real tears in that scene, but if she did, it’s the first time Ellie Kemper ever cried on camera. And it’s all thanks to Bryan Cranston and the soap opera actresses of Loving. 

Jenna [01:06:27] Well Ange, I traded some text messages with Ellie Kemper about this. 

Angela [01:06:31] What did she say? Is that why she peed? Because she was drinking so much water all day? She had a full bladder. 

Jenna [01:06:37] She said she did not take this advice. 

Angela [01:06:39] Oh. 

Jenna [01:06:40] She used a menthol stick. 

Angela [01:06:42] Oh, well, that will make your eyes water. 

Jenna [01:06:44] I’ve used them. It’s like they dab menthol up by your eyes and it makes them water. And then you, you know, you just kind of… 

Angela [01:06:52] Yeah. 

Jenna [01:06:52] With your voice and, and you’re, you know- And then the menthol does the tears. 

Angela [01:06:57] Kenneth Paul, who did my makeup on the show, once asked me if I was a vampire because he put the menthol in the corner of my eyes, and my eyes didn’t react to it at all. 

Jenna [01:07:07] Do vampires not cry? 

Angela [01:07:09] I don’t know. He just was like, are you the walking dead? I can’t, he said, I’ve never seen anyone not have a reaction to the menthol stick. 

Jenna [01:07:18] Do your eyes water when you cut onions? 

Angela [01:07:21] Yes. 

Jenna [01:07:22] Oh!  

Angela [01:07:23] I know. 

Jenna [01:07:23] So maybe that’s how we make you cry in your next project. 

Angela [01:07:27] I guess I’m gonna have to roll in with a bunch of onions. 

Jenna [01:07:29] I love this visual. I love this idea. 

Angela [01:07:33] If I get a job on a soap opera, I’m like, one second. Let me chop an onion. 

Jenna [01:07:36] Mhm. Jim is going to convince Dwight that he has a lot of children and they are his work children. They are his buildinkinder. And there’s something he can do for his buildinkinder. And it’s get them some pie. 

Angela [01:07:49] Yep. 

Jenna [01:07:50] Dwight is inspired by this. We did have a tiny catch from Alison Y in Louisville, Kentucky, who said, I’ve been waiting for this little background catch. The office staff are upset that the pie stand closes at five, and it’s already 4:42 when Jim climbs onto the roof to go after Dwight. However, if you look at the watch on Jim’s wrist, it actually says 2:55. It’s true. You can see Jim’s watch very clearly at 15 minutes, 42 seconds, 17 minutes, 24 seconds, and the best shot of it is at 18 minutes, two seconds and it is 2:55. Well, here it is, folks. Our almost death number one. When Dwight comes down from the roof and gets behind the wheel and starts speeding away toward the pie. 

Angela [01:08:39] Where do we even start? First of all, we rehearsed the scene and Rainn was actually going to be pretending to drive, but not driving. 

Jenna [01:08:46] Yeah, the bus was hooked up to a pole rig. 

Angela [01:08:48] Yes. And off camera they were going to yell, swerve right! And the whole cast would all lurch to the right. Then they’d say, swerve left! We’d all lurch to the left. But in fact, we were just driving along straight. 

Jenna [01:09:03] Yes. 

Angela [01:09:04] And we were not even driving. We were being pulled. Very safe, very safe. 

Jenna [01:09:08] Yes. 

Angela [01:09:09] Well, they watched that in playback. And guess what? It looked real phony. 

Jenna [01:09:13] Super fakey. 

Angela [01:09:14] We didn’t do a really good job, I guess, of fake swerving. So they said, you know what? We’re going to take the bus off the rig. We’re going to put a stunt driver in. Rainn, you hop out. Now, we’re going to drive down the road. And when we yell swerve right, the stunt driver is going to swerve right. 

Jenna [01:09:32] Yeah. And we should just…. 

Angela [01:09:33] Naturally. 

Both [01:09:35] React. 

Jenna [01:09:36] Right. 

Angela [01:09:37] What no one thought about was that there were hundreds of items inside a tiny bus, and all of them were not nailed down. They weren’t tied down. Everything you see was loose! Rolling chairs, desks, lamps, staplers, water cooler, coffee pot. None of it was taped down, nailed down, strapped down, none of it. 

Jenna [01:10:01] And literally no one thought of this. 

