The Office & HIMYM: Favorite Cold Opens!

I'm Jenna. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We were on the office together. And we're best friends. And now we're doing the ultimate. This Lovers Podcast just for you. Each week we will dive deeper into the work of the with exclusive interviews, behind the scenes details, and lots of Love stories. We're the Office Ladies 6.0. Hi there, everybody! Hi, we have such a fun episode today, lady. I'm really excited about it. We do. We are going to be discussing our favorite cold opens. Mm-hmm.

I think you guys have heard us use that term before. That's sort of like the two minutes of a TV show that precedes the title sequence. A lot of times on the office, this was a standalone comedic bit that was separate from the plot of the episode, but sometimes it was on plot of the episode. Yeah. And we're gonna get into some of our favorite cold opens with some special guests today. We have Josh Radner and Craig Thomas, the hosts of How We Made Your Mother.

We love their podcast. You guys know it. It's on our network. They rewatch each week an episode of How I Met Your Mother. And we're gonna talk cold opens with them today. Yeah, we thought it would be kind of fun if we traded some of our favorite the office cold opens and they told us a couple of their favorites from How I Met Your Mother.

But before we get to that, we have a really great chit chat. Yeah, this week's suggestion comes from Bailey M in Oklahoma City, who said, Hey ladies, Taylor Swift recently released a music video for her song Opalite and Donald Gleason is in it. It is glorious. She put a period after each word. Like like it like she wrote it out like it is your birthday. Yeah. It is glorious. Yes. Bailey said there's some Ned like dancing. Please discuss.

Okay, Bailey. We were very curious about all of this as well. And we did some digging. music video came about because Taylor and Donald were guests on the Graham Norton talk show, which is a really fun talk show. It's in England. There's like a big sofa and there's always a random s assortment of celebrities on this sofa. And if you watch the episode of the talk show, you can literally see Taylor's eyes light up.

When she has the idea for this music video, it all started with Killian Murphy and Taylor Swift complimenting Donal on his performance in the paper. Let's hear it. Donald. I love that! I love that! So good. The loveliest, most romanticizing character. He like romanticizes his life. And it's really sweet and beautiful. And also I don't think that you just sound American, you seem American. Sounds good. Yeah. Numbers on the back of Sky. Rocket. Donald's dancing alone.

Right. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm I'm hoping to get in a Taylor Swith music for you. And as the music video came out, Graham Norton was a guest on a podcast called Wanging On and he talks about all of it. Let's hear it. So tell So uh b uh basically uh well okay, I'll tell you what happened. So uh I got uh contacted by uh Taylor and Taylor's people and uh they wanted to disc I think they wanted to discuss something and I was I wonder what that's about.

And and then uh something about the music video and I thought, Oh, what's that? And then I got through the thing and it was like the whole thing uh came to her in a blinding flash on the sofa. Which you see in the At the end if you stay to the end of the video, you see her get the idea. And it was uh so she was on the show with Killian Murphy, Donald Gleason, Greta Lee, Jody Turner Smith and Luz Cabaldi.

And Donald Gleason said something about his dancing and he said, Oh, I'm hoping to be in the next Taylor Swift video and you see her little eyes go In it and everyone was available, everyone agreed to do it. He also said that it was, quote, like shooting a movie. It was a massive, massive deal and everyone was lovely on set. It was a really, really fun experience.

And he said they filmed his scenes at the Wit Gift Shopping Center in South London towards the end of 2025. And he was so excited to finally be able to talk about it. Well, I mean First of all, if Taylor Swift asks you to be in her music video, of course the answer is yes. Come on. Of course. Yeah. I mean anything Taylor, of course. I mean, Taylor, if you need two, you know, ladies of a certain season Yeah. Yes, we're there for you, Taylor. We're there for you, Taylor.

Ha ha ha Well, it's very funny because I have a little fun Surprise to share. Also about Taylor Swift. I was in our general mailbag for office ladies and I found this letter from Kayla M in upstate New York. And Kayla, I thank you so much for this letter because I didn't know this and it was a very exciting moment for my family. Oh. Here is what Kayla said.

Hi, office ladies. This is urgent. Did you know that Jenna can be seen in the Taylor Swift, The Eras Tour, The Final Show concert movie? I noticed and screamed. What Yes. lady. Yes. Ah So Kayla says just toward the end of All Too Well during the Red Era, you're in the crowd singing along and wearing your friendship bracelets. I cannot believe I just noticed this considering how many times I have watched it. Love you ladies.

