THE OFFICE: Greg Daniels Previews ‘The Beginning of the End’ of the Series

As we gear up for the final batch of episodes of THE OFFICE, big changes are coming…and that all kicks off tonight.

“[Tonight’s episode] is really what I would say is the beginning of the end where we start to break down what’s going on with this documentary and see behind the scenes and, you know, who is involved,” THE OFFICE showrunner Greg Daniels told reporters on the set last week. “And we’re going to play that more and more…leading towards the end in a way where we couldn’t have done a lot of these ideas [that we had] in season 4, because…it would just be too weird to continue after.”

Yep, by knowing the show is coming to an end — and having the proper time to say goodbye — it has afforded the writers the opportunity to play with storylines they’ve been cooking up for years.

“In the early days, we didn’t really have any expectation of going nine years, and so it was all about kind of pleasing ourselves and coming up with some weird stuff,” Daniels said. “So the basic idea for the last episode has been floating around since way back then, but, you know, the specifics of how we’re getting there are changing, and then we had an idea around season 4 that we are incorporating [now]…Basically what we’re doing is all the really cool ideas that would break the show that we had over the years that we were like, ‘That’s really cool, but I don’t see how you come back from that.’ We’ve saved all those up, and we’re gonna start billing them out.”

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THE OFFICE continues its final season Thursdays at 9 PM on NBC.