Angela [01:10:04] None of us! I don’t know what was up. And then we start off down the road. 

Jenna [01:10:09] Mhm. 

Angela [01:10:10] And when they told the stunt driver to swerve, he swerved like I thought the bus was going to tip over. It was like such a hard turn. 

Jenna [01:10:18] It was so intense. And the entire cast and all of the contents of the bus went flying into the side of the bus. 

Angela [01:10:28] And you can see it in real time, because that’s the take we used. 

Jenna [01:10:32] They used a very tiny portion of the take. 

Both [01:10:35] Because. 

Angela [01:10:36] We were on the floor, covered in things. 

Jenna [01:10:39] Covered in people. 

Angela [01:10:41] Covered in people you couldn’t even see Creed. He was covered with so many things. 

Jenna [01:10:45] And people. 

Angela [01:10:46] And people. I hurt my knee because who was it, was a Clark’s chair rolled into my chair? I rolled- everything- I got smushed up against the wall. Everything rolled into me. 

Jenna [01:10:57] Yes. 

Angela [01:10:57] My lamp slid into my lap. I remember catching my lamp in my lap. 

Jenna [01:11:02] Yeah, I was on the ground. Leslie was on top of me. And I remember we had to pull a lot of things out to find Phyllis. She hurt her ankle. 

Angela [01:11:13] Our camera operators. 

Jenna [01:11:14] Yes, they went flying. 

Angela [01:11:15] They went flying while holding cameras. 80 pound cameras. 

Jenna [01:11:19] Yes. And true to their love of their cameras and the equipment, you know, they used their bodies to shield the cameras. 

Angela [01:11:27] The bus was an absolute mess. It was like someone picked it up and shook it in the air and everything went everywhere. 

Jenna [01:11:36] I mean, I’m thinking back to it. We stopped the bus and we were just in a daze. 

Angela [01:11:42] Yeah. 

Jenna [01:11:43] We got off the side of the road. I don’t even remember where we were. 

Angela [01:11:46] We couldn’t even get off very quickly because they had to, like, kind of pull us out of it all. 

Jenna [01:11:51] Yes. The medics came rushing up. We were able to assess that everyone was, you know, had bumps and bruises but were ultimately okay. But shook up, I think is a fair assessment. There were some bathrooms nearby. We were like in a random park. 

Angela [01:12:11] Yeah. 

Jenna [01:12:12] And I remember there were like these hikers coming back from a hike. I just remember the look on their face because they were just watching the cast of The Office, walking in a daze to the public restroom. I went in there with Phyllis. 

Angela [01:12:29] They got ice for Phyllis, I remember. 

Jenna [01:12:31] Yep. My knee was a little messed up. 

Angela [01:12:33] Yeah. 

Jenna [01:12:34] We couldn’t believe it. We were like, wow. Wow. 

Angela [01:12:37] That just happened. 

Jenna [01:12:38] Yes. 

Angela [01:12:39] They had to reset the whole interior of the bus. 

Jenna [01:12:42] Yeah, we took a lunch break. 

Angela [01:12:44] Yeah, we were like, forget it, let’s go to lunch. 

Jenna [01:12:46] And we couldn’t even ride back to our base camp in the bus, which had been the intention. So they had to bring all these vans. But we got back. We have lunch. We were like, we’re okay. We kind of ended up laughing about it. We were like, oh my God, that’s crazy. We’re like, Bryan Cranston, you almost killed the whole cast of The Office. 

Both [01:13:03] Hahaha. 

Angela [01:13:05] But we’re okay. 

Jenna [01:13:06] Yes. And you know, he had had a number of crazy things happen on that RV in Breaking Bad where it’s like, you know, going back and forth and all of the meth lab is flying all over the place. So we’re just trading crazy stories. 

Angela [01:13:19] He felt really bad though. 

Jenna [01:13:20] He did. It was so sweet. I mean, we cannot express enough how sweet Bryan Cranston is. But it was right- we’re like, it’s fine, it’s fine. And after lunch, we had some more scenes to shoot on the bus. They had gotten it all put back together and they brought us together and they said, guys, we’re so sorry about what happened, but we have kind of an exciting announcement. We know it’s just been hot and miserable on this bus, but we have found a portable air conditioning unit. 

Angela [01:13:49] Yeah, we could hook it up to the back of the bus. 

