The Office & HIMYM: Favorite Cold Opens!

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And now we're doing the Ultimate Office Lovers podcast just for you. Each week we will dive deeper into the world of The Office with exclusive interviews, behind the scenes details and lots of BFF stories. We're The Office Lady 6.0. Hi there, everybody. Hi. We have such a fun episode today, lady. I'm really excited about it. We do. We are going to be discussing our favorite cold opens. I think you guys have heard us use that term before. That's sort of like the two minutes of a TV show that precedes the title sequence. A lot of times on The Office, this was a standalone comedic bit that was separate from the plot of the episode. But sometimes it was on plot of the episode. Yeah. And we're going to get into some of our favorite cold opens with some special guests today. We have Josh Radner and Craig Thomas, the hosts of How We Made Your Mother. We love their podcast. You guys know it. It's on our network. They rewatch each week an episode of How I Met Your Mother. And we're going to talk cold opens with them today. Yeah. We thought it would be kind of fun if we traded some of our favorite The Office cold opens, and they told us a couple of their favorites from How I Met Your Mother. But before we get to that, we have a really great chit chat. Yeah. This week's suggestion comes from Bailey M in Oklahoma City, who said, Hey, ladies. Taylor Swift recently released a music video for her song, Opalite, and Donal Gleason is in it. It is glorious. She put a period after each word. She wrote it out like it is your birthday, but she put it is glorious. Yes. Bailey said there's some Ned-like dancing. Please discuss. Okay, Bailey. We were very curious about all of this as well. And we did some digging. And this music video came about because Taylor and Donal were guests on the Graham Norton talk show, which is a really fun talk show. It's in England. There's like a big sofa and there's always a random assortment of celebrities on this sofa. And if you watch the episode of the talk show, you can literally see Taylor's eyes light up when she has the idea for this music video. It all started with Killian Murphy and Taylor Swift complimenting Donal on his performance in the paper. Let's hear it. Donal is magnetic in that show. I love that. I love that show. I want to say I'm so happy it's coming back and his character is like the loveliest, most romanticizing character. He like romanticizes his life. And it's really sweet and beautiful. And also I don't think that you just sound American. You seem American. I know your accent is so good. Like you are American. You have to leave that in the show. Here's your number for a better skyrocket. Thank you, Taylor Swift America. I'm not messing with you. Thank you. Can I also say thank you to Killian. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Killian. Thank you, thank you. No, no, no. He's got it. Thank you. Can I also say it's just worth watching for Donal's dancing alone. Oh my god. Yes, absolutely. I'm hoping to get into Taylor Swift's music video. And as the music video came out, Graham Norton was a guest on a podcast called Wanging On, and he talks about all of it. Let's hear it. And so tell us who was on your sofa that night. So basically, okay, I'll tell you what happened. So I got contacted by Taylor and Taylor's people and they wanted to discuss. I think they wanted to discuss something. I was like, oh, well, that's about. And then there was something about the music video. And I thought, oh, what's that? And then I got through the thing. And it was like the whole thing came to her in a blinding flash on the sofa. Which you see in the video. Yeah, at the end, if you stay to the end of the video, you see her get the idea. And it was, so she was on the show with Killian Murphy, Donald Gleason, Greta Lee, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Lewis Capaldi. And Donald Gleason said something about his dancing. And he said, oh, I'm hoping to be in the next Jail of Swift video. And you see her little eyes go, but doing, little light bulb moment. And the next thing you know, she's written this whole treatment and we're all in it. And everyone was available. Everyone agreed to do it. He also said that it was, quote, like shooting a movie. It was a massive, massive deal. And everyone was lovely on set. It was a really, really fun experience. And he said they filmed his scenes at the Whitgift Shopping Center in South London towards the end of 2025. And he was so excited to finally be able to talk about it. Well, I mean, first of all, if Taylor Swift asked you to be in her music video, of course the answer is yes. Come on. Of course. Yeah. I mean, anything Taylor, of course. I mean, Taylor, if you need to, you know, ladies of a certain season. Yes, we're there for you, Taylor. We're there for you, Taylor. Well, it's very funny because I have a little fun surprise to share. Also about Taylor Swift, I was in our general mailbag for Office Ladies. And I found this letter from Kayla M. in upstate New York. And Kayla, I thank you so much for this letter because I didn't know this. And it was a very exciting moment for my family. Oh. Here is what Kayla said. Hi, Office Ladies. This is urgent. Did you know that Jenna can be seen in the Taylor Swift The Errors tour, the final show concert movie? I noticed and screamed. What? Yes, lady. Yes. So, Kayla says just toward the end of All Too Well during the Red Era, you're in the crowd singing along and wearing your friendship bracelets. I cannot believe I just noticed this considering how many times I have watched it. Love you, ladies. You are kidding me. We both went to Taylor's Errors tour. I cannot believe I was not at the one in Vancouver. You were in Vancouver. I was in New Orleans. Lady, you made it into her movie? I can't believe it. I cannot believe it. My daughter and I went to that together. I took a screen grab of it. I was going to say I need a screen grab immediately. It's a very fun moment because I am just looking up at the stage with just like stars in my eyes. I look really happy. I've got my friendship bracelets and I was really happy. It was such a special night for me. So, lady, I took a screen grab of it. Here it is. Look at me. I've