You are kidding me. We both went to Taylor's Eris Tour. I cannot believe I was not at the one in Vancouver. You were in Vancouver. I was in New Orleans. Lady, you made it into her movie? Can't believe it. I cannot believe it. My daughter and I went to that together. I took a screen grab of it. But I was gonna say I need a screen grab immediately. It's a very fun moment because I am just looking up at the stage with just like

stars in my eyes. I look really happy. I've got my friendship bracelets. And I was really happy. It was such a special night for me. So lady, I took a screen grab of it. Here it is. Look at me. I've got, I'm holding my hands up. Under my chin. I'm looking up. I'm smiling. Oh my Oh my gosh, I see you! Yeah. Yes. Oh, that is so special. That is It's so fun.

And you know, right to my left there is my daughter, who didn't make it into the movie, but who was there that night and it was just such a special night for us and yeah. But isn't that crazy? That is crazy, crazy. Okay, so I also went with my daughter, but Jenna, what did you wear? Cause I look back at my pictures. I wore like sparkly cat ear. Yeah. And I had glitter on my face. Like what what did you wear? So I wore So remember that sparkly sequin jacket that I got from Macy's? Yes!

Yeah. So I wore just black pants and a t-shirt. And then I wore that sparkly jacket. Cause I was deep in hot slash mode at that point. And I knew I was going to be taking my jacket on and off. Yeah. You went sparkly jacket. I bought a shirt that said Karma is a cat and I wore cat ears. But so but what a glorious, wonderful, joyful experience that was. And I cannot believe you're in the dang movie.

That is so cool. Taylor, our offer still stands. I know Jenna's been in the movie, but if you need us to be in any future music videos. Literally. Any future anything. And actually anything, right? For you. Well, thank you so much to Bailey for writing in with that chit chat. I had a lot of fun watching all of those clips. We're gonna take a short break and when we come back, we're gonna discuss cold opens with Craig and Josh.

Hello there, fine gentlemen. Why hello? Oh is that us? We're the fine. Fine gentlemen, I was so confused. My goodness, of course. It's so great to be chatting with you again. We love chatting with you guys. Thanks for having us back. Yes, fine gentlemen. It's lovely to see you. Top of the morning to you. Well, we're really excited to chat cold opens with you. And Craig, it's really cool to have you on the podcast today because you're gonna give us a little bit of, I hope.

A writer showrunner's perspective on the cold open. Could you tell our audience what is a cold open? Mm-hmm. No pressure, by the way, no pressure. Yeah. Yeah, no I know. I have to define the entire genre of cold. And this will be canon, whatever you say. This will go right in the dictionary. Uh it's a little funny thing at the start of the show. That's the really short version.

It's you guys, I think the office was amazing at doing ones that were these little self-contained movies, these little mini short films that kind of that stood alone sometimes. They didn't always kick off the story. Am I right, you guys? It feels like that was often true for you guys.

That's so hard to do that we almost never did it on how I met your mother. We were too lazy. We're like, it's too hard to make a little like gem of so we often we usually started the story off somehow in our cold opens. You can either kick off the plot in the cold open or it's just a funny little thing.

And those are sort of the two ways to go. We sometimes did the funny little thing version on How much Your Mother, but usually we try to get the story started in some way. I would argue that doing the funny standalone way is probably harder because when you're starting the story, it at least has some momentum. But you I the you guys did it ingeniously on the office.

Well, you know, we all today picked one of our favorite cold opens from each of our shows. We're gonna share those. We'll set them up and we'll talk about'em. And I know the one I picked, I'm not gonna say it yet, but I almost picked the episode the injury. And that was a time we had a cold open on the office that did

kick off the episode. That's when Michael has a George Foreman grill by his bed because he loves the fresh bacon in the morning and he steps on the grill. But so that cold open where he calls Pam in a panic. is one that then leads into the whole episode. So we did that every once in a while, but you're right. Mostly ours were these standalone little movies. Did you guys tell us?

In the one of the episodes we did together that often they would write it for one and it would end up on another episode. Like they would mix and mash them. They weren't always the ones that you thought you were they were gonna be paired with. Yeah. Exactly. Because they were movable, because they were their own little story. But also sometimes they just got rid of them completely because they needed the time to tell the story of the episode.

Right. And if it is self-contained and modular like that, it's easier to take out. Whereas if you start the story, you're kind of stuck with it. Right. Did you guys always do a cold open? Cause we didn't do it every episode. We did sort of longer, like full act ones. We started the show with titles for the entire first season.

