The Absolute Best Deleted Scenes From The Office

It's hard to forget Michael, fresh off his trip to a Jamaican resort, banging on a steel drum and serenading his employees with the news that he's feeling "hot, hot, hot." He is at his most irritating — no one has ever benefited from someone attempting reggae lamely at 10 a.m. — and his most truly clueless. He has no idea that he isn't introducing his colleagues to "island living," but preventing them from doing their work... and, simultaneously, no idea that the sunbathing photo of Jan is about to blow up his office.

In this deleted scene, however, he is almost sweet in his sincerity. Sure, he sounds ridiculous as he attempts to remember the lyrics to Harry Belafonte's "Day-O," and no, he is nowhere near pulling off his tiny little rasta braid, despite the fact that he somehow managed to fit three beads onto it. But he is nakedly honest when he describes wanting every day to feel like it did for him in Jamaica, when he woke with the sunrise, ate a mango, and looked forward to hours spent with someone he loved. He is almost tragicomic in the airport, his bold Hawaiian shirt the only color in the otherwise grey-toned frame. He has no idea how silly he looks, how messy things are about to get, or how much he's going to annoy his employees. He's just happy to be enjoying his "chill pill."

Jim and Michael's relationship took many forms. Sometimes, as when Jim confided in his bumbling boss about his feelings for Pam, it was a genuine friendship. Often it became a game of Jim seeing just how much he could get away with under the nose of the man who was, ostensibly, his superior. Once in a while it grew openly adversarial. But it never stopped mattering, from the moment they were introduced to the day Michael left for Colorado. The two men might not always have gotten along, but they made each other into better, smarter, and kinder people.

This deleted scene is a great example of the bedrock kindness that was always the foundation of Jim and Michael's camaraderie. Yes, Jim is pulling a fast one on Michael, culminating in Michael's surrender of his own office. Sure, Michael is made to look silly in contrast to Jim's knowing prankster charm. But Jim is genuinely helping his friend get into the right headspace, and by the end of the episode, he will have arranged a special screening of the Michael Scott "director's cut" at Poor Richard's Pub. When Michael needs a "suit" to play off, Jim steps in to provide — and Michael, if not knowingly, gives him a creative outlet in his workday. If that's not workplace synergy, what is?

The fake fire that led to Stanley's heart attack has become the stuff of Office legend. It was, of course, a great scene in and of itself, from the baroque escalation of Dwight's cigarette in a trash can to the moment Angela's cat falls out of the ceiling. But social media has given the clip new life, circulating everywhere from Tumblr to Twitter. Stanley collapsing is just the cherry on top of a strange and smoke-filled comedy sundae.

This deleted scene would have given it a hilarious postscript, however, and an all-time great Michael vs. Toby moment. The Office was, above all, built on the inherent tension of "cringe comedy," and this scene epitomizes that — and even adds a dash of horror. You're fairly certain Michael won't actually electrocute someone, but this is a show on which you can't be absolutely sure that won't happen. After all, someone already had a heart attack, and there was that episode all about Michael hitting Meredith with his car. 

By the time Michael wends his way to the annex and asks for a handshake from his greatest enemy, you're nearly convinced that Michael might just send a second employee to the hospital. The tension breaks, Michael is angry, Toby is once again laid low. But for a moment, the audience hangs perfectly suspended between horror and hilarity.

Before Andy was "Baby Wawa," before he was in and out of love with Erin, before he was boss, he was a fumbling salesman with nothing but a Cornell degree to his name. Among the earliest hits he would take was the moment he realized the young woman he'd been seeing was, in fact, an underage high-schooler. He and Jim wander the school in a daze after spotting her, Andy incredulous and increasingly hurt. How could she do this to him? How could he have been so blind? Finally, Jim comforts him with the soothing balm of acapella. Only song could soothe the savage beast.

In a deleted scene, however, The Office derived quite a bit more comedy from the situation. Andy cartoonishly confronts his girlfriend, Jim attempts to keep Andy from incriminating himself, and it becomes more and more clear just how thoroughly Andy's paramour and her friends were using him for access to the adult world. Jim failing to impress a high schooler is an exquisite gag — not even he can make this disaster of a situation anything but embarrassing. Cutting these scenes made the plotline more focused on Andy's failure to establish himself in Scranton, but it did deprive the audience of Jim accidentally insulting a dead man.

Jim and Dwight's rivalry was a pillar of The Office from beginning to end. Future Dwight, Megadesk, and Dwight's secret CIA ice cream social are all standouts of the series, and they're only a handful of classic moments between the two. What made their tension so special was the fact that Dwight never stopped believing himself to be the superior man, despite the many, many times Jim took him down a peg. He is, according to himself, the true authority in the office, an alpha male, possibly a genius, and so entirely perfect at being himself that his Second Life persona was also a Pennsylvanian paper salesman who owned and operated a small-scale beet farm.

It is that iron ego that makes this deleted scene so special. Dwight's password is "Frodo," because of course it is, and then he changes it to "Gollum," because of course he does. A lesser show might have reduced Jim to a bully and Dwight to the kicked-around patsy, but the cast and crew of The Office knew that Dwight would never allow himself to be reduced to such a cringing caricature. He is the volunteer sheriff's deputy, and by god, his internet will not be reduced to the lax state of security one might expect from (insert sneer) someone like Jim. The audience roots for both of them, because no one's really getting hurt — Dwight and Jim need each other to get through their days at Dunder Mifflin.

Season 4 started off strong, and not just because Jim and Pam had finally decided to act on their feelings. No, that long-running plotline played second fiddle to the real star of the season opener: the moment Michael hit Meredith with his car. Everything that came from that moment, poised on that edge between horrifying-and-hysterical that The Office kept sharpened to a wicked point, became the stuff of TV legend. Truly, will anything ever top Michael Scott's Dunder Mifflin Scranton Meredith Palmer Memorial Celebrity Rabies Awareness Pro-Am Fun Run Race for the Cure? 

The deleted scene of everyone visiting Meredith in the hospital comes about as close as anything could. It is a symphony of awkwardness, a perfect blend of these characters at their most vivid. Angela's terseness and Kevin's blunt narcissism are held barely in check by Michael, who is, of course, working overtime to convince everyone that he is not at fault here. Creed snags a few pills. Andy makes it weird, then doubles down. It is The Office encapsulated, a distillation of all that made these characters so weird, lovable, and ultimately, unforgettable. They might not have raised any money for rabies, but they cemented a place in our hearts.