got, I'm holding my hands up under my chin. I'm looking up. I'm smiling. Oh my gosh, I see you. I've got my light up bracelet on. Yes. That is so special. That is so fun. And you know, right to my left there is my daughter who didn't make it into the movie, but who was there that night and it was just such a special night for us. And yeah, but isn't that crazy? That is crazy, crazy. Okay, so I also went with my daughter, but Jenna, what did you wear? Because I look back at my pictures. I wore like sparkly cat ears and I had glitter on my face. Like what, what did you wear? So I wore, remember that sparkly sequin jacket that I got from Macy's? Yes. Yeah. So I wore just black pants and a t-shirt and then I wore that sparkly jacket. Cause I was deep in hot slash mode at that point and I knew I was going to be taking my jacket on and off. Yeah. You went sparkly jacket. I bought a shirt that said karma is a cat and I wore cat ears. But what a glorious, wonderful, joyful experience that was. And I cannot believe you're in the dang movie. That is so cool. Taylor, our offer still stands. I know Jenna's been in the movie, but if you need us to be in any future music videos. Literally any future music videos. And actually anything, right? We're here for you. Well, thank you so much to Bailey for writing in with that chit chat. I had a lot of fun watching all of those clips. We're going to take a short break and when we come back, we're going to discuss cold opens with Craig and Josh. 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Lady, have you ever invested in something that seemed really amazing at first, but then did not live up to the hype? I once got this kind of fancy jacket that looked amazing in the store, but then I wore it out once and I realized it was not comfortable and now it just lives in my closet collecting dust. LinkedIn has a word for that. Bullspend. Bullspend is when you optimize for numbers that look great, impressions, reach, reactions, but then those numbers don't actually drive revenue. Invest in what actually looks good to your CFO. LinkedIn ads generate the highest ROAS, 121% of all major ad networks. You can reach the right buyers by targeting company, industry, job title, and more. So cut the bullspend. Advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash office. That's LinkedIn.com slash office. Terms and conditions apply. Hello there fine gentleman. Why hello? Oh, is that us? We're the fine. That's us. We're the fine gentleman. I was so confused. You are the fine gentleman. My goodness, of course. It's so great to be chatting with you again. We love chatting with you guys. Thanks for having us back. Yes, fine gentleman. It's lovely to see you. Top of the morning to you. Well, we're really excited to chat cold opens with you. And Craig, it's really cool to have you on the podcast today because you're going to give us a little bit of, I hope, a writer showrunners perspective on the cold open. Could you tell our audience what is a cold open? No pressure, by the way. No pressure. Yeah, I know. I have to define the entire genre of cold open. And this will be canon, whatever you say. This will come right into the dictionary. It's a little funny thing at the start of the show. That's the early short version. I think the office was amazing at doing ones that were these little self-contained movies, these little mini short films that stood alone sometimes. They didn't always kick off the story. Am I right, you guys? It feels like that was often true for you guys. That's so hard to do that we almost never did. We were too lazy. It's too hard to make a little gem. So we usually started the story off somehow in our cold opens. You can either kick off the plot in the cold open or it's just a funny little thing. And those are the two ways to go. We sometimes did the funny little thing version on How Much You're Mother. But usually we try to get the story started in some way. I would argue that doing the funny standalone way is probably harder. Because when you're starting the story, it at least has some momentum. But you guys did it ingeniously on the office. Well, you know, we all today picked one of our favorite cold opens from each of our shows. We're going to share those. We'll set them up and we'll talk about them. And I know the one I picked, I'm not going to say it yet, but I almost picked the episode, The Injury. And that was a time we had a cold open on the office that did kick off the episode. That's when Michael has a George Foreman grill by his bed because he loves the fresh bacon in the morning and he steps on the grill. But so that cold open where he calls Pam in a panic is one that then leads into the whole episode. So we did that every once in a while, but you're right. Mostly ours were these standalone little movies. Did you guys tell us in one of the episodes we did together that often they would write it for one and it would end up on another episode? Like they would mix and match them. They were always the ones that you thought they were going to be paired with. Yeah, exactly. Because they were movable because they were their own little story. But also sometimes they just got rid of them completely because they needed the time to tell the story of the episode. Right. And if it is self contained and modular like that, it's easier to take out. Whereas if you start the story, you're kind of stuck with it. Did you guys always do a cold open because we didn't do it every episode. We did sort of longer, like full act ones. We started the show with titles for the entire first season and then kind of mixed and matched. Although we realized like in season two, we had a lot of time to do it. We realized like in season two that we had a great theme song to smash cut to. