Production
"Dream Team" was written by B. J. Novak and directed by Paul Feig. It originally aired on April 9, 2009, the same day as the episode "Michael Scott Paper Company"; the debut episode of the new NBC show Parks and Recreation was shown between the two episodes. It marks the first appearance of Novak as Ryan since "Frame Toby" in November 2008, when Novak briefly left the show to film his role in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Mindy Kaling, an Office writer who also stars as Kelly Kapoor, thought of the idea of Ryan dying his hair blond. Novak wore a baseball cap in public between the times his hair was dyed and when the episode aired, in order to make the reveal a surprise, and even kept the cap on when he and the rest of the cast and crew did a public forum and Q&A session. "Dream Team" was the third of six episodes guest starring Idris Elba, best known as Stringer Bell from the television series The Wire. Elba said he did not watch the episode when it aired because "I'm hypercritical about my work, so I try not to torture myself."
Prior to the episode airing, NBC set up a web site for the new Michael Scott Paper Company at michaelscottpapercompany.com, which included a mission statement for the company, photos of the new office space and a downloadable copy of the coupon for "unparalleled customer service" featured in the episode "Michael Scott Company". Another official NBC site, dundermifflininfinity.com, created a Flash game inspired by the episode, in which the viewer attempts to kick a soccer ball past Jim in the office parking lot and hit Phyllis in the face.
The official The Office website included two cut scenes from "Dream Team" within a week of the episode's original release. In one minute-long clip, Andy continues brown-nosing to Charles; during a documentary interview, Andy says he was not the teacher's pet in school, but that he "walked the teacher's pet, and fed it, and bathed it". A second one-minute clip involves the soccer game itself: Dwight excitedly sets up the game, Jim tries not to show Charles he does not know what "offside" means and Creed picks up the ball and hurls it at Kelly.
Read more about this topic: Dream Team (The Office)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“Perestroika basically is creating material incentives for the individual. Some of the comrades deny that, but I can’t see it any other way. In that sense human nature kinda goes backwards. It’s a step backwards. You have to realize the people weren’t quite ready for a socialist production system.”
—Gus Hall (b. 1910)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“To expect to increase prices and then to maintain them at a higher level by means of a plan which must of necessity increase production while decreasing consumption is to fly in the face of an economic law as well established as any law of nature.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)