Hello there, it's under middle of the night, and welcome back to another episode of The Office ASMR, a podcast to enjoy my fall asleep.

Tonight we are on season 6 episode 8. This is Koi Pond, originally aired October 29th, 2009, coming up in the end of the decade.

Directed by Reggie Huddlin, written by Warren Lieberstein, and Hallston Sullivan.

This was the 108th episode of The Office, and I will just say it is the third and a trilogy of weird tonal episodes following the massive event of the wedding.

I've been listening, I don't think I've talked about this yet, because I've been such a weird, weirdly long I ate this for me, but I've been listening in rewatching Parks and Recreation in parallel, and it was really started by the new podcast Parks and Rec Election, which is Alan Yang and Rob Lowe.

He was doing an obviously style podcast, re-listening to all the episodes, talking about them, and doing interviews with cast members and people from the show.

Alan Yang, who he wrote in the first season, and then he was very heavily involved through Parks and Rec, he says, you know, the first season 2 and 3 are really exciting because you have found your characters and you haven't going through storylines,

but keep in mind, each episode has two, sometimes three, storylines, so by the time you get to season 4, you've done 350 to 400 storylines, and your characters are fully baked, you know, they've had their arcs, they've found their footing, they've found their voice, and even said, you know, once you get to like season 6, 7, 8,

it's like, are you going to completely change your characters to the point where they're unrecognizable, or are you going to have them fight over a pen again, and it does seem like that's what's happening at this point in our stage of the office.

It's like, Pam in the last episode, unrecognizable, from a character perspective, as to how she's speaking to Michael, dealing with the news of her mom, like there's so many aspects of Pam in that episode that just don't jive, and then, even Michael, the other Michael way, that he's combative with her, it just feels totally different,

and it's also such a huge shift from the Mafia episode, which again, it was like this level of awareness taken down, such a low level of how your ridiculous they're being, you know, Michael was spiraling because of the tone in these episodes just so weird,

and that's my memory of this one too, my memory of this one is like, you know, Jim as a character wouldn't be treating, you know, Michael falling in this way, and there's just weird vibes to these episodes,

and now we're trying to remember it all comes after Koipon, because soon we're going to be getting to the baby, we've double date, murder is a good one,

so share, oh Scott's thoughts, wait when's the baby cup, delivery, episode 17, all right, we do a run, we have a run for some decent episodes here,

I guess it's just this three that are kind of weird, although I always remember the baptism episode being weird, what does that say Patrick's Day?

They're new lean, yeah, all right, we're getting some weird stuff, but hey, that's what we're here for, I'm excited to continue the episodes here,

I'm actually revisiting many episodes only for maybe the second or third time, because I definitely go back to all of them, but, you know, I can't remember some of these later episodes,

nearly as well as the beginning ones, so, with all that being said, this podcast is not sponsored by Parks and Rec, I would also say, like, since this is just truly the most subjective review of that show,

the show is not nearly as good, and the office recap shows, and I think I know why, I mean, listen, it's very enjoyable,

Roblo chatting with Alan Yang, and they've had Chris Pratt and Fred Armiston, and they've had your major people, they haven't had Amy Polar on yet, but it's fun,

but I think the reason, the reason, certainly, that I enjoy the office lady so much, is that they go in and out, they, I mean, the episodes are 45 to an hour long versus Parks and Rec collection,

it just feels way more ad-heavy, but, you know, Angela and Jenna, they go into the sets, and they reference the script, and they dig into so many aspects of the show,

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