And then kind of mixed and matched, although we realized like in season two that we had a great theme song to smash cut to. Yeah. You know what I mean? With that like hard cut to the dun dun dun dun dun. It's like it's perfect for that. How are we not? We are like, why aren't we doing this? I was gonna say though, both our shows have really iconic grab you by the lapels kind of theme songs. Yeah. And there's something especially about if you do the first season.

People get to know the theme song. By the second season, it's actually really thrilling to do a cold open and then cut to, you know, do the needle drop to the theme song. Yeah, I feel like our theme songs were almost the button at the end of the scene sometimes, right?

Yeah. You know, Craig, we did usually have a cold open. Every once in a while we wouldn't for time, but for the most part we did. And I think about our writer's room and how much fun they had coming up with these standalone cold open ideas. I mean Kevin's Chili, my lord. Yeah. That one, that was Aaron Scher and I just people quote that to Brian. I think for the rest of his life he's gonna hear that.

I think also it's a great way if you have a card on the wall that's a funny idea, but you just can't make it a whole episode, but you could make it a really funny two minutes. I think a lot of our cold opens were things also that might be feeling a little too absurd for our little documentary show. that we were putting on, but we could be a little more broad in our cold opens as well, which brings us to speaking of a little bit of a broader cold open, Angela, your pick. It's one of our classics.

So I wanted to pick a cold open that was a real all ensemble moment'cause sometimes the cold opens were mostly, you know, Michael or Dwight and those kind of storylines. But this had everybody. It included a huge rehearsal. with our camera operators, our boom operators. It was like a real dance, if you will.

It's something I get yelled at the airport. Okay. So basically this is from stress relief, the episode stress relief. It is that famous fire drill cold open where Dwight is gonna teach everyone. How to survive an office place fire and Yeah. By locking the doors and setting a fire. It's absolute instant mayhem. We pulled a clip from the middle where Dwight is trying to get everyone to do all the steps in the chaos. Here it is. Procedure. Excellent!

Option! Where do we go, folks? What use a what to cover the mouth? What? What are they? We've already tried that. Exit points, exit points, people. I'm getting help! You're too heavy! I only weigh 82 pounds! So good. It's so great. Can I ask a question? How long did that take to shoot that? That looks like a m entire movie. Well, it was a full day to shoot it, but it was also a bunch of rehearsals.

Yeah. I came in a day early and I had to work with this cat and the cat wrangler and we had a fake cat. We had a real cat and a fake cat. And and I had a body double, like that stunt, just that moment of throwing the cat in the ceiling and it coming out the other side was a huge stunt. I just love like the unexpected, like the first throw of the cat.

Hilarious and unexpected. But so soon after is that second falling cat, which you're not quite expecting, which is like the actual enormous laugh of that moment. And the cat was totally okay, everyone listening. Our lime producer had put a whole bunch of like Fernie pad things, so he did hit something squishy and soft. I love also though Rain's unflappable

kind of commitment to like safe and everyone is absolutely panicking around him. But I heard Adam McKay say this thing that there's nothing funnier than people being confidently wrong. And so much of of Dwight is confident wrongness. And so much of like the humor on the office is confident, absolute wrongness. Well that's definitely Michael Scott. He's like the most confident idiot ever.

W there's something about us. We love it. We love that confident wrongness. Yeah. All right, so we asked you guys to pull your favorite cold opens, and I know there's it's always so hard to pick one, but Josh, which one did you pick? So I picked an episode from season four. It's called Right Place, Right Time. I think it was episode twenty two from season four.

It kind of starts off in a little bit of a minor key in terms of, you know, Robin and Ted and this morning scene and he's running out to g he's gonna go get a bagel, like a very kind of low key New York morning. And then he goes out the front door and he's about to turn one way, but he stops and he turns another way. He goes another direction. And then the narrator comes in and starts talking about, you know, almost the butterfly effect, essentially, like our seemingly innocuous choices.

are all kind of adding up together in this magical way to deliver us where we need to be. And oh and also right when he leaves, he grabs the yellow umbrella, which at that point we had established as an iconic Prop. Yeah, we told the audience that is involved in t how Ted is going to meet the mother eventually. That's like this magical, like little flash forward we saw, a yellow umbrella is part of that.

Meeting. Right. So he's like, he's just going outside to get a bagel, but he grabs this yellow umbrella and then it's like, oh my God, like now this is very, very significant. And then Uh it starts to rain and he opens the umbrella and then he gets a tap on his shoulder and he turns and we don't know who he's seeing, but the fake out, of course, is this must be the mother.

Right. And that's when you cut to main titles and you don't see the face. You have to watch the whole episode to see who's behind that umbrella. I loved this cold open and I also love the voiceover, which is by Bob Sigott. Yeah. So I would love to hear that because it's poetic and wonderful and I love it. The great moments are here. And that plan is a good one. A butterfly flaps its wings. Yeah. But it's also kind of wonderful. All these little parts. Constantly working.