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? With that like hard cut to the... It's like, it's perfect for that. How are we not? We were like, why are we doing this? I was going to say though, both our shows have really iconic grab you by the lapels kind of theme songs. And there's something especially about if you do the first season, people get to know the theme song. By the second season, it's actually really thrilling to do a cold open and then cut, you know, do the needle drop to the theme song. Yeah. I feel like our theme songs were almost the button at the end of the scene sometimes, right? Yeah. You know, Craig, we did usually have a cold open every once in a while. We went for time, but for the most part we did. And I think about our writer's room and how much fun they had coming up with these standalone cold open ideas. I mean, Kevin's chili, my lord. Yeah. That one, that was Aaron Schur. And I just people quote that to Brian, I think for the rest of his life. Going to hear that. I think also it's a great way if you have a card on the wall, that's a funny idea, but you just can't make it a whole episode, but you could make it a really funny two minutes. I think a lot of our cold opens were things also that might be feeling a little too absurd for our little documentary show that we were putting on, but we could be a little more broad in our cold opens as well, which brings us to speaking of a little bit of a broader cold open. Angela, your pick. It's one of our classics. So I wanted to pick a cold open that was a real all ensemble moment, because sometimes the cold opens were mostly, you know, Michael or Dwight and those kind of storylines. But this had everybody. It included a huge rehearsal with our camera operators, our boom operators. It was like a real dance, if you will. It's something I get yelled at the airport. Okay. So basically this is from Stress Relief, the episode Stress Relief. It is that famous fire drill cold open where Dwight is going to teach everyone how to survive an office place fire. By setting a fire. By locking the doors and setting a fire. It's absolute instant mayhem. We pulled a clip from the middle where Dwight is trying to get everyone to do all the steps in the chaos. Here it is. Have you ever seen a gun victim? Okay. Procedure. Procedure. Exit options. Where do we go, folks? Use a what to cover the mouth. A what? A rag. A damp rag, perhaps. Let's remember those procedures. What are they? The exit. That's the wrong way. We've already tried that. Remember your exit points. Exit points, people. What's next? Oscar. Stay alive. I'm getting help. Pull me up. You're too heavy. I only weigh 82 pounds. Save bandit. How about 911? Anyone? 911. Oh my god. I mean it's so ridiculous. It's so good. It's so great. Can I ask a question? How long did that take to shoot that? That looks like an entire movie. Well, it was a full day to shoot it, but it was also a bunch of rehearsal. Yeah. I came in a day early and I had to work with this cat and the cat wrangler. We had a fake cat. We had a real cat and a fake cat. And I had a body double. Like that stunt, just that moment of throwing the cat in the ceiling and it coming out the other side was a huge stunt. I just love the unexpected. The first throw of the cat is hilarious and unexpected, but so soon after is that second falling cat, which you're not quite expecting, which is like the actual enormous laugh of that moment. And the cat was totally okay. Everyone listening, our line producer had put a whole bunch of like ferny pad things, so he did hit something squishy and soft. I love also though, Raine's unflappable kind of commitment to like everyone is absolutely panicking around him. But I heard Adam McKay say this thing, that there's nothing funnier than people being confidently wrong. And so much of Dwight is confident wrongness. And so much of like the humor on the office is confident, absolute wrongness. Well, that's definitely Michael Scott. He's like the most confident idiot ever. There's something about us. We love it. We love that confident wrongness. Yeah. All right. So we asked you guys to pull your favorite cold opens. And I know there's, it's always so hard to pick one, but Josh, which one did you pick? So I picked an episode from season four. It's called Right Place, Right Time. I think it was episode 22 from season four. It kind of starts off in a little bit of a minor key in terms of Robin and Ted and this morning scene. And he's running out to, he's going to go get a bagel, like a very kind of low key New York morning. And then he goes out the front door and he's about to turn one way, but he stops and he turns another way. He goes another direction. And then the narrator comes in and starts talking about, almost the butterfly effect essentially, like our seemingly innocuous choices are all kind of adding up together in this magical way to deliver us where we need to be. And also right when he leaves, he grabs the yellow umbrella, which at that point we had established as an iconic prop. Yeah. We told the audience that is involved in how Ted is going to meet the mother. Right. Actually, that's like this magical like little flash forward. We saw a yellow umbrella as part of that meeting. Right. So he's like, he's just going outside to get a bagel, but he grabs this yellow umbrella and then it's, oh my God, like now this is very, very significant. And then it starts to rain and he opens the umbrella and then he gets a tap on his shoulder and he turns and we don't know who he's seeing, but the fake out, of course, is this must be the mother. Right. And that's when you cut to main titles and you don't see the face. You have to watch the whole episode to see who's behind that umbrella. I loved this cold open and I also love the voiceover, which is by Bob Saiget. Yeah. So I would love to hear that because it's poetic and wonderful and I love it. Kids, I've been telling you the story of how I met your mother. And while there's many things to learn from this story, this may be the biggest. The great moments of your life won't necessarily be the things you do. They'll also be the things that happen to you. Now I'm not saying you can't take action to affect the outcome of your life. You have to take action and you will. But never forget that on any day, you can step out the front door and your whole life can change forever. You see, the universe has a plan, kids, and that plan is always in motion. A butterfly flaps its wings and it starts to rain. It's a scary thought, but it's also kind of wonderful. All these little parts of the machine constantly working, making sure that you end up exactly where you're supposed to be, exactly when you're supposed to be there. The right place at the right time. Aw, there it is. That is so beautiful. Craig, I think that's some of the most lyrical narrating writing that you and the gang did. And also, it really strikes me that the entire DNA, like blueprint of the entire series is in that cold open. