Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? Part 17

a travel-size tube of toothpaste for "women's teeth"

a SpongeBob SquarePants keychain

a mechanical pencil (kinda cool, but it was instantly stolen when I took it to work)

weird coffee pods that work only if you buy the coffee machine that the pods are made for

tan silicone cutlets you glue to your real b.r.e.a.s.t.s

a crotchless girdle meant to hold your back fat in

a children's book written by a lead in the original Beverly Hills 90210

a diabetes cookbook (I actually love this)

The gift bags are junk bags. I'm not telling you this to complain, but rather to relieve you of any romantic notions you might have of them. Use those romantic notions for something else, like thinking about the significance and grandeur of our National Mint. Not only would you never purchase any of the stuff in these gift bags, but you would not even give it to a relative you have a chilly relations.h.i.+p with. There is, however, one excellent perk we get on our show: I've enjoyed an endless supply of free paper, paperclips, envelopes, and office supplies since joining The Office, because I steal props on a regular basis.

BECOMING A LITTLE BIT FAMOUS

When you have it as good as I know I do, work-wise, you rarely have time to enjoy your fabulous good fortune, because you're too busy worrying about when it will run out. After the first season of The Office, I remember Jenna Fischer, Angela Kinsey, and I got turned away from a party thrown by a famous magazine at a fancy hotel on Sunset Boulevard. The party coordinators didn't think being on The Office warranted our getting in. We stood and watched the One Tree Hill cast waltz in with no problem. The PR people at the party regarded us with the disdain normally reserved for on-set tutors for child actors. (For the record, there is usually no one weirder on a set than the tutor for child actors. They tend to be aging hippie ladies with inappropriately long hair tied coquettishly in a messy gray braid, and an all-denim outfit that would put Jay Leno to shame.)

Luckily, I was not in the aging child-tutor stage for long, though. Midway through season two, we were finally getting recognition due to our track record of a dozen great episodes, and people were into us. It was glorious. The highlight was one Sat.u.r.day, when I was vacuuming my car at a gas station on Santa Monica Boulevard during the Gay Pride parade and a group of gay veterans in uniform shrieked, "Oh my G.o.d, it's Kelly Kapoor!" The guys at the gas station thought I was hot s.h.i.+t.

This is a photo of when I directed "Michael's Last Dundies," which I also wrote. In this moment I am explaining what comedy is to Will Ferrell. (photo credit 14.5)

Being the "It" show in season two presented its own challenges, though. A common refrain we heard was "I disliked your first season, but by the second season you really came into your own." I think people thought their compliment meant more if they tempered it with something insulting first. As if I were to say, "I initially thought you were ugly, but then you walked closer to me and I realized you were pretty." I love our first season. I think it is a little dark and really funny. I found the phrase "came into your own" especially weird, as though The Office finally developed b.r.e.a.s.t.s or something.

WHAT WE HAVE TO BE SCARED ABOUT

What's coming up next is a perennial fear in the television world. Some people who work in the industry confidently ignore all new good shows, saying, "There's room for lots of good television. That won't affect us," but that's simply not true. There's room for a little good scripted television and many, many reality TV shows about monitored weight loss. If the science were there to genetically clone Jillian Michaels, our network would just be different filmed iterations of obese people losing weight, all day long. My friend Charlie Grandy once joked that it is only a matter of time before there is a category at the Emmys for "Best Extreme Weight Loss Program."

In the spring, when the networks trot out their lineup of new shows, you may idly think, Meh, maybe I'll try this one or DVR that one, but I get a little paranoid trying to figure out whether any newcomer is going to beat us into a painful death by primetime scheduling. I've made a list of potential shows that I believe would kill The Office in the ratings:

I Want to Be Able to Walk for My Wedding!: Jillian Michaels helps a morbidly obese couple confined to their sofa lose weight for their nuptials.

I Want to Be Able to Walk When I Officiate a Wedding!: Jillian Michaels helps an obese priest, confined to his parish, officiate a wedding.

Obese Priest: A priest who eats too much dessert helps a group of at-risk, but hilarious teens.

Sing-Sing-Sings!: A singing compet.i.tion in Sing Sing prison.

The Weekly Hangover: A reality show where three friends are chloroformed and put in a random dangerous situation, like in the movie The Hangover, and have to piece back what happened to their lives.

Interspecies Friends.h.i.+ps: Have you ever seen that YouTube video where the elephant is friends with the collie? Or the one where the turtle and the hippopotamus are best friends? I could watch those for hours. These are the buddy comedies people crave.

I actually think I might create Interspecies Friends.h.i.+ps. A smart, small observational show about two animals who are friends against all odds. It'll be a tough sell at first, but by season two it'll really come into its own. But it'll never be as good as the original British version, Interspecies Chums.

Franchises I Would Like to Reboot

BY NOW YOU'VE seen what a savvy Hollywood person I am and wonder when I will be making my big jump from television to film. Here's where I explain everything and tell about some of my most exciting film projects in the pipeline.

n.o.body likes it when Hollywood reboots beloved franchises. When I was hired to write for the NBC remake of the cla.s.sic BBC show The Office, everyone had the immediate physical reaction of being around someone who had just farted.

The thing is at least we were trying to remake something that was excellent. What I have never understood is the rebooting of already terrible things. For example, take The Dukes of Hazzard. This was a show whose two greatest claims to fame were (a) a car that consistently jumped over large objects at critical moments, and (b) introducing Americans to the Daisy Duke short-shorts, which single-handedly lowered the average age of s.e.xual intercourse in this country by several years. I loved the show as a four-year-old, but even then I kind of knew The Dukes of Hazzard was for kids. I thought, This is good for me, or a five-year-old, tops. So, when it got remade as a movie, I didn't quite understand.

But then I heard how much money it made and I thought, I need to get in on this, p.r.o.nto. Here are some franchises I would like to reboot, for the love of the franchise and a little bit for the love of the money I think they would make.

A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN

Unfortunately, a bit of an uphill battle here. As fun and frothy as this movie was, it was based on an actual historical event. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was a real thing. Also, I would reboot this movie only if I can play the Rosie O'Donnell part, and I'm pretty sure there weren't many Indian women in the United States in the 1940s.

THE HULK

I feel like if they're going to remake this every two or three years anyway, I want to get a shot at one.