Jenna [01:13:52] We’re going to, like, tow it on like a little trailer behind us. 

Angela [01:13:56] And it’ll have a tube that comes in the top vent and it’s silent. 

Jenna [01:14:01] Yeah, we can keep it on the whole shoot the whole rest of the day. 

Angela [01:14:05] Amazing. 

Jenna [01:14:06] The bus is- yes, it’s clean. We don’t have any more crazy driving stunts. 

Angela [01:14:10] We’re just going to drive and capture the last few scenes. 

Jenna [01:14:14] It’s going to be great and it’s so excited. 

Angela [01:14:17] So excited. We got on the bus. There was such this cool air. Oh, it felt like a retreat from the heat the minute you walked in. 

Jenna [01:14:26] It was right above where I was sitting. 

Angela [01:14:28] The vent. 

Jenna [01:14:29] The vent. 

Angela [01:14:29] Yes. 

Jenna [01:14:30] So I was like, so happy. This is great. 

Angela [01:14:33]  You got that nice cold air blowing on ya. Well, as we start filming, Jenna started to say, I smell something. Something smells weird. And we were like, I don’t smell it. I was at the front of the bus. I remember being like, I don’t smell anything. And you did have a lot of allergies. 

Jenna [01:14:52] I did. I was, you know, I was always noticing dust. I can probably spot mold like a mile away. I’ll start sneezing. 

Angela [01:15:00] So we were kind of like, well, Jenna’s a little sensitive to things, you know? 

Jenna [01:15:03] I was like, guys, it smells like gas. Like it smells- I feel like it’s- I can smell exhaust. 

Angela [01:15:10] Yeah. 

Jenna [01:15:10] Something is wrong. 

Angela [01:15:11] Something is wrong. And Jenna was like, I’m serious. Something is- there’s gas, guys, coming in. And then I remember Sarah, our camera operator. She got like, dizzy. 

Jenna [01:15:21] Yeah. She was like, guys, I don’t feel good. 

Angela [01:15:24] She was standing right behind you, right under the vent. 

Jenna [01:15:27] Yes. 

Angela [01:15:28] So then Bryan Cranston comes on the bus, he gets a chair, he pulls it over and he stands on the chair and puts his face right up in that vent and immediately goes, Oh my God, everyone get off the bus. Here’s what was going on. That air conditioner that we were pulling behind the bus, the intake tube was about a foot away from the exhaust pipe of the bus. 

Jenna [01:15:52] We were literally sucking exhaust, making it cooler- 

Angela [01:15:56] And shooting it back in the bus. 

Jenna [01:15:58] Yes. 

Angela [01:16:00] We were breathing in the bus’ exhaust.  

Jenna [01:16:02] Carbon monoxide. 

Angela [01:16:03] Yes. 

Jenna [01:16:04] 100%. 

Angela [01:16:04] I remember Leslie’s eyes were red and watery. And Sarah got this horrible headache. You were like, feeling almost nauseous, right? 

Jenna [01:16:15] Yes. Yes. Which again, we assumed was just my car sickness. Right? 

Angela [01:16:20] I remember the look of horror on Bryan’s face. 

Jenna [01:16:24] I feel so bad for him. 

Angela [01:16:24] He immediately was like, Everyone off the bus now. We had been breathing in carbon monoxide. 

Jenna [01:16:30] For a good amount of time. 

Angela [01:16:31] Yeah. Ugh.

Jenna [01:16:32] So we. 

Angela [01:16:35] All got off the bus. 

Jenna [01:16:36] The medics came over, they checked us out. They said we were all okay, that our exposure time would not put us at great risk. They mentioned we might have some headaches but that we would ultimately be fine. And luckily the scene we had not shot yet is the scene coming up, which is the pie. 

Angela [01:16:58] Pies. 

Jenna [01:16:59] If we all look like we couldn’t be happier to be eating the pie, it’s because we were really happy to be eating the pie after this day we’d had. 

Angela [01:17:06] And breathing fresh air. 

Jenna [01:17:08] Yes. After almost dying twice, this pie was so delicious. And listen, our characters are happy to be eating pie as well. Because Andy is going to give Nellie the signed application form. Kevin is going to get Oscar to throw pie in his face. 

Angela [01:17:26] Yeah. 