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. The whole show is spelled out thematically and illustrated in that. And then as the episode goes on, again, we talk a lot about how I met your mother. One, it's a big mystery. It's a nine season mystery. But also, a lot of episodes start off with something very strange and disorienting and what is going on. And then the episode solves the mystery. So it's like a mysteries inside mysteries inside mysteries. Yeah. And this is like, this is a great mystery episode, but it's also, it just lays out all the themes so beautifully at the beginning. And Bob, man, I love hearing Bob's voice. Bob, I know. I get such a chill note hearing Bob do that one. He was such a secret weapon of the show. He was so good at being future Ted, telling his kids that story. And I think it's an underrated kind of like track in the overall song of our show. You know, that was, that's like a really crucial instrument in the orchestra there. And he was wonderful. It makes me miss him. He was just a great guy and he loved playing that part. He took a lot of pride in being future Ted. He and Josh developed a real bond because he's like, I'm future you. I'm the voice of future you. And you guys like really became close over that and you hear it. He would watch the episode. He'd tap into where Ted was emotionally and he'd perform that. And I love that about him. And yeah, this is kind of the whole series in miniature. Since this whole episode that you're having us on is a symposium on cold opens. This is another way we used cold opens, which is we liked teasing a mystery. We liked really getting right up to a mystery moment, hard cutting the credits. And you have to stay tuned for the next 20 minutes to find out in this case, who's behind that umbrella. It turns out to be Meryl Streep playing herself. I know. But you need to watch the rest of the episode. And that's what I mean by we usually put the cold open on how I met your mother was like a load bearing support of the architecture because we really start the story there. We plant a mystery or we kick something off in some way. We didn't do as many free standards as you guys did, which again, are really hard to do. One other thing I want to say about that cold open. Again, when Craig and I have been doing how we made your mother, part of it is like the mystery of why people love the show so much and why do people still want to talk about them and play them for their kids and all this stuff. And one of the things that I think people find so much solace in is that it's a meaningful universe. How I met your mother says the universe, both in this show and presumably the one that you're existing in also is meaningful. And every little encounter has meaning. And it's kind of an antidote to cynicism. It's an antidote to nihilism or chaos. That there's a plan and there's benevolence and there's a guiding hand. And I think that even if people don't articulate it that way, that's part of the warmth they feel when they watch the show and why they keep coming back to it. I so agree. It's like comfort. You know, when I watch your show, it makes me feel like everything's okay in some way. And I want you guys to know just yesterday, I met a woman who told me she loves your podcast. She's an office lady's listener. She's so excited. It's on our network. And then she told me that her and her husband recreated the moment with the umbrella, with the trench coat, where you only see the legs, you know? And she pulled out her phone and showed it to me. And then I was like, I'm actually seeing them tomorrow and we're watching this cold open. So I just think that your show is really meaningful to people. And that's a special thing. We need those touchstones. I think we're two for two. We're hitting them out of the park. And so, okay, who's up next? Jenna, it's you. Sure. Well, I felt a little shy about picking this one because I am the star of it, but I only ever got to star in one cold open. And it is one of my favorites. It was in season nine. And it also features the whole ensemble because those were also my favorite cold opens. You know, a lot of our cold opens were a great opportunity for Jim to play a prank on Dwight. Those are some of our most famous ones, you know, Bear's Beats, Battlestar Galactica when he puts his desk in the bathroom, or it features Michael doing something crazy like parkour or needing to put his face in cement. So this one was really fun for me. It's Pam's Chore Wheel and it's near and dear to my heart. If there was one prop that I wish I had from the show, it would have been any of these Chore Wheels. I wish I had that hanging in my office. But basically what happens in this is the office is really dirty. It's messy. I mean, you even see like a little rat crawl across the floor and Pam's the office administrator and she has to try to come up with some sort of cleaning schedule where people divide up all of the chores. So she tries making a Chore Wheel. We have a little clip from the top of this one. We can take a listen. The building's custodian is on vacation for the month and Dwight is too cheap to hire a replacement. So instead we're living in filth, but not for long because I have created the Chore Wheel. Oh yeah. Can I spin first? Well it doesn't spin. We'll just move the wheel one notch each morning and you see what chore you get that day. A wheel is supposed to spin. Yeah. You know like No, I'm familiar with spinning. It's just that wouldn't work with a chore wheel because people might get the same chore. Bah, boring. Girl, all she talks about is chores. A wheel wants to spin, Pam. Spinning would be more fun. Okay. Okay, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah! Big money, big money. Yeah! Yeah! So she makes a spinning wheel, and then they get mad because the only thing that you can win is a chore. So then she has to make another wheel where you win fun stuff, but there's one thing on the wheel that's called tiny wheel. And if you hit tiny wheel, you have just been a tinier chore wheel that's really cute. It's so tiny. And that has actual chores on it, but Pam says no one cares because