I Will Never See The Office's Funniest Scene The Same Way Again After Learning The Truth About It

Apr 09, 2025

Dwight’s fire drill is the funniest scene from The Office by far, and there’s an interesting behind-the-scenes reason why that cold open was so chaotic. Season 5, episodes 14 and 15, “Stress Relief,” collectively make up one of The Office’s best episodes. In the first part, Dwight does a hands-on fire drill that involves lighting a real fire in the office and ends with Stanley having a heart attack. In the second episode, Michael allows his employees to roast him in order to blow off some steam and relieve some stress.

The opening sequence of “Stress Relief” is easily the best cold open from The Office, and that might be because it wasn’t put together like all the other cold opens. There was a specific reason why “Stress Relief” opened with such a crazy scene. The construction of this cold open is detailed in Andy Green’s book The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s, an excerpt of which can be read on Vulture.

On February 1, 2009, nearly 100 million Americans tuned in to watch the showdown between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII. NBC had a tough decision to make about which of their shows to follow it up with. They considered airing an episode of The Apprentice, but ended up choosing The Office. The Office was already the network’s biggest comedy, averaging nine million viewers per episode, but the Super Bowl was an opportunity to introduce the show to an even bigger audience.

The Office was already the network’s biggest comedy, averaging nine million viewers per episode, but the Super Bowl was an opportunity to introduce the show to an even bigger audience.

According to writer Anthony Farrell, showrunner Greg Daniels told the writing staff that the Super Bowl episode had to be “big and crazy and wild.” Since it would be the first thing that Super Bowl viewers saw when the game was over, the cold open needed to stand out, so the football fans would “stick around” for the rest of the supersized episode. And from that mandate, Dwight’s iconic fire drill was born.

Writer Gene Stupnitsky recalls that Daniels came in with a bizarre pitch for the Super Bowl episode based on an obscure French film he’d seen: “Jim loses Pam in a poker game.” Stupnitsky says that Daniels was like a father figure to all The Office’s writers, so they had a tough time telling him they didn’t like the idea. The writers actually started to break the story for the poker game episode, but thankfully, before it was too late, Daniels came to his senses, ditched the poker storyline, and accepted a pitch about Dwight setting the office on fire.

Source: The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s, via Vulture

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