Exactly where you're supposed to be. Yeah. The right place. At the right time. Uh So beautiful. Craig, I think that's some of the most like kind of lyrical narrating writing that you and the gang did. And I also, it really strikes me that the entire DNA, like blueprint of the entire series is in that Cold Over. Yeah. Right? Like

The whole show is spelled out thematically and illustrated in that. And then as the episode goes on, again, we talk about a lot about how I met your mother. One, it's a big mystery. It's a nine season mystery. But also a lot of episodes start off with something very strange and disorienting and what is going on. And then the episode solves the mystery. So it's like mysteries inside mysteries inside mysteries. Yeah. And this is like, this is a great.

Mystery episode, but it's also it just lays out all the themes so beautifully at the beginning. And Bob, man, I love hearing Bob. I get such a chill no hearing Bob do that one. He was such a secret weapon of the show. He was so good at being future Ted telling his kids that story. Yeah. And I think it's an underrated

kind of like track in the overall song of our show. You know, that was that's like a really crucial instrument in the orchestra there. And he was wonderful. It makes me miss him. He was just a great guy. And he loved playing that part. He took a lot of pride in being feature Ted.

He and Josh developed a real bond because he's like, I'm future you, I'm the voice of future you. And you guys like really became close over that and you hear it. He would watch the episode, he'd tap into where Ted was emotionally, and he'd perform that.

And I love that about him. And yeah, this is kind of the whole series in miniature. Since this whole episode that you're having us on is a symposium on cold opens. This is another way we used cold opens, which is we liked teasing a mystery. We liked really getting right up to a mystery moment, hard cutting to credits, and you have to stay tuned for the next 20 minutes to find out.

In this case, who's behind that umbrella? It turns out to be Meryl Streep playing herself. No. But it's you need to watch the rest of the episode. And that is we that's what I mean by we we usually put the cold open on how I met your mother was like a load bearing support of the architecture because we really start the story there. We plant a mystery or we kick something off in some way. We didn't do as many freestanders as you guys did, which again are really hard to do.

One other thing I wanna say about that that cold open, again, uh you know, when Craig and I've been doing how we made your mother part of it is like the mystery of why people love the show so much and why do people still want to talk about them and play them for their kids and all this stuff. And one of the things that I think people find so much solace in.

Is that it's a meaningful universe. How I Met Your Mother says the universe, both in this show and presumably the one that you're existing in, also.

is meaningful and every little encounter has meaning and it's kind of an antidote to cynicism, it's an antidote to nihilism, you know, or chaos. That that there's a plan and there's benevolence and there's a guiding hand. And I think that Even if people don't articulate it that way, that's part of the warmth they feel when they watch the show and why they keep coming back to it. I so agree. It's like comfort, you know, when I watch your show, I it makes me feel

like everything's okay in some way. And I want you guys to know, just yesterday I met a woman who told me she loves your podcast. She's an office ladies listener. She's so excited. It's on our network. And then she told me that her and her husband

recreated the moment with the umbrella with the trench coat where you only see the legs, you know? And she pulled out her phone and showed it to me. And then I was like, I'm actually seeing them tomorrow and we're watching this cold open. So I just think that Your show is really meaningful to people and that's a special thing. We need those touchstones. I think we're two for two. We're hitting them out of the park. And so, okay, who's up next? Jenna, it's you.

Sure. Well, I felt a little shy about picking this one because I am the star of it. But I only ever got to star in one cold open and it is one of my favorites. It was in season nine and it also features the whole ensemble because those were also my favorite cold opens. You know, a lot of our cold opens were a great opportunity for Jim to play a prank on Dwight.

Those are some of our most famous ones. You know, Bears beats Battlestar Galactica when he puts his desk in the bathroom, or it features Michael doing something crazy like parkour or needing to put his face in cement. So this one was really fun for me. It's Pam's chore wheel and it's near and dear to my heart. If there was one prop that I wish I had from the show, it would have been any of these chore wheels. I wish I had that hanging in my office.

But basically what happens in this is the office is really dirty. It's messy. I mean, you even see like a little rat crawl across the floor. And Pam's the office administrator and she has to try to come up with some sort of cleaning schedule where people divide up. all of the chores. So she tries making a chore wheel. We have a little clip from the top of this one. We can take a listen.