the tiny wheel is so cute. And it was just funny and silly, and I don't know, I would love a chore wheel in real life. I was gonna say, Jenna, I don't know you that well yet, but this seems to me like entirely door to door something you would do. Am I right about that? Yes, bingo. I think it's another reason why she loves it is because in real life, Jenna, you do make a chore list. You ever go, Jenna? I'm a Pisces. I'm a very organized Pisces. The tiny wheel feels very you. I feel like you would definitely do the tiny wheel part. We're gonna make this fun. We got a tiny wheel. Yeah, it's super tiny. And I think it just also, it's like having kids and trying to get them excited about chores. Like there's all these adults in the room, but they're just acting like children. And she's having to like manipulate them into keeping their own space clean. It's like, don't you want it to be clean guys? It's also fun to play as an actor when it's like you against everyone else. How everyone unites as like a single hive mind where they're like, no, it should spin. Like a circle should spin, a wheel should spin. Even Jim doesn't have her back. Even Jim turns at you. But it's a little like, I hope like Simpson's crowd scenes are so funny when everyone like picks up like pitchforks and lanterns and just like scoring city hall or whatever. So quickly over anything. And kind of shows like our ability to fall into like mass psychosis as a society. I loved as part of the ensemble, whenever we would all collectively like react to one character, I loved it so much. I mean, Pam rarely had to hold everyone's attention in the conference room. That was normally Michael, right? All the time. But it was so fun to just be like, being the crowd and be like, we don't get it. I don't get it. Do you get it? I don't get it. It was super fun. I remember it was very intimidating to stand in front of you all too. I was standing there and I was like, oh my gosh, Steve did this for seven years. How did he do this? But don't you feel like that's how Pam would feel? Like that feels very usable. Like where actor thing and character thing are probably close. Yes. Like she has like this really great idea that she feels really confident about, but also as soon as anybody pushes back against her, she's like, oh no. Craig, I think it's your turn. You're the person who hasn't shared yet. I'm very nervous. Now, the funny thing is this is by far the simplest one of any of the ones that we talked about today. I chose it mainly because I'm looking at it through the lens of doing our podcast, of doing a rewatch podcast where you go back and you investigate what the hell you did if you can remember it. And the way I felt about this cold open at the time was I really liked it and I'll tell you why. And then we got up to this episode just a couple months ago and we had the writer of this episode, Greg Malins, who worked on Friends and How I Met Your Mother. And he came on and he dropped a couple of bombs on me that made me completely change how I see this cold open now. So I chose mine to be podcast relevant. I'll set it up really quick because I think we're gonna play a clip and then we're gonna surprise you with a couple of subsequent clips of the podcast. Okay, so it's the early season two. Marshall has had his heart broken. Lily and Marshall broke up at the end of season one. Marshall is tepidly trying to like tiptoe into being single. He's flirting with a woman at the coffee shop. They're actually hanging out at a coffee shop because he likes this woman who works there. And there's a debate about coffee shops versus bars. So I guess that decides it. Yep. Hanging out at a coffee place, not nearly as much fun as hanging out at a bar. Okay, so it goes on from there. You see a flashback of Marshall flirting all week with this woman who works at the coffee shop telling really stupid dad jokes basically, but she's into it and you kind of catch up to reality. He's gonna ask her out and they discover along the way that she drew a heart on his cup, but didn't do anything on Ted's cup. Well, what if the heart doesn't mean anything? What if she writes it on all the cups? Mine says Ted, no heart. Mine says Swarly. I think it's Swarly from Barney. It's not even a name. Who would ever be called Swarly? Oh, please don't start calling me Swarly. This would never happen at a bar. Man, what's up with Swarly? I know, he almost never sealed Swarly's get that upset. Here's why I love that, that when we did this in 2006, I guess that aired. When we launched How I Met Your Mother, we really wanted to separate ourselves from friends. We wanted to be able to say we are not one of the 75 other shows that has tried to recapture what friends did. But of course we look like friends. If you put it on a poster, it's like young people dating in New York, it looks similar. We wanted to differentiate ourselves. I thought this was a very clever way to do that because it seemed that opening joke about the coffee shop versus the bar. Our home base set is a bar. It seemed obvious and it was written by a friend's writer, Greg Malin, the only writer who wrote for friends and How I Met Your Mother. And I thought that was such a great way to differentiate the two shows. Well, Greg came on our show recently on the podcast, cut to 19 years later, and he revealed to me two big things. I've been really undercut. My feeling that had differentiated the best from friends. One was his assertion and he swears to God about this, that he did not mean it as a friends versus How I Met Your Mother joke. And literally every single person working on How I Met Your Mother and the millions of people who've seen that episode, every single person thinks it's a friends differentiated from How I Met Your Mother joke, except the guy who wrote it. He's like, no, I just thought it was like a funny line. Can I raise my hand on that one? When I watched it, I was like, oh, that's such a fun tongue-in-cheek wink to, we're not friends in a coffee shop. Right, right. I have a hundred percent of weight. Holding it, we all thought this is a fun joke, dig it friends, like a hundred percent everyone thought it. There's one guy on planet Earth who thinks it's not a friends reference, and it's Greg Malins. That is so crazy, because also like there's the cute, like