Someone Writing 'The Office' Season 9 Really Wanted to End Jim and Pam, But John Krasinski Gave A Hard No
The audience debate about whether Jim and Pam are a good couple, whether Jim cheated on Pam with Cathy or Pam cheated on Jim with Brian the boom guy, are seemingly never-ending. You like to think they're the perfect couple, but some people seem to feel the need to pick them apart for no matter what.
'Some people' apparently also included someone in the writer's room during season 9 of The Office. We all know that that season saw Jim and Pam go through some marital struggles, and honestly, it's all the more realistic for it. But the original storyline was actually apparently far more dramatic...and also, according to John Krasinski, just plain wrong.
According to Brian Baumgartner's (Kevin Malone) new book, Welcome to Dunder Mifflin: The Ultimate Oral History of The Office, the original script for the season 9 episode "After Hours," where some of the Dunder Mifflin team goes down to Tallahassee to open a new store, was originally much more controversial. The document contained a scene that saw Jim give into temptation, making out with Pam's replacement Cathy in his hotel room.
John Krasinski read that twist in the readthrough and knew immediately that he could not do it - and said as much to the show's creator, Greg Daniels, right away.
"That's the only time I remember putting my foot down... I remember saying things that I never thought I'd say before, like, 'I'm not going to shoot it,'" he recalls in the book.
"There is a threshold with which you can push our audience. They are so dedicated. We have shown such great respect to them. But there's a moment where if you push them too far, they'll never come back. And I think that if you show Jim cheating, they'll never come back," he explained.
Daniels agreed with Krasinski that cheating was just something Jim would never do - but then, he argued, they needed something to happen to Jim and Pam in that season. Their story couldn't remain static yet another year - especially since, at that time, they weren't sure the ninth season would be their last.
Luckily, Krasinski had a more realistic point of conflict in mind:
"I said, 'I think we should get borderline separated, and I think we can do it and then come back,'" he explained. "He was so on board with that."
This one was far more realistic for Jim and Pam. As a couple who went straight from the honeymoon phase of their relationship to a wedding and a baby, the pair kind of skipped the stage of just getting used to normalcy and their lives being slow enough for them to think about what they wanted - and unfortunately for Jim, once they finally did, he realized he wanted more than what they had.
The fact that Pam was satisfied where she was and Jim was a little too impatient to wait for her to get caught up - because he's so used to them just being in sync - ended up being the perfect test for Jim and Pam's marriage, and a great model to show other couples that going through something similar doesn't mean the relationship has to end, as long as you're both willing to work on it.
Krasinski not only saved Jim and Pam as a couple, he took their romance and turned it into one of the best on-screen examples of a real marriage ever shown on TV.
Thank you and bravo, Jim.
Brian Baumgartner's new The Office Tell-All book is available wherever books are sold.