The building's custodian is on vacation for the month and Dwight is too cheap to hire a replacement. So instead we're living in filth. But not for long, because I have created the chore wheel. Oh yeah. Can I spin first? Well, it doesn't spin. We'll just move the wheel one notch each morning and you see what chore you get that day. A wheel is supposed to spin. Yeah. Good good no, I'm familiar with spinning, it's just that wouldn't work with a chore wheel because people might get the same chore.

Продолжение следует... Boring. A wheel once a spin, Pam. Bidding would be more fun. Yeah. Hey, that's what I'm doing. Pocket. Thank you. Big money, big money. So she makes a spinning wheel and then they get mad because the only thing that you can win is a chore. So then she has to make another wheel where you win fun stuff.

But there's one thing on the wheel that's called tiny wheel. And if you hit tiny wheel, you have to spin a tinier chore wheel that's really cute. And that has actual chores on it. But Pam says no one cares because the tiny wheel is so cute. And it was just funny and, you know, silly and I don't know. I love it I would love a chore wheel in real life. I was gonna say, Jenna, I don't know you that well yet, but this seems to me like entirely door to door something you would do. Am I right?

Yes. Bingo. That's I think it's another reason why she loves it, is because in real life, Jenna you do make a chore list. For a go, Jenna. I'm a Pisces. I'm a very organized Pisces. The tiny wheel feels very you. I feel like you would definitely do the tiny wheel part. We're gonna make this fun. We got a tiny wheel. Yes. It's super tiny. And I think it just also it's like

uh having kids and trying to get them excited about chores. Like there's all these adults in the room, but they're just acting like children. And she's having to like manipulate them into keeping their own space clean. It's like, don't you want it to be clean, guys? It's also fun to play as an actor when it's like you against everyone else. How everyone unites as like a single hive mind where they're like, No, it should spin like a circle should spin, a wheel should spin. Yeah.

Even Jim doesn't have- But it's a little like I always like Simpson's crowd scenes are so funny when everyone like picks up like pitchforks and lanterns and just like storms city hall or whatever. So quickly. Over the over anything.

And kind of shows like our ability to fall into like mass psychosis as a society. You know. I loved as part of the ensemble, whenever we would all collectively like react to one character. I loved it so much. I mean, Pam rarely had to hold everyone's attention in the conference room. That was normally Michael, right? All the time. But it was so fun to just be like Be in the crowd and be like, We don't get it. I don't get it. Do you get it? I don't get it. It was super fun.

I remember it was very intimidating to stand in front of you all too. I was standing there and I was like, oh my gosh, Steve did this for seven years. How did he do this? But don't you feel like that's how Pam would feel? Like that feels very usable. Like where actor thing and character thing are probably close. Yes. Like she has like this really great idea that she feels really confident about, but also as soon as anybody pushes back against her, she's like, oh no.

Craig, I think it's your turn. You're the person who hasn't shared yet. I'm very nervous. Now, the funny thing is, we've this is by far the simplest one of any of the ones that we talked about today. I chose it mainly because. I'm looking at it through the lens of doing our podcast, of doing a rewatch podcast, where you go back and you investigate what the hell you did, if you can remember it.

And the way I felt about this cold open at the time was I really liked it and I'll tell you why. And then we got up to this episode just a couple months ago and we had the writer of this episode, Greg Malins, who worked on Friends and How I Met Your Mother. And he came on and he dropped a couple of bombs on me that made me completely change how I see this cold open now. So I chose mine to be podcast uh relevant.

I'll set it up really quick because I think we're gonna play a clip and then we're gonna surprise you with a couple of subsequent clips of what of the podcast. Okay, so it's the early season two. Marshall has had his heart broken. Lily and Marshall broke up at the end of season one. Marshall is tepidly trying to like tiptoe into being single. He's flirting with a woman at the coffee shop. They're actually hanging out at a coffee shop because he likes this woman who works there.

And there's a debate about coffee shops versus bars. So I guess that decides it. Yep. Hanging out at a coffee place, not nearly as much fun as hanging out at a bar. Okay, so and it goes on from there. You see a flashback of Marshall flirting all week with this woman who works at the coffee shop, telling really stupid dad jokes, basically, but she's into it. And you kind of catch up to reality. He's gonna ask her out.

And they discover along the way that she drew a heart on his cup, but didn't do anything on Ted's cup. Well what if the heart doesn't mean anything? What if she writes it on all the cubs? Mine says Ted, no heart. Warly. Amen. It's Swarley from Barney. It's not even a name. Who would ever be called Swarley? Thank you. Oh please don't start calling me sweet. Warley. Thank you. This would never happen at a bar. Man, what's up with Swarley? I know. You almost never see old Swalls get that upset.

