The Office Showrunner Reveals Cut Storyline From Jim & Pam Wedding Episode

Greg Daniels, former showrunner of NBC’s immensely successful workplace sitcom The Office, reveals the details behind a unusual storyline that was cut from Jim and Pam’s wedding episode. As well as developing the British sitcom of the same name for an American audience, Daniels has had a highly prolific career, working on some of the most prestigious US comedies of the last 30 years. From writing for The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live to creating the Netflix comedy Space Force and The Office‘s sister-series Parks and Recreation, Daniels boasts quite the impressive comedic portfolio.

Running for nine seasons from 2005-13 and receiving 42 Emmy nominations, The Office has become one of the most beloved American sitcoms of all time, and one of its most cherished features is the love story between salesman Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and receptionist-turned-administrator Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer). Following the various ups-and-downs of their courtship and subsequent relationship after Pam leaves her fiancé Roy, the pair are finally united in holy matrimony in the two-part season 6 episode “Niagara.” As always, however, things don’t quite go as planned, with Jim accidentally announcing Pam’s secret pregnancy and Andy puncturing his scrotum ahead of the wedding, among other catastrophes. But, all’s well that end’s well, and the couple eventually get married beneath Niagara Falls before the actual ceremony.

It now seems that there was even more planned for the episode than what actually made it to screen. As reported in Mashable, Daniels and co-writer Mindy Kaling discuss the episode in detail on Fischer and Angela Kinsey’s Office Ladies podcast. Daniels outlines how the episode’s structure “was balancing how much comedy to put in and how much joy” and establishing how Jim and Pam are able to still have a beautiful day despite so much going wrong. Citing Andy’s scrotum incident and Michael wooing Pam’s mom, he also reveals an additional, unused situation for the couple:

To top it all off, like, Roy shows up on a horse to try and make a grand gesture of ‘take me back,’ and it just goes terribly. And, you know, this was a card that we had on the board early on about when those things happen in romantic comedy movies, they usually work. And how awkward is it when that doesn’t work, and nobody wanted it, and nobody was rooting for it. And you know, you have to just ride your horse away.

The show’s creator further elaborates on how this would then inspire Dwight to ride a horse over Niagara Falls, but ultimately this plot line was abandoned. Daniels reveals, “I think we had just sort of over-stacked the comedy and under-stacked the joy, because there were just too many bad things happening to poor Pam and Jim.” He also highlights the cast’s reservations that “the emotional balance in the episode was off,” and so the scene never made it beyond the table-read, replaced instead with the Dunder Mifflin gang recreating the JK Wedding Entrance Dance from YouTube.

Whilst remaining unequivocally funny, the series is widely celebrated for its deft handling of the more emotional episodes, so it may not come as a huge surprise that this additional setback for Jim and Pam was axed in order to give the sentimental elements of the story more room to breathe. And with the two-parter now considered to be one of the best episodes of The Office, it would certainly seem to be a move that paid off. Whether fans feel that Roy should have made his cringe-fueled gesture or not, Daniels’ revelation confirms that the emotional heft of The Office was every bit as integral to its success as the comedy.

Source: Mashable

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