waitress, like barista, like kind of like Rachel, like wow, that's crazy. Greg, oh my Lord. And the second thing that came out of that was even more disturbing. Greg made another confession about that last joke right before you cut to titles, that again, I was so proud that we were differentiating our show from the long shadow cast by friends. Well, 19 years later, a couple months ago, Greg Malins said this to me. Here's the truth, and I've never told anybody this. This is a revelation, and it's not something that, A, I'm proud of, and B, makes me feel good, and C, makes me look good, because none of the above are true. The end of the cold open of this episode, I wrote that joke already on Friends. Oh my gosh. And while we're at it, can we play the clip of the joke on Friends? Which again, I never knew until 2026. Okay, for now temporarily, you can call me Clint. No way are you cool enough to pull off Clint. Okay, so what name am I cool enough to pull off? Um, Jean. It's Clint. It's Clint. See you later, Jean. Bye, Jean. It's Clint. Clint. What's up with Jean? So you can see how this slay the undercuts by feeling that this was differentiating us from Friends. You're allowed to steal from yourself. I did a series with Greg after the office called Your Family or Mine on TBS, and now I want to rewatch it to see if there's any Friends like Slythe in the Your Family or Mine. He just keeps using them. Yeah. Maybe he put some hoes at your mother jokes on that. He always takes the show previous and puts it on. But I thought he was so noble and like there was something very brave about confessing to that 19 years later. That episode is a beloved, wonderful episode. Himmian fans go to coffee shops in 2026 and say the name Swarley. And they send us pictures of them doing the Having Had Swarley. Like that's an iconic episode written by Greg. He's a great writer. He did a great job in that episode. He slugged that one joke in thinking that we would beat it. And we never did it. Got a huge laugh at the table read and you thought, oh, shit, this Friends joke's gonna end up staying. It's gonna stay. And the whole time I'm blabbering about, oh, I love that it differentiates us from Friends. And 20 years later, I learned it did not differentiate us from Friends in any way. That's great. Awesome, guys. Look at all the things you're discovering through the podcast, through the rewatch. How fun is that? Yeah. Are you guys loving it? Are you loving the experience, Josh, of having to watch it? And is your wife still watching with you? She is, yes. Although I think I might have mentioned this to you. She's dying because she wants to just keep going. She just wants to binge. And we have to dole it out. And I have to watch them in order. And she can't run out ahead of me. So she's having to wait on me. So she doesn't like that. But other than that, she's having a great time. And it's so nice to watch it with her and to let her see this huge part of my life before I met her, having a different perspective on it all these years later, which is what the show is kind of framed as, as a man looking back on his life when he was younger. And so it's just been a blast. And we talked about before, but hearing from fans and also learning about myself now versus then and where I was then and kind of forgiving myself for how hard I was on myself then. And it's just, I don't know, the whole thing has been quite a blessing. So we're really thrilled. Oh my goodness. Josh Craig, thank you so much for coming on to talk about cold opens with us. Y'all are such a delight. We enjoy you so much. You got to come back. Please, yeah. We'd love to have you back on our show. We love hanging with you guys. Yeah, thank you guys so much. Thanks for taking us under your wing and showing us how to do a podcast. We're thrilled to be paired with you guys. Thanks for having us. Next time, tags. Yeah, man. Next time we discuss tags. We'll define what tags are. Tags. We'll have a whole philosophical discussion. Good times. Love you guys. Thanks for having us, you guys. Thank you so much. Bye. Bye. Bye. MUSIC We are going to talk to you about Jones Road Beauty because I love this cosmetics brand. Yeah, we're big fans. I am not good at applying makeup. And the thing I love at Jones Road Beauty is their eyeshadow stick. It's like a stick and you just put it on your eyelid and they're done. My favorite thing, it's called the best pencil. And it is the best eyeliner pencil I've ever used in my whole life. It goes on really smooth and it's super easy to make a straight line, which I'm sorry is a challenge for me. Modern day makeup that's clean, strategic, and multifunctional for effortless routines. For a limited time, our listeners get a free shimmer face oil on their first purchase when they use code OfficeLadies at checkout. Just head to jonesroadbeauty.com and use code OfficeLadies at checkout. And after you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. Here's the thing. Ideas are easy. We all have them. But it's turning those ideas into something real. That's the thing that usually slows me down. But that's where Canva comes in. Whether you're putting together a presentation for work or designing a logo, building a website, or even creating a social post, Canva can make anything a thing. I use Canva with my son. He started an online business, trading and selling sports cards. And we use Canva to design the logo and all that stuff. It's the go-to tool when you need to bring an idea to life fast and without overthinking it. And here's the best part. You don't need to be a fancy designer. Canva lets you create high quality visuals in just minutes with simple drag and drop tools. I love a drag and drop tool, Lainey. So the next time you've got an idea and you need to make it real, think Canva. