TVSquad

(S05E02) Before we start tonight's review, I'd like to take a moment to worship at the Sling Media altar. Yet again, the makers of the Slingbox have made it possible for me to review The Office in a timely fashion despite the fact that I'm currently doing a week of shows in Las Vegas (where The Office airs three hours later than I'm used to and, for marketing purposes, has magician Lance Burton digitally inserted into every scene). If you're a traveler and a TV watcher and you haven't bought a Slingbox yet, you're missing out.

Part of me worried about the ethics of opening with what amounts to be a commercial for Slingbox (and also for my fabulous Las Vegas comedy show at the Tropicana: tickets still available for the weekend!) Then I realized that by doing so, I actually provided a pretty good segue into the theme of tonight's episode. So let's get to it...

Any DVD set that has The Office on it is going to be good. That's just a fact. So obviously, The Office: Season 4 DVD set already has a lot going for it. So what I was mainly interested in when I received it was how they dealt with their shortcomings: namely the fact that due to the writer's strike, this set only has 14 episodes.

While The Office fared much better than other shows with its truncated season, I still expect a DVD set without a full season's worth of episodes to have enough bonus features to help make up for it. While the features on this set are pretty standard (deletes scenes, blooper reels, commentaries, etc.) for the most part, the quality makes you forget that the set is light about ten episodes.

Ah, summertime. The heat, the haze, the traffic, the lack of The Office; what's not to hate? Luckily, the brilliant folks behind The Office have been busy figuring out ways to tide us over until the fall. Starting Thursday, July 10, NBC.com will be airing Office webisodes. For those of you who like your Dunder Mifflin-ites live, Mindy Kaling (Kelly) will be hosting the Office Games in Scranton on Saturday, July 19.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to participate in a conference call with Mindy Kaling and Brian Baumgartner (Kevin) as they discussed the webisodes, Office Games, friendly competition and the status of a few MIA Dunder Mifflin employees.

To some, the only games that matter this summer will be the Olympics in Beijing. To others, Scranton, Pennsylvania will be the place to be for the real games.

On Saturday, July 19, The Office's number one on-screen enthusiast, spunky Kelly Kapoor -- played by actress/writer/co-executive producer Mindy Kaling -- will host a series of games to promote the release of two new The Office products. NBC and Pressman Toy have created The Office DVD Board Game and The Office Trivia Game.

I'm just catching up after the closest thing that I have ever seen to a hurricane blew through volcano country and knocked out the power for 30 hours, and my internet has just gone all Dunder Miflin on me. Anyway, there is a good article over at the L.A. Times about writers as actors and what that means for comedy on television.

The focus is on The Office as many of the members of the cast are also the writers of the show. Executive producer Greg Daniels (The Simpsons) goes through his reasons for choosing to move people from the writers room in front of the camera. And it's not just because he's lazy. There is a method to his madness. Given the mockumentary style of the show, he feels that unpolished actors that may seem awkward at times add to the realism of the show.

They also touch on the character of Toby. Played by Paul Lieberstein, Toby was originally intended as a bit part. But when NBC President Kevin Reilly saw the character he responded, "He's funny. More of him." And Paul's acting career was born. The story for Mindy Kaling's character, Kelly, is much the same. Both of them say that they prefer writing to acting. Joel talked with Kelly about this back in March as well. It's a good behind the scenes piece, and worth a look.

Entertainment Weekly ran an interesting online reader's poll asking, "Who deserves more fame?"

While I'm not sure I'd wish big time, privacy-destroying fame on any of my favorite performers, there are definitely some TV actors out there who are severely underrated.

Who was included on the EW list? Christopher Gorham, Ugly Betty; Allison Mack, Smallville; Sara Rue, Less Than Perfect; Nathan Fillion, Firefly; Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, Supernatural; Wendell Pierce, The Wire; David Hyde Pierce, Fraiser; Matthew Settle and Damian Lewis, Band of Brothers; the cast of Everwood; Clea DuVall and Nick Stahl, Carnivale; Mary Lynn Rajskub and Roger Cross, 24 and Tahmoh Penikett, Battlestar Galactica.

Ryan Budke is at it again, bothering employees over at Dunder-Mifflin. This time he's in the breakroom of the company, interviewing cast member and writer/producer Mindy Kaling. In the exclusive Netscape video below, he talks to her about tonight's episode:

One of the things I like about this blogging job I have is that I get to interview people that I find interesting. They don't always have to be the biggest stars, but they have to have something about them that makes me curious. So when I started seeing more of Mindy Kaling on The Office, I decided to dig a little.

As I said in my February "In the Limelight" profile of her, the 26-year-old has accomplished quite a bit so far: besides being a writer and actor on The Office, Mindy also teamed with her friend Brenda Withers to write the play Matt & Ben, which won awards at the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival. She's also appeared on Curb Your Enthusiasm and in the mega-hit movie The 40 Year Old Virgin.

In The Office, Mindy plays Kelly, a Dunder-Mifflin drone who lately has been given a few interesting plotlines -- she has a crush on indifferent office temp Ryan. Kelly also has her very own annoying characteristic -- she can't shut up.

Needless to say, I was very interested in finding out how Mindy was able to go from Dartmouth to the writer's room of a hit network show in less than five years. So the Thursday before last, I managed to find her on the set of the show as she was wrapping up filming for the day. She called me back on a land line (maybe from the set itself... the phones there do work) and we talked about a number of topics, including how she's going to spend her April:

[Photo: Chris Haston/NBC]

One of the more obvious differences between the American and British versions of The Office is that the "background" characters, who were mosly silent in the British version, have started to develop personalities themselves, to the point where their portrayers are now considered to be full cast members. This is something that Greg Daniels and the writers of the show -- many of whom are some of those newly-minted cast members -- needed to do; faced with an open-ended set of 22-episode seasons, other characters besides the main five had to be developed, giving the writers more room to explore the Dunder-Mifflin world.

One of the office drones that is developing rapidly is Kelly, played by Mindy Kaling. Until a couple of episodes ago, all we knew about her was that she was the one around whom Michael would make inappropriate Indian jokes. But we're finding a lot more about Kelly in short order; first of all, she's chatty, extremely chatty, as Jim has been finding out. She also really digs Ryan, who is the most permanent temp in history. We also know that she's a little mischevious, as we found out when she innocently asked Michael's boss Jan about what the term "second base" meant, right before winking to the camera.