Here's why I love that that when we did this in two thousand and six, I guess that earned. When we launched How Mage Mother, we really wanted to separate ourselves from friends. We wanted to be able to say, we are not one of the 75 other shows that has tried to recapture what friends did.

But of course we look like friends. If you put it on a poster, it's like young people dating in New York. It looks similar. We wanted to differentiate ourselves. I thought this was a very clever way to do that because it seemed that opening joke about the coffee shop versus the bar, our home base set is a bar.

It seemed obvious and it was written by a friends writer, Greg Malins, the only writer who wrote for Friends and How I Met Your Mother. And I thought that was such a great way to differentiate the two shows. Well Greg came on our show recently on the podcast, cut to nineteen years later. And he revealed to me two big things that really undercut my feeling that had differentiated us from friends. One was his assertion, and he swears to God about this.

That he did not mean it as a friends versus how I met your mother joke. And literally every And working on How I'm at Your Mother, and the millions of people who've seen that episode, every single person thinks it's a friends differentiated from How I'm at Your Mother joke, except the guy who wrote it. He's like, no, I just thought it was like a funny line.

Can I raise my hand on that one? When I watched it, I was like, oh, that's such a fun tongue-in-cheek like wink to we're not friends in a coffee shop. Right. We all thought this is a fun joke, dig it, friends. Like a hundred percent everyone thought it. There's one guy on planet Earth who thinks it's not a friend's reference and it's Greg Malins. That is so crazy. Cause also like there's the cute like waitress like Barista, like kind of like Rachel. Like, wow, that's crazy. Greg. Oh my lord.

And the second thing that came out of that was even more disturbing. Greg made another confession about that last joke right before you cut to titles that again, I was so proud that we were differentiating our show from the long shadow cast by friends. Well, 19 years later, a couple months ago, Greg Malin's. Said this to me. Here's the truth, and I've never told anybody this.

Revelation and it's not something that A I'm proud of And B makes me feel good and C makes me look good'cause none of the above are true. The end of the cold open. Of this episode I wrote that joke already on French. Yeah. Oh my god. And while we're at it, can we play the clip of the joke on Friends? Which again I never knew until 2026. Okay, uh for now, temporarily, you can call me Clint. No way. Cool enough to pull off Clint. Okay, so what name am I cool enough to pull off? It's Clint.

It's clicked. It's click! What's up with Gene? So you can see how this slightly undercuts my feeling that this was differentiating us from friends. You're allowed to steal from yourself. I did a series with Greg after the office called Your Family Are Mine on TBS. And now I wanna re watch it to see if there's any friends like slide. She just keeps it. Yeah.

Yeah. Maybe he puts some how I met your mother jokes on that. He always takes the show previous and puts it on. But he was I thought he was so noble and like there was something very brave about confessing to that nineteen years later.

That episode is a beloved, wonderful episode. Time and fans go to coffee shops in twenty twenty six and say the name Swirly. And they send us pictures of them doing the having had Swirly. Like that's an iconic episode written by Greg. He's a great writer. He did a great job on that episode. He slugged that one joke in, figuring that we would beat it, and we never did it, got a huge laugh at the table reading. You thought, oh shit, this friend's joke's gonna wind up staying.

And the whole time I'm blabbering about, I love that it differentiates us from friends. And in, you know, 20 years later I learned it it did not differentiate us from friends in any way.

That's great. Awesome guys. Look at all the things you're discovering through the podcast, through the rewatch, you know? How fun is that? Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Are you guys loving it? Are you loving the experience, Josh, of having to watch it? And is your wife still watching with you? She is, yes. Although I think I might have mentioned this to you. She she's dying because she she wants to just keep going. Like she just wants to binge.

And we have to dole it out and I have to watch them in order and I ca and she can't run out ahead of me. So she's having to uh To wait on you. So she doesn't like that. But other than that, she's having a great time. And it's so nice to watch it with her and to let her see this huge part of my life before I met her.

having a different perspective on it all these years later, which is what the show is kind of framed as as a man looking back on his life when he was younger. And so it's just been a blast. And you know, like we've we talked about before, but hearing from fans and and also learning about myself now versus then and where I was then and kind of forgiving myself for how hard I was on myself then and It's just I don't know the whole thing has been like quite a blessing. So we're really thrilled.

Yeah. Oh my goodness. Josh, Craig, thank you so much for coming on to talk about Cold Opens with us. Y'all are such a delight. We enjoy you so much. You got to come back. Please. Yeah, we'd love to have you back on our show. We love uh hanging with you guys. Yeah, thank you guys so much. Thanks for taking us under your wing and showing us how to do a podcast. We're thrilled. Paired with you guys. Thanks for having us. Next time, tags. Yeah man. We discussed tag. Philosophical discussion.

