Steve Carell’s Final ‘Office’ Season Gets Supersized in a New “Superfan” Edition on Peacock

Back in 2011, 30 Rock took a shot at its corporate owners when it had executive character Jack Donaghy characterize a chief tenet of NBC’s programming strategy as “make it 1997 again through science or magic.” These days, NBC seems more than willing to settle for, well, 2011; it may not have been the network’s glory days, but it still had The Office, its biggest scripted hit of that post-Must See TV era. Over on Peacock, the network has been reliving that era by rereleasing each season of the show in “superfan” versions featuring extended cuts of each episodes. Season 7 of this project just dropped, finishing up Steve Carell’s run on the series.

Though many of the episodes are as much as eight or ten minutes longer than their original running times, some of them are extended by just four or five minutes, and will require a genuine superfan with plenty of rewatch knowledge to spot where, exactly, the episodes have been extended. Of course, those fans may also be familiar with some of the additional material, which often comes from deleted scenes shared on DVDs or online – and in general, the gimmick of longer episodes recalls the “supersized” sitcom episodes NBC would sometimes break out for the most popular shows on their Thursday-night lineup during 2000s-era sweeps. (Remember sweeps? No? Don’t worry about it.)

Viewers of those old supersized episodes may also recall that sometimes the tight 22-minute-episode pacing of a network sitcom would be slowed and undermined by the addition of extra minutes, even when they allowed room for some funny gags. For Season 7 of The Office, that slackening is applied to episodes that represent the show past its creative peak, but not quite at the levels of exhaustion that would set in for much of the final two, Carell-less seasons. At times, this particular season winds up looking like an alternate-universe of The Office where the show was produced for streaming, without the time constraints of broadcast networks. In other words, a mixed blessing.

The very first episode of the season, “Nepotism,” has examples of both the extra laughs this affords, and the scenes that don’t add much when reinstated. A brief moment of post-summer catch-up reveals that sad-sack HR representative Toby (Paul Lieberstein) self-published a mystery novel, only to be sued for plagiarism after selling four copies – a perfect note of character comedy that isn’t strictly necessary to the plot but gets a big laugh (plus a follow-up laugh later in the episode when Toby urges a colleague not to read his book as the fallout from another sale could “ruin” him). On the other hand, a scene with Michael Scott (Carell) attempting to teach his newly hired and hostile nephew (Evan Peters!) how to make double-sided copies feels redundant, given that we’ve already been fully acquainted with the kid’s bad behavior.

In general, the additional material in later episodes like “Andy’s Play” and especially the Halloween episode “Costume Party” follow a similar pattern: The material featuring Carell, good as he is, tends to underline ideas the rest of the episode has already conveyed, while the bits and pieces featuring other members of the ensemble tend to be funnier and more novel. It’s a reminder of why The Office worked so well, and so many of its imitators, even very good ones like Parks and Recreation, didn’t feel sustained for quite so long: At any given point, it had over a dozen regular characters who could pop in and out of the story as needed, whether for an absurd subplot, a running gag, or a single killer line. (One to-the-side-of-the-side character who pops up slightly more in the extra Season 7 footage: Bob Vance, husband Phyllis and head of Vance Refrigeration.) Even more than previous seasons, it feels like these episodes are easing their way toward Carell’s departure, which happens towards the end of the season but not as the finale.

The slight awkwardness surrounding his exit remains in place. While a longer version of “Training Day” has more time for Carell to goof around with Will Ferrell, playing his short-lived replacement Dangelo Vickers and has some good laughs, it also arguably makes the already-strange Vickers character even more inscrutable. Of course, a true superfan will probably be more interested in the extra minutes afforded to “Threat Level Midnight,” the fan-fave episode featuring Michael’s long-in-the-works feature film. The whole point of this project doesn’t really seem to be to bring new fans to The Office, but instead to bring old fans back to it for another rewatch. In other words, an expanded season of The Office is neither science nor magic. It’s just network TV trying to make up for its own cultural absence.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.