While The Office continues its march to its final episode, this week’s episode “Livin’ the Dream” featured Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) singing a surprisingly touching “I Will Remember You” to say goodbye to his friends at Dunder Mifflin, although the emotion of the moment is later countered by Andy taking a dump on David Wallace’s car. For a limited time, you can capture the full episode on NBC (Andy’s song starts around the 34-minute mark). Otherwise, you can catch the original “I Will Remember You” by Sarah McLachlan on YouTube. Maybe Andy’s song moved me because anytime I hear a Sarah McLachlin song I now thing of poor suffering animals.
Anyway, the special hour-long The Office episode had some touching moments that seem to be setting up the end of the series on May 16. While I could speculate and make predictions, as a long-time fan I just want to enjoy the final ride. But we do now know that Michael Scott (Steve Carell) will not return for the finale (May 5, 2013 Update: Maybe we don’t know, as TVLine is now reporting Carell will make a cameo in the finale).
In past episodes, one character we could be sure would not give us a touching moment was Michael Scott’s friend Todd Packer, who has two thumbs and was the subject of another episode that featured excrement. As we noted in an earlier post, NBC’s website is featuring short videos of former regular guest stars on The Office looking back on their time on the show. In this video, David Koechner, who played the obnoxious Todd Packer, talks about the fun he had on the show: “It is a play, so let us play.”
[December 2014 Update: The NBC interview video is no longer available for embedding, but you may watch it on YouTube or instead below you may watch one of Koechner’s classic appearances on The Office.]
Like many of the characters in the American version of the The Office, Packer is based on a character from the original British version of the series, Chris Finch, who was played by Ralph Ineson.
What is your favorite Todd Packer moment on “The Office”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)
There are numerous places to go for happy holiday songs about snowmen, toys, and good cheer. But the holidays are often a depressing time of year for many, in part, because the songs and movies create such high expectations of perfection in our lives. So, to counter those expectations, here at Chimesfreedom we revisit three of the best depressing holiday songs, brought to you by Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, and the Pogues. Because these songs lower one’s expectations, maybe they provide a source of joy for this time of year better than some of the syrupy happy songs.