With 'Office,' NBC Goes Off the Beaten Laugh Track

From left, B.J. Novak, Rainn Wilson, Steve Carell, John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer in a scene from the new show, which premieres Thursday. (Paul Drinkwater -- Nbc)

("Interesting," Kaling says. "You just made a list of shows that don't suck.") Daniels says the laugh track "tells you where the jokes are . . . but take the laugh track away, you don't know where the humor is. It could be a reaction shot. I'll watch and laugh at a different place than someone else."

One of the delights of the original was the time the camera lingered on character's reactions. "I love the awkward pauses," Daniels says, "it's better than a line. It's realer."

Novak says, "The camera is so close, so subtle, that when an actor blinks, he's writing a joke."

In the scripts, the writers would call for "a meaningful beat" or "a pause that tells everything." In one upcoming episode where the employees choose their health care plan, Novak ended his script with the instruction to the actor, "the longest pause in network television history."

To give "The Office" its docu-parody vibe, the show hired camera crews from reality series such as "Survivor," and so the look is rough and jumpy, the action shot through potted plants, sometimes intimate and sometimes panning back and forth as characters engage.

"The camera guys from the reality show are going wherever they're interested," Daniels says. "So the cameraman isn't 100 percent sure where he's supposed to be, and you get things at just the right moment. You get these happy accidents, because they follow their instincts."

The network gave the show the soundstage and set that had been used for "Felicity." But Daniels and crew decided to film the first six episodes in their own production offices, a setting familiar to 40 million white-collar American workers: an anonymous corporate park, a place of miniblinds, weak coffee, copier and fax, with those nondescript gray chairs and generic motel room art, chirping phones and the sad "break room" back by the microwave and toilets.

Kaling points out that most comedies and dramas set in offices feature actors in stylish clothes working in power settings. "You pay attention to outfits and how shiny and beautiful everything is," she says. "We went to a number of actual paper companies because we wanted to get this stuff right."

"What we consider beautiful," Daniels says, "is what is truthful."

"The Office" focuses on the mundane blips of office life, like a diversity workshop (in which witless boss Carell asks the character Oscar, who's Hispanic, "Is there a term besides Mexican that you prefer? Something less offensive?"). There is a birthday party (what to write on the card?); employees pick a health plan (and wonder why vaginas aren't covered); they play a basketball game against the blue-collar guys in the paper warehouse (Carell picks the black dude as center for his team, though contrary to stereotype he can't dribble the ball).

For all the fun the writers hope the audience has, there is a kind of mirror being held up here.

"The idea is kind of like Margaret Mead goes to this village on this island to write about its culture," says Daniels. "The village is the workplace, has different rules, has a chief, but the thing of it is, it's a very Sunday school world; you're not supposed to tell dirty jokes. If you're truthful, if you act like yourself, yawn in meetings, there is constantly this Sunday school teacher looking at you."

Hence the dread of the annual holiday office party. "Exactly," Daniels says. "It's almost Victorian, so many things you can't do. Have to wear a jacket and tie. Restrained."

"And the fashions for women," Kaling says, whose character wears her shirt "buttoned right to the neck. Pants pulled up right to my bra. And flats. Puritan women's wear."