'The Office' goes back to work

When The Office executive producer Greg Daniels and actor Rainn Wilson talked to reporters a couple weeks ago about the show's return, NBC had yet to announce that it will spin off the Emmy-winning comedy. Still, Wilson sounded up for the idea.

Someone had asked Daniels about resisting the temptation to make breakout supporting characters -- like Wilson's Dwight Schrute, for instance -- more and more broad. He said he prefers to spread the wealth among the show's ensemble.

"That's part of trying to kind of keep people off balance. You know what I mean? Obviously Dwight is super funny and people love Dwight," Daniels says. "And they buy Dwight dolls and stuff like that. But if it just became the Dwight Show, you know ..."

"There would be nothing wrong with that," Wilson chimes in.

We should point out that for now, the spinoff is pretty much a blank slate: NBC hasn't cast anyone or even revealed a premise. The prevailing opinion, however, is that the new series won't focus on any of the principal characters in The Office.

More's the pity, based on some of the jokey ideas Daniels and Wilson threw out during the call.

Daniels: "We just joke around [in the writers' room]. We talk about the detective agency. Have you heard that, Rainn?"
Wilson: "No. ... I think it would be like -- in the '70s, what was the one that was at -- Dennis Weaver was on a horse ..."
Daniels: "McCloud."
Wilson: "Yeah. McCloud was a fish-out-of-water cop in New York City and there's something appealing about that."
Daniels: "I like that. That's perfect."
Wilson: "There's something appealing about just watching Dwight going in an opposite direction, not having it be a comedy or a sitcom -- but just having it be a reality show about a beet farmer. Kind of like Ax Men -- it's this new hit reality show about lumberjacks. You could just watch a beet farmer."

The Office returns to NBC Thursday with an episode that finds Jan (Melora Hardin) and Michael (Steve Carell) having several co-workers -- including Jim and Pam (John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer), who've finally run out of excuses over for dinner. Here's a clip:

Along with fictional spinoffs, Daniels and Wilson discussed the first episode back, character development and other aspects of the show. Some highlights:

What's ahead

Daniels: "That's a very kind of charged situation where Michael has been asking Pam and Jim to come have dinner with him and Jan over and over, and over again.

"And he finally manages this -- through this kind of scam, to destroy all their excuses. And it just happens to be after the previous episode which is when he went to New York to try and help Jan with her deposition, and he kind of blew her wrongful-termination lawsuit. So there's a lot of tension between them in that episode. And then, coming up we have some episodes that follow off of that.

"Some of them involve the character of Ryan [B.J. Novak] whose website initiative started the season off and is kind of crumbling underneath him and has gotten -- for some reason has become infested with sexual predators. .... And we have episodes coming up where Dwight and Michael are going to have joined Ryan in some of his club-hopping New York partying and, you know, try to -- I think get involved in his life a little bit more."

The many facets of Dwight Schrute

Wilson: "I want to say that this is something that I love about this show is that, you know, every season -- even every episode -- every couple of episodes, there's always some new aspect of Dwight that Greg and the writers want to explore.

"And that's such a rare thing, you know. So many shows have their comic sidekick character and ... they do X,Y and Z. But I get emotional stories and comedic stories, and family stories -- lots of different textures. And I really appreciate getting to do that as an actor."

Effects of the strike

Daniels: "Well, you know, we had some stuff that we were planning for the end of the year, and we didn't end up having enough time to do what we had planned. But we came up with some other alternatives -- things which we really like a lot -- and it's probably good that way for the creative process.

"... We didn't have a lot of stuff that we scrapped because we only had the one episode ready to be shot, and that's the one we came back with."

Will they ever see the documentary?

Daniels: "We have talked about it. I don't think we're there yet, but I definitely love it as a big, kind of game-changing story move. But, you know, hopefully when we do press that nuclear button, it'll be prepared for and everybody will be -- you know, people will think it's worth it.

Wilson: "I think it's hard. Once they see the documentary -- I'm just speculating here because I know nothing about those conversations. But I think once they see the documentary and you kind of deal with the fallout of that, I don't know how much longer you can then continue storylines, you know, with all the characters kind of ... being in the public eye and stuff like that."

Daniels: "There are certain things that we have in our back pockets, and I feel like if we ever got to a place where we were discussing storylines and we just had nothing, you know, then we would say all right, time to scramble the world and see what comes out of that. You know, time to shake the Boggle set."

Your thoughts on the return of The Office? It's been too long, hasn't it?

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