Brian Baumgartner

When I first came across Brian Baumgartner’s book, I knew I had to read it. I’ve always been a big Office fan thanks to my son who was in college when the show premiered. Since then I’ve been known to not miss any showing of an episode on tv, which means I usually see one about every day. And, yes, I never see anything new because I’ve seen all of them. I’m even in that club that knows the episodes by their titles. So this book is for anyone who is a fan. If you aren’t a fan of The Office and/or you watched it but didn’t like it, it’s best to keep on moving on by. It just won’t be your cup of tea.
I bought the Kindle version and checked the audio version out from our local library. I always read a book and listen to a book (almost always a different book) while I do my 30-minute daily walk. I chose to “read” almost all of “Welcome to Dunder Mifflin” by listening to the audio version. That was a mistake. In fact, I don’t even think this book should have been made into an audio book. I imagine Brian Baumgartner and Ben Silverstein went to a lot of trouble to round up all of the quotes from interviews with the show’s characters from Brian’s podcast. The problem is none of the dialogue read on the audio version of the book is read by the actual characters from the show except for those by Brian and Ben. And most of the narrators (aka. actors) don’t sound a bit like the original characters. So, that means it’s hard to keep track of who is speaking. Occasionally, especially when a character is first introduced, another narrator will come on and say, “John Smith reading for Steve Carell.” That is very annoying and confusing. So I would recommend that if you are a big fan of The Office, buy the print or Kindle version of the book and pass on the audio.
One other annoying thing about the book is the number of times the word “like” is used by the characters as in “Well, I’m like, ‘We better do that scene again,’ and “She’s like, ‘ I don’t get it.’ And then I’m like, ‘Well, I do.’” I suppose if you’re under the age of 40, you’re used to hearing “like” used as every other word in dialogue. And it might not read too badly, but if you’re listening to the audio version of the book, it’s really annoying.
One last negative thing I found about the book was how planned, scripted, and un-spontaneous the show was. Being a “mockumentary” I always assumed The Office was very spontaneous, However, reading this book you hear that the writers and other production people analyzed and overanalyzed just about every aspect of the show and even did multiple (sometimes double digit multiples) takes of scenes. Even the famous proposal scene between Jim and Pan was this way. I guess I should be making this a positive thing since all of the scenes I’m talking about came off as looking typically spontaneous, and that spontaneity is what made The Office the great show it was. Well, that and Steve Carell.
All in all, two big thumbs up for “Welcome to Dunder Mifflin: The Ultimate Oral History of ‘The Office.’”… (mehr)