The Alliance (The Office episode)

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The Office episode

"The Alliance"
Dwight hiding in a box in "The Alliance"
Episode No.	4
Prod. Code	103
Airdate	April 12, 2005
Writer(s)	Michael Schur
Director	Bryan Gordon
Guest star(s)	Craig Robinson
The Office Season 1 March 2005 - April 2005
Pilot Diversity Day Health Care The Alliance Basketball Hot Girl
List of all The Office episodes...

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The Office (US)

"The Alliance" is the fourth episode of the first season of The Office (U.S. version). It was written by Michael Schur and directed by Bryan Gordon. It first aired on April 12, 2005.

1 Synopsis
2 Deleted scenes
3 Trivia
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Although time has dragged on, the downsizing rumors at Dunder-Mifflin have not ceased. Dwight feels particularly threatened by the impending crisis, and, in an act of desperation, forms an alliance with his office nemesis Jim. Jim sees the alliance as an opportunity with great potential and agrees as a lark. He immediately enlists Pam's help in the situation.

Meanwhile, Michael tries to boost morale in the office by having an office birthday party for Meredith, even though her birthday is a month away. Michael agonizes over writing the perfect greeting in her birthday card. In the end his joke (and subsequent rejected one) falls flat, severely ruining the party. At the same time Oscar also gets him to donate money to his nephew's cerebral palsy walk-a-thon, which Michael mistakenly overcompensates money in an effort to look like a good boss.

At the end of the day, after a breakthrough in his pranks on Dwight, Jim giddily grabs Pam's hand in an attempt to explain what has just happened. However, Pam's finance Roy catches this and sees it as an attempt by Jim to make a move on Pam. Roy is visibly heated, although nothing ensues.

[edit] Deleted scenes

The Season One DVD contains a number of deleted scenes from this episode. Notable cut scenes include:

Dwight brags to Jim how secure his computer is. Jim successfully guesses Dwight's password ("Frodo"). Dwight changes it, and Jim guesses it again ("Gollum").
Michael critiques Pam's phone-answering delivery. (This is the scene used in the title sequence when Jenna Fischer's name appears.)
Dwight throws old food out of the office fridge.
Jim complains to Dwight that he threw out his lunch as Dwight plays with his Phillies bobbleheads.
Oscar asks Angela to sign up for the walk-a-thon.
Extension of Jim and Dwight's conversation in the parking lot.
Toby signs Meredith's card in Michael's office, but Michael prevents him from writing any jokes.
Jim hopes to get Dwight to say "immunity" (a la Survivor).
Extended scene with Dwight trying to help Michael with Meredith's card. When Dwight asks Michael for immunity from downsizing, Jim quietly celebrates.
Michael tries to get Meredith to inconspicuously recall recent funny moments with him.
Michael explains to Oscar how he shouldn't have deceived him with the walk-a-thon.
Michael presents his alternate (and just as bad) card jokes to Meredith.
Dwight questions Ryan about his alliances.

[edit] Trivia

The Dundie awards are first mentioned by Dwight in this episode. We finally get to see the Dundies in the episode "The Dundies".
The first cut of the episode ran 37 minutes long. Producers considered making the episode a two-parter, one focusing on the Alliance and another focusing on Meredith's birthday party.^[1]
The car that Dwight kicks actually belongs to actress Phyllis Smith, who plays Phyllis on the show. Rainn Wilson stated that after every take she would tell him, "Please don't kick the hubcap too hard."^[2]
There were over a dozen takes of the scene where Michael wolfs down cake. Steve Carell ate so much (at 7:30 in the morning) that he got sick.^[3]
Not much of the footage made the final cut, but during the party, Ryan talks to a different woman in the background of each scene. The producers thought this was a nice character touch for the new employee.^[4]
A sign seen in this episode gives Dunder Mifflin's address as 1725 Slough Avenue, a reference to the UK The Office locale in Slough, Berkshire, England.
This episode marks the first appearance of the staff newsletter. The text of the staff newsletter is the same each time it appears (since it is merely a prop); only the picture and headline change.

Top Salesman Award

Welcome to yet another exciting edition of the Dunder Mifflin Employee Newsletter. Thanks to all of the staff and new contributing writers for putting this together for all of you, and also many thanks to the folks at Designtown for printing this up for us. Hopefully you will find a lot of useless information contained herein that will help you do your job better, faster and quicker and cheaper and happier.

As anybody can easily tell, this newsletter doesn't really have a lot to say. It's really just a prop to fill some space and sort of look like a newsletter without really being much of a newsletter at all. By typing a lot of words in two columns on the front of this page, we can achieve the look of a newsletter without really reporting much news or provide any real information to the reader at all. In fact, at times we can probably get away with not using real english words, such as kjgowbiwiwpo, ovcviqvck, or the much beloved dfbiouvsulegphaelk. These words can also be strung together to form a sentence, paragraph or even a whole prop book, magazine or newspaper.

[edit] References

^ Daniels, Greg (Producer). 2005. "The Alliance" [Commentary track], The Office Season One (U.S./NBC Version) [DVD], Los Angeles, CA: Universal.
^ Wilson, Rainn (Actor). 2005. "The Alliance" [Commentary track], The Office Season One (U.S./NBC Version) [DVD], Los Angeles, CA: Universal.
^ Fischer, Jenna (Actor), Krasinski, John (Actor), and Daniels, Greg (Producer). 2005. "The Alliance" [Commentary track], The Office Season One (U.S./NBC Version) [DVD], Los Angeles, CA: Universal.
^ Novak, B. J. (Actor/Writer). 2005. "The Alliance" [Commentary track], The Office Season One (U.S./NBC Version) [DVD], Los Angeles, CA: Universal.