A bucket of chili peppers hanging in the gut Office Experience. It floated through the air, layers of beans and sauces solidifying as they fell and splattered on the carpet. Even if you’re the most disengaged fan of the popular NBC sitcom, you’ll immediately recognize this as a scene from Season 5, Episode 26when Kevin — the lovable guy played by Brian Baumgartner — stumbles, and accidentally insults Dunder Mifflin with a brown stew of questionable consistency.
It was one of the most famous jokes in the history of Office, and this exhibit serves as its shrine. Visitors take up positions at the back of the ship and wince into a Kevin-ish expression, as their partners snap a picture of the future Instagram grid. With tickets starting at $35, they are keen to get their money’s worth.
The chili bucket is just the tip of the iceberg. Office The experience of taking your patrons through a zoo of Office language and memorabilia, all rendered with the same precision, detail as Disneyland. There’s a perfect replica of Pam’s reception desk, for instance, complete with a collage of cosmic sticky notes pinned to her computer screen. The tiny, Protestant chapel west of New York, where Jim and Pam hitchhiked, has also been completed; Step inside and you’ll hear an instrumental piece from Chris Brown’s “Forever” reverberating throughout the nave.
You can visit Daryl’s barn and Dwight’s sugar beet farm, and you’ll discover a storehouse of Easter eggs along the way. The Jell-O-wrapped stapler is here, as is the purple bandanna that Prison Mike was wearing. Spreadsheets and infographics line the walls, such as detailing each “That’s what she said” sentence uttered during the show or fictional afterlife career of the characters. side characters like Creed, Erin and yes, Toby.
The office itself looks… rather dull. Like in the show.
Luke Winkie
In other words, it’s a real museum about Office minutiae—filled with picturesque photographs mercilessly designed to win the hard-earned dollars of aging millennials. I arrived at the Washington, DC location around midday on Black Friday, with a group of other 30-somethings eager to rush through the door and live the life of a jolly newsboy. Make all the jokes you want, but Office Experience fully understands its mission.
Stacy Moscatelli, co-president and chief strategy officer at Original X Productions, the company behind Office Experience. “You want to be able to walk into the office and have a moment where you feel like you’re Jim, Pam or Michael, if that’s your preference. We wanted them to have the opportunity to not just sit at their desks and take pictures. But we want them to be able to open [the characters’] drawers, and view their desktops. We know that really hardcore fans will know the difference.”
Original X Productions has built a small empire from the first sparks of millennial nostalgia, which is rapidly emerging as one of the most lucrative fields in entertainment. In addition to Dunder Mifflin, the company also organizes The You The experience—where that luxury Greenwich Village apartment has been revived for anyone who buys tickets, from San Francisco to Paris—as well as a Harry Potter experience, where your loved ones can explore the Forbidden Forest and summon their own Patronus.
Yes, the original X is licensee more than licensor; Office The experience is the product of an agreement between NBC Universal and Deedle-Dee Productions, the vehicle behind Greg Daniels Offices, Parks & Recreation, and King of the hill. Moscatelli tells me that the company is always looking for more keystones that hit the pop culture with the lowest common denominator to reap. “It’s about finding the right IP, the right fan base, and the right partner,” she said. (May I suggest 30 Stones?)
I do not represent Moscatelli’s target market. At best, I’m a casual fan of Office. I joined the series in 2008, and most of the episodes have been consumed—by most critics’ assertions—representing the era of grim failure of the whole. (Firstly Office the season i watched in full was same place where Jim and Pam got engagedthat completely provoke my girlfriend who talks about Office like how the sketch comedy brothers talk about the first few years of The Simpsons.) I do not have any implicit prejudice against the program; it’s simply not part of my personal picture of how network television tends to shape an American, which I understand makes me something different.
It’s a classification Not case of Denise Rosales, a 41-year-old teacher from Texas, who lined up next to me as we waited for the exhibition to open. Rosales doesn’t have any family in the DC area, but she specifically planned a Thanksgiving trip to the nation’s capital so she could visit the Experience. For her, it was like a pilgrimage right to Dunder Mifflin.
“My parents are sightseeing there. I have taken them to some monuments. But the main reason for me to come here is because Office,” Rosales, who wore a Stanley-themed t-shirt, said, “I’ve watched the entire series a million times. It will bring back those memories.”
All the data a fan wants—and a die-hard fan might already know.
Luke Winkie
Office not the only popular sitcom from the mid to late 2000s. My name is Earl ran for 96 episodes, and How I meet your Mother has been shown on the a8r for nine years, but neither of those shows stand the slightest chance of being sanctified by their own travel theme park—a destination worth tweaking vacation plans. You could argue that Office represent the last vestiges of a monoculture that had begun to wane during the Bush years, yet the show’s best season only averaged 11 million viewers — a far cry from the usual 40 million. often commanded by Cosby Program in the 80’s.
In that sense, I think most likely Office simply calcifying a certain phenotype of widespread millennial expression, the phenotype we still feel to this day. If you’re an American in your 30s, that means you’ve endured countless “That’s what she said” statements. Normie Michael Scott’s reaction gifs, and countless Tinder records begging to find Jim or Pam. The smirk, half ironic, Reddit style of Office survives in concise Marvel scripts and Twitter biographies to this day. It’s in our bones. We cannot escape.
In fact, the more time I spend with The Office Experience has made it increasingly clear that for a lot of young(ish) people, loving this sitcom is pure, primal instinct; as natural as drinking water. Patrick Flynn, 34, who started watching the film, said: “It has humor, love and awkward moments.” Office at university and visited with his partner. (He also kindly agreed to be interviewed outside of Experience.) “It’s got believable characters. It’s got Steve Carrell.”
You probably won’t be surprised to learn that real people job because the exhibit doesn’t share Flynn’s legacy or mine – that is, most of them were born after the turn of the millennium. An employee told me that she is not a Office fans in his youth, but mentions that Original X trained its team of reporters to be fluent in all sorts of Dunder Mifflin minutiae. “They showed us clips so they knew the characters and knew how to talk to guests,” she said. (I have agreed to keep her anonymous for job security purposes.)
When I asked if she became a Office since taking the job, she says she prefers the first seasons. We taught the kids very well. Our legacy is safe. There’s a lot of bad about getting older, but I think there’s a simple joy that millennials are now discovering: We’re, after all, a spoiled demographic. It has never felt so good to be washed.
