The Office: Here Comes the Bride, the Baby — and the Shark?
The Office
Expectant parents Jim and Pam are set to walk down the aisle Thursday in an hour-long episode of The Office, but will it be happily ever after for them and the show?
We all know romantic "I do's" and impending tots spell more doom than bliss for veteran shows and with The Office attempting a jump-the-shark double here (Pam is due in February), the Dunder Mifflin crew seems closer to strapping on water skis than ever before.
"Oh, not at all," Creed Bratton tells TVGuide.com. "We're so far away from jumping that shark. That's your swan song when you do something like that."
Watch clips from Jim and Pam's wedding
Bratton says he "totally" understands why people would think sharks are circling the waters because, well, how can you not? In classic sitcom form, the will-they-won't-they tension and obstacles (e.g. Roy, Karen) between potential lovebirds is what keeps us engaged (no pun intended) and there's nothing like wedding bells to zap the spark. And then a baby fixes everything, right?
"We don't know what's going to happen with the baby because they haven't even written [the birth] yet," Bratton says. "I don't think Creed would care, but he did stare at that woman breast-pumping that one time. In real life, we've got our real baby — Izzie — Angela [Kinsey]'s baby, so we're happy with a baby on set all the time. I'm not worried about it."
Here's one detail we may be worried about: "People aren't allowed to bring babies to work, so we'll see what they have in store," Bratton points out.
Go behind the scenes of Jim and Pam's nuptials
"We have the best writers and they always blow our minds. The favorite part of my week is to go to the table read and hear what they have in store. Everybody is roaring. Tears going down their faces," he continues. "Yeah, there's a wedding and a baby, but we've got so much stuff with all these characters to develop that we're not anywhere near exhausting all the possibilities. It's definitely not jump the shark."
Are The Office's wedding and baby too much or just enough?