Office Party

Mayor Doherty, the president of the town’s Friendly Sons of St. Patrick society, said no. But he’s accommodating. Doherty told Daniels he could easily arrange a mock parade for the cameras: “If people knew The Office was coming to town to shoot an episode, I’d have no problem getting 25,000 people to show up. I’ll just be serving beer.”

Daniels was skeptical.

“Trust me,” the mayor told the producer. “People will show up and start drinking. You don’t know. Free beer in downtown? They’ll be here. It’s not a hard thing.”

Tonight, in the off-campus apartment, I’m surprised that nobody is drinking anything but Crystal Club soda. All the students I meet are seniors and over 21, and the University has a reputation as a serious party school. But the kids eat pizza and drink soft drinks and watch The Office, and they laugh together in great loud gasps at the episode, in which Rainn Wilson’s character, Dwight, is provoked into resigning from Dunder-Mifflin.

When the show is over, there’s some half-hearted concern expressed that Dwight will disappear from the show. But everybody here grew up on TV and knows that a major character’s departure goes against all series logic. I soon end up with the Four Morons in front of the computer in the bedroom of the apartment’s tenant, Kristin Peterman, an English major who wants to be a screenwriter.

We survey the various video clips from Rainn Wilson’s Mall at Steamtown visit that they’ve posted on YouTube. I ask about an episode I remember in which Michael and Dwight travel to Philadelphia for a sales convention. Isn’t there an impromptu rap by Steve Carell’s Michael and Rainn Wilson’s Dwight in a scene where Michael is hosting what he thinks will be the coolest party, in his hotel room? (Of course, almost nobody shows up.)

“Oh,” says lead Moron Phil Loscombe. “That’s the best. I have it as a ringtone.” So do Moron Joe Butash (biomathematics and philosophy) and Moron Andrew Ametrano (media studies) and Kristin. Within seconds, the four of them have whipped out their cell phones and are racing one another to find it first, like some new-communications-era ­version of rock-paper-scissors.

They all find the audio clip at the same time, and start it playing slightly off-synch with one another. The result is a small cacophony. But I can make out the lines of the rap.

“Ain’t no party like a Scranton party,” intones Michael Scott.

“’Cause a Scranton party don’t stop.”