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. Start designing today at Canva.com. I think there's a myth out there that you have to have a huge chunk of money already to start investing money or that you have to have some expert level knowledge. But the truth is you can start investing with your spare change using Acorns. Acorns is the financial wellness app that cares about where your money is going tomorrow. It's also a smart way to give your money a chance to grow. And it's easy to sign up in minutes and start automatically investing your spare change even if all you've got is spare change. And you can quickly adjust how much you're investing daily, weekly or monthly to stay on track towards your goal. Whether you're just starting out or planning your next big milestone. Sign up now and Acorns will boost your new account with a $5 bonus investment. Join the over 14 million all-time customers who have already saved and invested over $27 billion with Acorns. Head to acorns.com slash office ladies or download the Acorns app to get started. Pay non-gliant endorsement. Compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns. Tier two compensation provided. Potential subject to various factors such as customers' accounts, age and investment settings. Does not include Acorns fees. Results do not predict or represent the performance of any Acorns portfolio. Investment results will vary. Investing involves risks. Acorn advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. View important disclosures at acorns.com slash office ladies. Well, I love those guys. I mean, they're smart, they're funny, they're insightful. I mean, come on. And kind and warm. And kind. I know. Lovely. Lovely, love them. Go check out their podcast, How We Made Your Mother. And now folks, it's time for... Around the Town. Our first around the town is from Jesse P. in Chesterland, Ohio. Jesse says, my family is in our third year of making our own maple syrup from the red maple trees on our property. My husband spends every Saturday in March boiling down sap in his homemade evaporator. We make enough for our family for the whole year and a little extra for friends. Our kids no longer like store-bought maple syrup and won't even touch, quote, pancake syrup anymore, laughy face. That is so cool. This tells you how much I know about maple syrup. I didn't realize that Ohio had red maple trees. I mean, of course, right? I mean, we have maple trees in Missouri. I guess I didn't think you could get syrup from them. I mean, I don't even know how you get the syrup. Do you? This is a crazy question. Do you put like a spigot in the tree? I mean, I don't know. I think you spigot the tree. Is that crazy? Did I see that in a movie? Was that a cartoon? Was that like a Bugs Bunny cartoon I saw in my youth? I don't know because I feel like I saw a spigot in a tree too, but I don't know why. Maybe it was in a movie or something? I don't know. Okay, yes. Well, according to the internet, a spigot or a spile is used to tap maple trees for sap, usually from February to March. Well, there you go. Whatever reason, I just thought all the syrup was coming from Canada. I never allowed syrup to come from anywhere else. I'm sorry, Ohio. This is wonderful. I wish we were neighbors with you, Jesse, so we could trade. I would like give you some lemons for some of your syrup. All right, our next around the town is from Heidi J. Who said, my friends, Pet Dotson, Walter Pickles, won first place this last weekend at the Canterbury Park, 2026 Winter Dog Race for Wiener Dogs. His description on the lineup sheet said, Walter Pickles is a very social friendly mini Dotson. He loves chasing bunnies and squirrels and taking long sniff walks. His favorite human food treat is popcorn. Congratulations, Walter Pickles. That is adorable. I wanna see the Winter Dog Race for Wiener Dogs. That's gotta be the cutest thing. All right, next up, and oh my goodness, did this one make my heart happy. It's from Kate W. in Chattanooga, who wrote in and said, she was so inspired by the office lady's breakdown of the paper and our shout out to my grandmother, Lena May, in her newspaper column, that she started a local newspaper of her own called the Chattanoogans, get it? To highlight the everyday lives of the people in their town, the first issue just went live at the beginning of March and featured work from local artists, a growing tie collection, an escape room crawl, and a goth-themed train ride. You can check out the first issue, it's on their Instagram, thechattie underscore Nougans, and she also went on to say a big thank you to us for being part of the inspiration behind this passion project. This fills my heart with so much joy. I love this, I love this for your grandma, I love this for the Chattanoogans, it makes me happy. It made me so happy, I just thought of my grandmother, you know, if she would have never even imagined that something like this is possible, that her little around the town column would just be touching other people's lives like this. Oh my goodness, Kate, thank you for sharing that. That's legacy, right? This has now become part of your grandmother's legacy. It continues to grow, she continues to reach people, that's really cool. That's so cool. All right, and we always now in these episodes with our office question of the week, this one comes from Catherine R from Mississippi. Catherine says, which episode of the office was your favorite to film and why is it your favorite? Oh, Catherine, this is so difficult. I love this question because I feel like we're always asking our guests this question, but I wondered, have we answered this question? I've been asked this question before in interviews and I have a few answers because there's sort of the episode that was my favorite to film because of maybe stuff that happened on set behind the scenes that are just special to me, but then there were episodes that were just so incredibly funny or creative or interesting that those were really fun to shoot too. But Angela, do you have an answer? This is really, I mean, Catherine, I feel like this changes for me every couple of months because Jenna and I rewatch the whole show and then every once in a while, I'll catch an episode with the kids or something or it will pop up, like you're traveling, you're in a hotel room, you're like, oh, the office is on Comedy Central, I'll watch one. And this might surprise you, Jenna, but I was feeling very nostalgic recently for Beach Games. Oh, that doesn't surprise me. I mean, that was a hard shoot. Is that why you think it would surprise me because it was a little grueling? It was grueling, we were outside in the heat, it was like dusty and sandy and like we got sunburned, it was long days. But then at night it was freezing, but we had to be in our