The Office Pranks: Seasons One and Two
The pilot episode of The Office, for instance, features one of the most notorious pranks pulled by Jim Halpert—embedding Dwight Schrute’s stapler into a bowl of jello. The classic has even led to a fan site, Jello Stapler, which not only contains instruction on how to embed one’s own stapler but posts picture submitted by other fans that have pulled the prank themselves. But although this may be one of the best practical jokes played by Jim during the first two seasons of The Office, it is definitely not the only one.
At the beginning of “The Fight,” Dwight arrives at work only to find his desk missing. He immediately accuses Jim of being responsible for the resulting wide-open space where it was once located, but Jim naturally denies it. “You’re the one who lost his desk,” he tells Dwight. “Where was the last place you saw it? I think you should retrace your steps.” When Dwight heads towards Michael’s office in order to complain, Jim says that he is “colder.” Dwight becomes sucked into the game at that point and follows Jim’s words of “warmer” and “colder” until he finally discovers his desk, set up exactly how he left it but inside the men’s room. When his phone begins to ring, Dwight sits down and answers it only to realize that it’s Jim asking a work-related question. Instead of being angry or annoyed, however, Dwight calmly responds to the inquiry. Afterwards Kevin Malone comes out of a bathroom stall and Dwight politely reminds him to wash his hands.
Another prank pulled in an opening teaser takes place in the episode “Booze Cruise” when Jim Halpert uses his friendship with a vending company employee to put numerous items from Dwight Schrute’s desk into the office’s vending machine. Thus when Dwight enters the break room he finds his name plate, stapler, cups and bobbleheads sitting inside the locked glass door along with the chips and pretzels one would normally find. “Dollar for a stapler, that’s pretty good,” Jim remarks. Receptionist Pam Beesly only adds to the frustration when she “purchases” Dwight’s pencil cup. “I don’t think so, I just bought it,” she replies when he says it belong to him. Dwight eventually breaks down and decides to simply buy his belongings back, but discovers that his wallet is in the J-1 slot of the vending machine. Jim simply offers Dwight a bag of nickels and leaves the room.
In the episode “Halloween,” Jim and Pam decide to upload Dwight’s resume onto the likes of Monster.com, Google and Craig’s List. They also have some fun with it, debating whether their co-worker’s greatest strength is “a dog-like obedience to authority” or “the ultimate team player.” When a paper company located in Maryland calls for a reference from Regional Manager Michael Scott, Pam transfers the call to Jim instead. “Dwight Schrute?” Jim begins, masquerading as his boss. “He is actually the single greatest employee of his generation. You hire Dwight K. Schrute and he does not meet... nay, exceed every one of your wildest expectations, well then you can hold me, Michael Gary Scott, personally and financially responsible.” Eventually the company, Cumberland Mills, calls Dwight directly. The salesman is confused but acceptable of the employment inquiry, although his quirky personality eventually results in the job not being offered. “I’m just not sure if it’s my official resume or if it’s something that maybe a satisfied customer posted online,” he tells the caller. “What does it say under martial arts training?”
Many of Jim Halpert’s pranks are spontaneous and based on events from that day. In the episode “The Alliance,” for instance, Dwight Schrute asks Jim if he wants to form an alliance as protection against the potential downsizing of employees at Dunder Mifflin. “Everything Dwight does annoys me,” Jim tells the camera. “I spend hours thinking of ways to get back at him, but only in ways that would get me arrested, and then here comes and he says, ‘No, Jim, here’s a way.’” Jim thus spends the rest of the day messing with Dwight, giving him false information about other employees forming their own alliances. He even suggests that one of these newly-formed groups will be holding a secret meeting in the warehouse. Dwight volunteers to spy on the fictitious gathering by hiding in a box on the warehouse floor. He pokes holes in the cardboard first, as Jim is concerned that Dwight won’t be able to breathe, and then Jim firmly tapes the lid of the box shut. Pam Beesly is enlisted to go to the warehouse and pretend she is talking to a fellow conspirator on the phone but runs out laughing when the box Dwight is hiding in falls over sideway. Afterwards Dwight cuts a large hole in the box and breaks through the top, giving the appearance that the container is giving birth to him as foreman Darryl Philbin watches on.
In the episode “Performance Review,” Dwight mistakenly believes it is Friday when in actuality it is only Thursday. Jim, in turn, decides to make it his goal for the day to keep Dwight’s confusion in tact. “I wanted to know what you were up to tomorrow, which is the fifteenth and that is a Saturday,” he says in a voice mail message to a friend when Dwight is within earshot. “So just let me know what you’re doing tomorrow, Saturday, for lunch.” Later Pam gets in on the act when she asks Jim if he watched The Apprentice—the NBC reality show that was on Thursday’s at the time—the night before. Dwight interjects that he somehow missed it. “I went and got drunk with my laser team last night,” he confides. “We never go out on a Thursday night. What the hell was I thinking?” In the end, Jim’s efforts prove successful when Dwight arrives late for work the next day—at 12:20 p.m. to be exact—completely disheveled with his shirt unbuttoned and tie missing.
Although only a handful of pranks were actually shown during the first two seasons of The Office, the episode “Conflict Resolution” reveals the full extent of Jim Halpert’s efforts to play practical jokes on his co-worker when Michael Scott goes through a box full of complaints that Dwight Schrute has submitted to human resources representative Toby Flenderson.
“This morning I knocked myself in the head with the phone,” one of them reads. Jim explains to the camera that he slowly filled Dwight’s headset with nickels that day until Dwight became used to the weight and then removed them all. He also spent another work day moving Dwight’s desk one inch every time the co-worker went to the bathroom, causing Dwight to issue the complaint, “By the end of the day my desk was about two feet closer to the copier.” Other accusations made in “Conflict Resolution” include:
“Someone replaced all my pens and pencils with crayons,”
“Everyone has called me Duane all day. I think Jim Halpert paid them to.”
“This morning I found a bloody glove in my desk drawer and Jim Halpert tried to convince me I committed murder.”
“Jim Halpert said there was an abandoned infant in the women’s room. When I went to save the child, I saw Meredith on the can.”
Although few of us could get away with such shenanigans in the real world to the degree and level that Jim Halpert has on The Office, the various pranks Jim has pulled on Dwight Schrute are not only a form of entertainment for viewers but a measure of comedic validation as well. We may not ever embed the stapler of an annoying co-worker into jello but it’s still nice to know that such an option exists.
Anthony Letizia (April 19, 2010)
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