Good times. Love you guys. Thanks for having us, you guys. Thank you so much.

I mean, they're smart, they're funny, they're insightful. I mean, come on. and kind and warm. Mind I know. Lovely. Lovely, love them. Go check out their podcast, How We Made Your Mother. And now, folks, it's time for Our first around the town is from Jesse P in Chesterland, Ohio. Jesse says, My family is in our third year of making our own maple syrup from the red maple trees on our property.

My husband spends every Saturday in March boiling down sap in his homemade evaporator. We make enough for our family for the whole year and a little extra for friends. Our kids no longer like store-bought maple syrup and won't even touch, quote, pancake syrup anymore. Laugy face. That is so cool.

Cool. This tells you how much I know about maple syrup. I didn't realize that Ohio had red maple trees. I mean, of course, right? I mean, we have maple trees in Missouri. I guess I didn't think you could get syrup from them. I mean I don't even know how you Do you this is a crazy question. Do you put like a spigot Tree. You spick at the tree. Is that crazy? Did I see that in a movie? Was that a cartoon? Was that like a Bugs Bunny cartoon I saw in my

No, because I feel like I saw a spigot in a tree too, but I don't know why. Maybe was it in a movie or something? I don't know. Okay, yes. Well, according to the internet, a spigot or a spile is used to tap maple trees for sap, usually from February to March. Well there you go. For whatever reason, I just thought all the syrup was coming from Canada. I never allowed syrup to come from anywhere else. I'm sorry, Ohio. This is wonderful.

I wish we were neighbors with you, Jesse, so we could trade. I would like give you some lemons for some of your syrup. Yeah. All right, our next around the town is from Heidi J, who said, my friends Pet Dotson, Walter Pickles, won first place this last weekend at the Canterbury Park 2026 winter dog race for Wiener Dogs.

His description on the lineup sheet said, Walter Pickles is a very social, friendly mini dotson. He loves chasing bunnies and squirrels and taking long sniff walks. His favorite human food treat is popcorn. Aw, congratulations, Walter Pickles. That is adorable. I wanna see the winter dog race for wiener dogs. That's gotta be the cutest thing. Yeah.

All right, next up and oh my goodness, did this one make my heart happy. It's from Kate W. in Chattanooga, who wrote in and said she was so inspired by the office ladies breakdown of the paper And our shout out to my grandmother, Lena May, in her newspaper column that she started a local newspaper of her own called The Chatty Nougans. Get it?

Mm-hmm. To highlight the everyday lives of the people in their town. The first issue just went live at the beginning of March and featured work from local artists, a growing Thai collection, an escape room crawl, and a goth themed train ride. You can check out the first issue. It's on their Instagram, the chatty underscoreNougans, And she also went on to say a big thank you to us for being part of the inspiration behind this passion project.

Fills my heart with so much joy. I love this. I love this for your grandma. I love this for the chatty Nougans. It makes me happy. It made me so happy. I just thought of my grandmother, you know, If she would have never even imagined that something like this is possible, that her little around the town column would just be touching other people's lives like this. It oh my goodness, Kate. Thank you for sharing that.

That's legacy, right? This has now become part of your grandmother's legacy. It continues to grow. She continues to reach people. That's really cool. That's so cool.

All right, and we always now end these episodes with our office question of the week. This one comes from Katherine R from Mississippi. Catherine says, which episode of The Office was your favorite to film and why is it your favorite? Oh, Catherine, this is so difficult.

I loved this question because I feel like we're always asking our guests this question, but I wondered, have we answered this question? I've been asked this question before in interviews and I have A few answers because there's sort of the episode that was my favorite to film. Because of maybe stuff that happened on set behind the scenes that are just special to me, but then there were episodes that were just

so incredibly funny or creative or interesting that those were really fun to shoot too. But Angela, do you have an answer? This is really I mean, Catherine, I feel like this changes for me. Every couple of months because, you know, Jen and I rewatch the whole show and then every once in a while I'll catch an episode with the kids or something, or it will pop up, you know, like you're traveling, you're in a hotel room, you're like, oh, the office is on Comedy Central. I'll watch one.

And this might surprise you, Jenna, but I was feeling very nostalgic recently for Beach Game. Oh, that doesn't surprise me. I mean that was a hard shoot. Is that why you think it would surprise me? Because it was a little grueling. It was grueling. We were outside in the heat. It was like dusty and sandy, and like we got sunburned. It was long days.

