Michael Schur, a producer and writer on Mose Schrute on the hit NBC sitcom, went on to co-create Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Good Place.
The Office remains a hugely popular show, and is consistently ranked as one of the most streamed shows on Netflix. It made stars out of its main cast, with Steve Carell, who played Michael Scott for seven seasons, and John Krasinski, who appeared as Jim Halpert throughout the show's eight-year run, in particular going on to enjoy successful and diverse movie careers. The show was adapted from the hit British version, which was created and written by comedians Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.
In a wide-ranging retrospective with the UK newspaper The Guardian, producer Schur says there was almost an episode that played out in real time, like 24, which was a very popular drama at the time. It would have used the character of Kevin cooking the pie in the microwave as the device to show events were taking place in real time. However, the episode never materialized, as Schur said his pitch didn't get past series creator Greg Daniels. Schur explains what would have happened below:
"At the time, the show 24 was getting big. I tried to sell Greg [Daniels] on an episode that’d happen in real time. My pitch was Kevin would get a chicken pot pie and it’d say on the instructions “microwave for 21 minutes and 30 seconds”. The episode would begin with him putting it into the microwave, setting it for 20:30 and hitting start. The story would play out over 21 minutes in real time and at the end of every act, he’d go back into the kitchen and we’d slowly push in on the microwave clock counting down."
The "real time" sitcom episode concept is not unique. Perhaps most famously, Seinfeld did it in season 2, episode 11, "The Chinese Restaurant," which plays out in real time as the protagonists wait to be seated at a local Chinese restaurant. Perhaps this is the reason Daniels didn't go for the pitch, as he felt the gimmick might be overused.
It wouldn't have been the first episode to focus on Kevin's love of food. In The Office season 5, episode 26, "Casual Friday," the cold open follows Kevin as he brings in a pot of his famous chili. He narrates the long and complicated process of creating the dish while he carries the pot upstairs, only to drop it just as he reaches the office. The sequence was so popular it has become a meme, and was even parodied in a 2020 Super Bowl ad that Baumgartner starred in.
Interestingly, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, season 6, episode 14, "Ticking Clocks," features a very similar premise to the one Schur describes. The episode plays out in real time, using a microwave lasagna that Hitchcock (Dirk Blocker) and Scully (Joel McKinnon Miller) are cooking in the precinct microwave to show the age of time. Given that Schur co-created the show and is still listed as a producer, it's possible that the idea was recycled for Brooklyn Nine-Nine, only more successfully. Regardless, it would have been interesting to see a real time episode of The Office, but it wasn't meant to be.
Source: The Guardian