Nearly 20 Years Later, Steve Carell’s Most Unhinged ‘Office’ Line Is Still the Greatest in Sitcom History

Steve Carell was already a known name in 2005 thanks mostly to his run as a correspondent on The Daily Show, but his career shot into the stratosphere when he was cast as Michael Scott in NBC’s American reboot of The Office. Whereas Ricky Gervais‘ portrayal as the boss on the British version of The Office was a little more mean-spirited, Carell’s take as the leader at Dunder Mifflin Scranton was of a well-meaning and kind man who thought he truly was the world’s best boss, even though he was absolutely clueless and overwhelmed most of the time.

There is no better example of this than The Office‘s most watched episode. Airing after Super Bowl XLIII in 2009, “Stress Relief” has the most chaotic opening scene in series history. In the aftermath, Michael Scott would accidentally but accurately describe himself during his reaction to what had happened. Those few sentences are who Michael Scott is, for better and for worse.

“Stress Relief” Has ‘The Office’s Wildest Cold Open

By Season 5, The Office had long been a beloved sitcom, but it wasn’t exactly a huge hit in the ratings. That got to change for one night only on Sunday, February 1, 2009, as the series was given the incredible honor of following Super Bowl XLIII. This meant that The Office would have the most eyes on it ever, including people who had never seen it, so the show knew it had to go all out, especially in the opening scene.

The episode, “Stress Relief”, is a two-parter, but it’s the opening scene from the first part that’s remembered most today. In it, Dwight (Rainn Wilson) decides that he needs to train his co-workers in the only way he knows how to properly respond to a fire. Instead of acting out a scenario, he makes the unannounced drill as real as possible by starting a fire in a trash can and then jamming the doors shut so no one can get out. This results in pandemonium, with everyone rightfully freaking out, including a hilarious scene of Angela (Angela Kinsey) trying to rescue her cat by tossing it into the open ceiling, only for it to come crashing down through the tile. But then, hilarity turns to seriousness, as the terror causes Stanley (Leslie Baker) to have a heart attack and fall unconscious.

Steve Carell’s Michael Scott Perfectly Describes His Reaction to the Mayhem

When Stanley collapses, Michael, instead of being the calm leader, loses his mind. He falls to his knees, screaming, “Stanley, you will not die!” and “Barack is President! You are Black, Stanley!” He’s hoping that this will bring him back to consciousness, but when that doesn’t work, he decides to do mouth-to-mouth and shoves his wallet in Stanley’s mouth so he won’t swallow his tongue. Thankfully, Stanley starts to wake up as Jim (John Krasinski) and others pull Michael off of him, or he would have undoubtedly made things much worse.

In the aftermath of the cold open, Michael Scott speaks about what went down. “I knew exactly what to do. But in a much more real sense, I had no idea what to do.” Although the rest of the dual episodes have more great moments, such as a CPR training session gone wrong, and Michael organizing a roast of himself to lessen everyone’s stress, those two sentences that Michael Scott utters completely summarize who he is. It’s not done in a knowing manner, as if he’s confessing to his failures, but is meant to simply mean that Michael panicked only in that moment, despite being such an all-knowing boss. He’s too clueless, as always, to realize that those words mean so much more.

‘The Office’s Michael Scott Is Clueless Yet Still Lovable

When we first meet Michael Scott on The Office, he’s showing us his coffee mug that says “World’s Best Boss.” He bought it for himself, but it’s how he believes everyone truly sees him, even though he’s not only clueless about how to do a lot of his job, but how others see him. Rather than being revered as some great leader, Scott is mocked, sometimes to his face, without him even knowing it. Much of the cringey humor in The Office comes from Michael Scott thinking he knows exactly what to do, only to commit errors that are so obvious to everyone but him. For example, in “The Convict,” he introduces Prison Mike, an offensive stereotype of convicts, when he’s trying to get everyone to accept new employee and ex-con Martin Nash (Wayne Wilderson). Rather than making things better, he only makes them worse, at least for himself, because he’s reduced Martin to a cliché rather than a real person.

In “Safety Training,” Michael tries to teach the office about mental health awareness not by talking about feelings, but by pretending that he’s going to jump off the Dunder Mifflin roof. His most infamous moment comes in the early episode “Diversity Day,” when Michael gets in trouble for doing an offensive imitation of Chris Rock. Again, he makes a bad moment even more horrible by holding a Diversity Day that reduces everyone to a racial stereotype.

If you knew someone like this in real life, you probably wouldn’t like him, and would rightfully consider them to be an arrogant racist and misogynist. The Office, however, shows that Michael is not a bad person. He means well in all of these scenarios, and it all comes from a place of genuinely wanting to help. He knows that’s what he should do and really wants to, but he doesn’t know how to do it. When we learn that Michael was a lonely child desperate to be noticed, we can understand why he still tries so hard as an adult. For every bad moment that’s hard to watch, there are also touching, emotional ones. He’ll stick up for both Dunder Mifflin and his co-workers every chance he gets because this is his family. Whether it be writing a letter of recommendation to Dwight or being there for Pam’s (Jenna Fischer) art show when no one else was, The Office shows us that Michael Scott is deeply flawed, but also deeply good. When it comes to being there for his friends when they need someone the most, he really does know exactly what to do.

Release Date

2005 – 2013-00-00

Franchise(s)

The Office