If you are an Office fan who hasn't listened to "Office Ladies" yet – where have you been? Luckily, this podcast, hosted by Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey (Pam and Angela on The Office) is only about a month old, so it's still currently easy to binge and catch up. Luckily, I happened to be browsing for more podcasts the day of it's release and have loyally been listening every Wednesday at work since.
This week's episode focuses on the last episode of season one, "Hot Girl." The podcast's format in general goes with a summary of an episode, fast facts relating to behind the scenes/filming, and fan questions. Occasionally, there are special guests.One of the said fast facts include the fact that Mindy Kaling, who plays Kelly Kapoor on the show, wrote it – and it was the first out of the 22 episodes she proceeded to write. She includes inspiration from her personal life – like her love for McDonalds, specifically Filet-O-Fish, in a joke about Michael ordering an obscene amount, which he claims is over a month. An episode in a much later season, also written by her, has a call back to this joke.
The "Hot Girl" episode was directed by Amy Heckerling, her other director credits include "Clueless" and "Fast Times at Richmond High." Despite this female leadership, the two podcast hosts still regard it as the cringiest episode of the season. Even though the actresses did not take any of the overtly sexist jokes personally – they instead view it as a chance to grow in the profession.
One of the most iconic lines of the episode is Angela stating her favorite colors: "grey, dark grey, charcoal." This line was completely improvised, as actress Angela Kinsey and guest star Amy Adams were told to "just banter," not knowing if the scene would even make the final episode. The original written script was hitting 39 minutes of run time.