Jenna [01:17:26] Pam tells Jim she is so happy to be eating pie, and he’s so happy that he’s made her happy. I want you to know, in the table read draft of the script, we did not make it to the pie stand. 

Angela [01:17:38] Oh, that would have been so sad. 

Jenna [01:17:40] That’s what we said. Me, John, Rainn and Ed were like, they need to get pie. In the original version of the script, the only thing we make it to is a gas station, and Dwight brings out Hostess Pies for everybody. 

Angela [01:17:53] Oh, I’m so glad we made it to Laverne’s Pies Tires Also Fixed. 

Jenna [01:17:57] Tires Fixed Also.  

Angela [01:17:58] That place, too. 

Jenna [01:18:00] Well, we got a question from Tali M in Toronto, Ontario who said, Background catch: While Kevin is trying to convince Oscar to pie him in the face, Erin and Peter chatting. Do you think this is foreshadowing for their future relationship or just a coincidence? 

Angela [01:18:16] Well, actually, Tali, there were a few little flirty moments in this whole episode that didn’t make it in between Erin and Pete. There was one when she was filling out the adoption forms with Nellie. They have a little scene. And this was another scene that they had where Pete takes a bite of blueberry pie, and then he kind of squishes blueberries on his teeth, and then he walks up to Erin and goes, Do I have anything in my teeth? And he smiles and his teeth are all blue, and they have this cute moment. So they actually had a few scenes together that are just furthering the storyline of Pete being someone that Erin is really bonding with. 

Jenna [01:18:58] I like Pete and Erin together. 

Angela [01:19:00] I do too! 

Jenna [01:19:01] A lot. I believe it and I like it. 

Angela [01:19:04] Yeah, there was even a Pete talking head about Erin in this episode that didn’t make it in, where he says that Erin’s just a really kind person, and she reminds him of his mom. 

Jenna [01:19:15] Hmm. Well, I want to share a little Phil Shea story about this pie. This pie was from a place called Simple Things sandwich shop and pie shop. And I remember that ahead of shooting this episode, Phil came up to me and asked me what kind of pie I would like to eat. 

Angela [01:19:31] He did. He went to the whole cast. 

Jenna [01:19:33] Mhm. 

Angela [01:19:33] Mhm. 

Jenna [01:19:34] I was allowed to pick anything but rhubarb because Pam doesn’t like rhubarb, which is ironic because- 

Angela [01:19:39] You love rhubarb. 

Jenna [01:19:39] Strawberry rhubarb is my favorite, but I ended up picking blueberry. 

Angela [01:19:44] I picked chocolate. 

Jenna [01:19:45] Mhm. 

Angela [01:19:46] Mhm. Well, now the final scene of this episode is everyone is back at work. They seem exhausted. Andy is going to come out with his banjo and lead everyone in one last roll call chant. And he ends it by playing Flatt and Scruggs. Flatt and Scruggs was an American bluegrass duo. Singer and guitarist Lester Flatt and banjo player Earl Scruggs, both of whom had been members of Bill Monroe’s band, The Bluegrass Boys, from 1945 to 1948. And then they formed a duo. I loved Ed playing the banjo at the end of this episode, and I feel like we should hear it, but before we do, thank you guys so much for sending in your questions and comments. 

Jenna [01:20:26] Thank you, Steve Burgess. Thank you, Ellie Kemper. 

Angela [01:20:28] Brent Forrester. We just love you guys so much. And thanks for supporting Office Ladies. And now here’s Ed playing the banjo. 

Everyone [01:20:51] Roll call. Roll call. 

Andy [01:20:55] What? 

Angela [01:20:57] There you have it, you guys. That was Work Bus aka Death Bus. And guess what? Next week- 

Jenna [01:21:03] Bryan Cranston is going to talk all about it. 

Angela [01:21:06] See you then! 

Jenna [01:21:15] Thank you for listening to Office Ladies. 

Angela [01:21:17] Office Ladies is produced by Earwolf, Jenna Fischer, and Angela Kinsey. 

Jenna [01:21:21] Our senior producer is Cassi Jerkins. Our in-studio engineer is Sam Kieffer. Our editing and mixing engineer is Jordan Duffy. And our associate producer is Aynsley Bubbico. 

Angela [01:21:31] Our theme song is Rubber Tree by Creed Bratton.