But then at night it was freezing, but we had to be in our same clothes that we had. That was the thing about beach games. You established this warm weather clothing for the day. And then at night you were stuck with that same outfit and you were freezing. And you were freezing. Yeah. So it was physically a difficult shoot. But, you know, I was going through some old pictures and um It was so unfortunate.

Just special in so many ways. Okay, one, I loved my storyline with letting Andy just float away. Mm-hmm. And I love that line where I say, Did you say sandwich? And Dwight says sabotage. I remember Jen Salata laughing her butt off and almost ruining a take because she cracked up every single time I said, Did you say sandwich? But then I also just remember us hanging out in between scenes by our trailers. We had like a little camp they set up.

And someone brought a football and we were throwing the football. And Harold Ramus came over in the morning and we would all have coffee together and sit outside one of the trailers having our coffee talking in the morning. It's just, it's amazing to me that I got to be a part of all of that. And I would say not to be totally sappy, but I am a bit of a sap. One of the things that was really special to me about it was watching you as my best friend have this absolutely amazing monologue.

That had so much. It was so long. I remember when we got the script, it was like half a page. And you nailed it in front of all of us and it had all this emotion and I was so proud of you. Thank you. Anyway, I don't know. I've just been very nostalgic for that episode. What a wonderful memory. I really hold it close to my heart.

It's so funny that you picked that one, Angela, and for the reasons that you picked it, because there were two episodes that popped into my mind and they're one right after the other in season two. And the first one is Booze Cruise. Oh yeah. And again, you'd be like, why are you picking the episode where we were up at till the crack of dawn and we were all nauseous and you got lost at sea?

But you know, it's that thing where those memories are now part of the lore and the joy of the show. They're part of the adventure of it. And we all really bonded. And that was the episode, Angela, where you guys found out you were gonna be series regulars. And so there was that extra added celebration and joy to that episode. But then it was also just really funny. It was fun being stuck together. It was like a summer camp at sea, you know?

And we all got to stay in a hotel, even though we never saw each other, except on the boat, because we were all so tired. And then, you know, the next episode after that was the injury. And I remember this was when we were finally. Not worried we were going to be canceled every single week. And I think we could exhale a little bit. You guys were series regulars. And then Mindy wrote this script that was just so bonkers and weird and so funny. And I laughed so hard.

Shooting that episode with Steve and the butter and all of his antics with the bubble. Bubble wrap. The bubble wrap. Yeah. So That section right there, those are some of my fondest memories. Yeah. I mean, obviously I have favorite ones because I loved us all in the conference room and we would get so punchy. So I look back on episodes where at the time I was like, I cannot believe we're spending five days in this one room together.

This one tiny conference room. But those are the ones though that feel so special because we were all sort of in it together, you know? Yes. I feel like if someone said, okay, I'm gonna send you back in time and you get to reshoot one episode, you get to re-experience shooting one, I think I would choose the injury because it's in the bullpen. You know, I would wanna go back in time and be in the bullpen. Right.

And I just remember laughing so hard and it was so absurd. And we were all like still very young and fresh and we were experimenting and we were finding ourselves. And that's just such an exciting time creatively. That's such a great question. If I could go back and relive one. I mean, that's really hard to pick'cause I loved dinner party, but I would want to redo one with everybody. Yeah, in the office, right?

In the office and I was thinking, gosh Selfishly I would also love women's appreciation. Mm-hmm. Those scenes of us in that van in Meredith's van. with all the trash and junk in it. And, you know, it we got to spend a whole day with Steve. We got to have Steve to ourselves. And that was so fun. And of course, you know, we had scenes in the office too. So we would get to be with everyone. But I would do that day again for sure. Yeah.

Well, thanks, Catherine. Thanks for letting us answer that question that we've asked so many people ourselves. It's fun to think about. Yeah. And thank you guys so much for writing in. We're really just loving doing these segments with you all. So go to officeladies.com. You can click on submit a question. We have lots of fun folders where you can write in.

Yeah, we've gotten really organized, everybody. We did it. We're very grateful to Ileana who helps us with our website. We have a special folder for second drinks where we want you to go in there and tell us your favorite moments from episodes. And then we also have a folder for around the town for chit chat questions and now officially a folder for the office question of the week. Yeah, so go check it out and we hope you guys have the best week. We appreciate you all so much.

And a big thank you to Craig Thomas and Josh Ratner for joining us today. Jenna Fisher. Our senior producer is Matt Beagle and our audio engineer is Sam Keel. Odyssey's executive producer is Leah Reese Dennis. Office Ladies was mixed and Our theme song is representative.