same clothes that we had, that was the thing about Beach Games. You established this warm weather clothing for the day and then at night you were stuck with that same outfit and you were freezing. And you were freezing, yeah. So it was physically a difficult shoot, but I was going through some old pictures and it was so just special in so many ways. Okay, one, I loved my storyline with letting Andy just float away. And I love that line where I say, did you say sandwich and White says sabotage? I remember Jen Salata laughing her butt off and almost ruining a take because she cracked up every single time I said, did you say sandwich? But then I also just remember us hanging out in between scenes by our trailers. We had like a little camp they set up and someone brought a football and we were throwing the football and Harold Ramis came over in the morning and we would all have coffee together and sit outside one of the trailers having our coffee talking in the morning. It's just, it's amazing to me that I got to be a part of all of that. And I would say not to be totally sappy, but I am a bit of a sap. One of the things that was really special to me about it was watching you as my best friend have this absolutely amazing monologue that had so much, it was so long. I remember when we got the script, it was like half a page and you nailed it in front of all of us and it had all this emotion and I was so proud of you. Anyway, I don't know, I've just been very nostalgic for that episode. What a wonderful memory. I really hold it close to my heart. It's so funny that you picked that one, Angela, and for the reasons that you picked it because there were two episodes that popped into my mind and they're one right after the other in season two. And the first one is Boo's Cruise. Oh yeah. And again, you'd be like, why are you picking the episode where we were up till the crack of dawn and we were all nauseous and you got lost at sea. But you know, it's that thing where those memories are now part of the lore and the joy of the show. They're part of the adventure of it. And we all really bonded. And that was the episode, Angela, where you guys found out you were gonna be series regulars. And so there was that extra added celebration and joy to that episode. But then it was also just really funny. It was fun being stuck together. It was like a summer camp at sea, you know? And we all got to stay in a hotel even though we never saw each other except on the boat because we were all so tired. And then, you know, the next episode after that was the injury. And I remember this was when we were finally not worried we were gonna be canceled every single week. And I think we could exhale a little bit. You guys were series regulars. And then Mindy wrote this script that was just so bonkers and weird and so funny. And I laughed so hard shooting that episode with Steve and the butter and all of his antics with the bubble wrap. Yeah. So that section right there, those are some of my fondest memories. Yeah. I mean, obviously I have favorite ones because I loved us all in the conference room and we would get so punchy. So I look back on episodes where at the time I was like, I cannot believe we're spending five days in this one room together, this one tiny conference room. But those are the ones though that feel so special because we were all sort of in it together, you know? Yes. Yes. Yes. I feel like if someone said, okay, I'm gonna send you back in time and you get to reshoot one episode. You get to re-experience shooting one. I think I would choose the injury because it's in the bullpen. Yeah. I would wanna go back in time and be in the bullpen. Right. And I just remember laughing so hard and it was so absurd. And we were all like still very young and fresh and we were experimenting and we were finding ourselves and that's just such an exciting time creatively. That's such a great question. If I could go back and relive one. I mean, that's really hard to pick because I loved dinner party but I would wanna redo one with everybody. Yeah, in the office, right? In the office. And I was thinking, gosh, selfishly, I would also love women's appreciation. Those scenes of us in that van, in Meredith's van with all the trash and junk in it and we got to spend a whole day with Steve. We got to have Steve to ourselves and that was so fun. And of course, we had scenes in the office too so we would get to be with everyone but I would do that day again for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Aw, well thanks, Catherine. Thanks for letting us answer that question that we've asked so many people ourselves. It's fun to think about. Yeah, and thank you guys so much for writing in. We're really just loving doing these segments with you all. So go to officeladies.com. You can click on submit a question. We have lots of fun folders where you can write in. Yeah, we've gotten really organized everybody. We did it. We're very grateful to Ileana who helps us with our website. We have a special folder for second drinks where we want you to go in there and tell us your favorite moments from episodes. And then we also have a folder for around the town for chit chat questions and now officially a folder for the office question of the week. Yeah, so go check it out and we hope you guys have the best week. We appreciate you all so much. And a big thank you to Craig Thomas and Josh Radner for joining us today. We'll see you next week everyone. See you then. Thank you for listening to Office Ladies. Office Ladies is a presentation of Odyssey and is produced by Jenna Fisher and Angela Kinsey. Our senior producer is Matt Beagle and our audio engineer is Sam Kiefer. Odyssey's executive producer is Leah Reese-Dennis. Office Ladies was mixed and mastered by Bill Schultz. Our theme song is Ruppertree by Creed Bratton. ["Ruppertree"] The all new 2026 Toyota RAV4 is here and it builds on everything drivers know and love about Toyota. With a redesigned look and modern tech that makes life behind the wheel easier than ever. The 26 RAV4 comes standard as a hybrid, providing smooth, efficient performance for both city streets and longer journeys. While the available all wheel drive keeps you in command when conditions are unpredictable. 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