With Martin Freeman hosting Saturday Night Live, it is almost a no-brainer that the show would have to do something about two of his most famous roles — as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit films and as Tim Canterbury on the BBC’s original series The Office. Still, SNL managed to take a funny concept and make it really funny with The Hobbit Office.
The segment also features Bobby Moynahan as Gandalf as the boss of a paper company, reflecting the character played by series creator Ricky Gervais and later played by Steve Carell in the U.S. version. And wait until you see which character from Middle Earth takes on the role of The Office‘s Gareth Keenan/Dwight Schrute character. Check it out.
The final Hobbit film, The Battle of the Five Armies, will be in theaters starting December 17, 2014.
What is your favorite part of The Hobbit Office? Leave your two cents in the comments.
One of my favorite episodes of the U.S. series The Office is the season four episode entitled “The Dinner Party.” In the show, Michael Scott (Steve Carrell) and Jan Levinson (Melora Hardin) invite some guests from the Dunder Mifflin office for dinner, and the tension in their relationship plays out to make the most awkward party since the Donners.
In the episode, Jim notes to the camera, “Michael and Jan seem to be playing their own separate game, and it’s called ‘let’s see how uncomfortable we can make our guests.’ And they’re both winning.” One of the most uncomfortable moments comes from a wonderful song, “That One Night,” by The Hunted.
The Hunted
The Hunted is the fictional band led by Hunter Raymond, the young man who had worked as Jan’s assistant. As Jan plays the CD on the stereo in “The Dinner Party” episode, the awkwardness ramps up when we realize that Hunter is apparently singing about losing his virginity to Jan (“You took me by the hand/ And made me a man.”).
Below is the cringe-worthy clip of when Jan first plays the song.
The song appears again at the end of the episode when Jim reveals to Pam that he stole the CD, a sweet gesture to make Pam laugh. Jim’s act is also a sympathetic theft so that Michael no longer has to hear the song. Jim plays the CD in their car as the song then plays over an epilogue showing the dinner guests after the party.
Who Created “That One Night”?
Unfortunately, there is no real album by The Hunted, but the song works perfectly in the episode of The Office. When a comedy uses an original song for comic effect, it is a challenge for the song to sound believably real while being funny too. “That One Night” hits it out of the park on all counts.
Who are the geniuses behind “That One Night”? In the series, actor Nicholas D’Agosto (born April 17, 1980) portrayed Hunter Raymond. D’Agosto appeared in two episodes during the third season, his voice appeared in another episode, and his image graced the CD cover for “That One Night” in “The Dinner Party” episode.
The actual singer on “That One Night,” though, is Todd Fancey, a singer-songwriter who is the guitarist for The New Pornographers. Fancey also wrote the catchy music for “That One Night,” while writing and producing team Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg wrote the lyrics.
The Lyrics?
There are no “official” lyrics for the song posted on the web. So, there seems to be a disagreement about the words Fancey sings.
Some say that part of the chorus says “so raw, so right,” while others claim he sings “so wrong, so right.” Another source claims the words are “so rock the ride all night all right.”
I have always thought the disputed words were “so wrong,” not “so raw.” That interpretation makes the most sense, but I understand how one may also hear it as “so raw.”
While we never got a tour or a full album from The Hunted, we loved the band’s music for that one night. Oh yeah.
Update and Alternate Version of “That One Night”
In April 2017, Rolling Stone featured an interesting oral history about the episode. One of the revealing facts was that Fancey also put together a more polished longer version of “That One Night” with alternate lyrics. While it is interesting to hear, one can see why The Office went with the version they did. Below is the alternate version.
What is your favorite episode of The Office? If you also love “The Dinner Party,” check out these deleted scenes. Leave your two cents in the comments.
I have been watching the U.S. version of The Office since it first premiered, and I was sad tonight to see the series end. Finishing a good book or ending a long-running T.V. series can do something that movies cannot accomplish by making you feel like you are losing a life-long friend. There will be plenty of articles critiquing The Office finale and comparing it to other series’ final episodes. I might think about those questions at some point, but tonight I just enjoyed seeing the characters one last time. Right now, though, what amazes me is that I watched the series all these years and did not know that the character Creed Bratton, played by Creed Bratton, had been in the Grass Roots. How did I miss that?
The final episode noted that the character Creed had been in the Grass Roots. And then when he sang at the end while playing guitar, it made me realize that they were not joking.
After searching for the lyrics (along the lines of “I saw a friend today . . . we forgot each other’s names” and “all the faces that I know have that same familiar glow”), I found that it is indeed a Creed Bratton song, “All the Faces.” Here is a live version of Creed singing the song he sang on The Office finale. Nice.
Creed Bratton joined the Grass Roots in 1967 and played guitar on songs like the classic, “Let’s Live for Today.” Creed is the guy in this video in the striped shirt on your left.
Bratton quit the band two years later, and his life did not go so well. By the nineties he was doing catering jobs, but then he got a big break when he got a job in 2005 on The Office playing someone with the same name as him.
During the run of the series, the real-life Bratton continued to work on his music. At least in one deleted scence from The Office, his character even got to jam out at least one time. In a deleted scene from the “Booze Cruise” episode, he picked up a guitar and even revealed his Grass Roots past. I am not sure why they saved the reveal about his past for so long. Viewers would have assumed it was a joke, but it did make a beautiful touch to the final episode.
Creed is releasing new music with Tell Me About It, a three-part “audio biography.” Check out “Faded Spats.”
Two members of the Grass Roots — Rob Grill and Ricky Coonce — have passed away. In addition to Creed, Warren Entner is still alive. The two are still good friends.
In tonight’s episode of The Office, near the end, the character Creed talked about how life is “arbitrary” in the way things happen in one’s life. But, he explains, no matter where one ends up, “human beings have this miraculous gift” to make a place their home.
With a life of ups and downs, the real Creed Bratton found a home on The Office and now is using that home to go on to other things. Although he will always be that odd guy on The Office to me, he is of course much more than that. It looks like we haven’t heard the last of Creed Bratton.
What is your favorite Creed moment on The Office? Leave your two cents in the comments.
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.
My favorite half-hour comedy has long been The Office, once I forgave it for not being the British version of the show, which I loved first. So, I am sad that the series finale is little more than a month away on May 16 at 9 p.m.
To help us say goodbye, John Krasinski (“Jim”) produced a 10-episode web series that NBC will be posting over the upcoming weeks. The series will feature interviews with memorable guest stars. The first episode talks to Will Ferrell, who during his lunch recalls his time on the show as Deangelo Vickers. (2016 Update: Unfortunately, the video is no longer available.)
Who was your favorite guest star on “The Office”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
