As much as The Office dwindled in quality in viewers’ and critics’ eyes in its final seasons, especially following the departure of Steve Carell and his regional manager Michael Scott in Season 7, the series’ finale is generally remembered quite fondly. The show’s final installment features an in-universe reunion between the various employees of Dunder Mifflin (or Dunder Mifflin Sabre) and, of course, the much awaited wedding between the judgmental Angela Kinsey (Angela Martin) and her perfect match, conspiracy theorist Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson). Funny and heartwarming at the same time, the episode was the perfect conclusion for a story that ran over the course of nine years. However, things could’ve looked a lot different if Wilson and writer, director, executive producer, and fellow cast member Paul Lieberstein (who plays Toby Flenderson) had it their way. For a while, back in the early 2010s, there was spin-off of The Office in the works, and it would’ve taken away Dwight and Angela’s happily ever after.
Big fans of the show might remember this story from back in the day. Or maybe they remember the backdoor pilot that aired in 2013, when The Office was in its ninth and final season. Titled “The Farm,” the episode focused on Dwight’s life at his family’s countryside estate, using a funeral to get him out of the office and back into his old life. Listed as the seventeenth entry in the season, the episode aired on March 14. A few months prior, though, on October 29, 2012, Rainn Wilson had already announced on his Twitter account that NBC would not be moving on with the idea for The Farm. Talk about short-lived! But what exactly happened there? And how would the existence of The Farm impact The Office’s beloved ending?
“The Farm” Was a Weak Episode of ‘The Office’
Well, to start answering these questions, we have to first take a look at what we actually got. It’s time to dive into the mess that is “The Farm.” As you might’ve already picked up, despite its killer musical number, “The Farm” wasn’t a particularly acclaimed installment of the show. Written and directed by then showrunner Lieberstein himself, the episode had two main storylines, one clearly more important than the other. Back at Dunder Mifflin Scranton headquarters, jerk Todd Packer (David Koechner) pops around to ask for forgiveness as part of a 12-step program to rid himself of drugs and alcohol. What the folks at the office don’t know is that it is all part of a ploy to poison them all with drug-laced cupcakes.
This storyline shares the screen with another one, in which Dwight travels to his family’s farm for Aunt Shirley’s (Mary Gillis) funeral. There, he is reunited with characters such as his cousins Mose (Michael Schur) and Zeke (Matt Jones), his pot planting brother Jeb (Thomas Middleditch), his city-dwelling sister and would-be poet Fannie (Majandra Delfino), and Fannie’s young son, Cameron (Blake Garrett Rosenthal). Oh, and, of course, he also bumps into his former crush, Esther (Nora Kirkpatrick), the biggest threat to Angela’s happy ending with Dwight. The episode is pretty quick to establish the dynamics between these characters: in a video recorded will, Shirley leaves the farm to Dwight, Jeb, and Fannie, as long as they agree to leave their city lives behind and return to their family’s land. Dwight is quick to agree, much as he is quick to start courting Esther, but his siblings take a while to jump on the boat. By the end of the episode, though, everyone is ready to take care of Aunt Shirley’s former property.
But the problem begins with the fact that “The Farm” was just not that great of an episode. Having to share the screen with a completely unrelated storyline did the Schrutes plot no good, and the absence of a Jim Halpert straight man meant the comedy often fell flat. Everyone is just too wacky for it to work. Oscar (Oscar Martinez), who is begrudgingly invited to Aunt Shirley’s funeral, plays this essential role of the audience surrogate for a few seconds, but he soon decides that he’s had enough of Dwight’s bizarre family and runs away. The episode was called a “Frankensteining” job, and even the kindest reviews remark upon its collage of two completely unrelated storylines.
This ‘Office’ Episode Had Already Been Watered Down
But to blame the episode for the failure of the spin-off is completely unfair. After all, the backdoor pilot only aired after NBC had already passed on the Dwight-centric series. And, apparently, there is a proper pilot hidden away on someone’s computer that was recut to make this Season 9 episode. Rainn Wilson spoke about it in a 2022 Q&A panel at Rose City Comic Con. “There was like a 29-minute version of ‘The Farm’ that was really long, and weird, and very interesting, and very funny, and I think it would have been a really great show. And it probably would’ve made them a billion dollars,” he stated. “It wouldn’t have been as good as The Office, but nothing is as good as The Office.”
The actor also hinted at the possibility of the pilot eventually getting a Peacock release, but he was pretty adamant in his belief that NBC never quite knew what they had with The Office. “We were weird, and they didn’t know how to process us,” said Wilson, who recalls the network being interested solely in more Friends-like projects. Wilson also recalls a change in management right before “The Farm,” a change that he, at least partially, blames for the spin-off being dropped. In an interview with Kevin’s Brian Baumgartner, on the podcast Off the Beat with Brian Baumgartner, Lieberstein also blames NBC Universal’s then new controller, Comcast.
“It was really about: Comcast comes in and buys and doesn’t have the seven-year history with the show, it’s essentially coming in now as Steve [Carrell] is gone. Ratings are going down, and you’re finding yourself creatively, and so there hasn’t been an investment or a buy-in exactly,” said Lieberstein. “We needed a Kevin Riley to be there at the time, to be at Comcast, someone that saw what could happen,” he completed, referencing NBC’s president of primetime development back when The Office first started, in 2005.
What Would ‘The Farm’ Have Looked Like?
Much like Wilson, Lieberstein was very disappointed with how things turned out. He had his hopes for The Farm, which, in a 2018 interview with The Daily Beast, he described as “a mockumentary about a small family farm, and trying to make it at a time when they’re being squeezed out.” The spin-off would, at least to Lieberstein, feature some well-known faces from The Office, though he’s never quite clear about who would make this rural road trip, besides, of course, Dwight.
Reports of the time remark that Angela would probably not be around, as performer Angela Kinsey had already moved on to another project at Fox, so there’s no doubt that The Farm would have meant an end to her and Dwight’s relationship. The final episode of the show would definitely have looked a lot different, perhaps still with the reunion, but likely without the wedding to tie everything up.
The brunt of the show would likely rest on the shoulders of newer characters, such as Dwight’s siblings, his nephew, and a colorful set of characters that included a wacky Nazi uncle that was set to be played by Tom Bower. Yeah, you read that right: at least one of The Farm’s characters would be a Nazi named Heinrich. Could Lieberstein and Wilson have pulled this all off? We’ll likely never know.
