An 'Office' clip show? Is NBC trying to cut costs on writers?

A huge thumbs-down to last night’s episode of The Office. A bogus original episode that was really a thinly disguised clip show? So lame. You know that old trick, when a sitcom seemingly runs a new episode, and has the characters start to reminisce for some reason—which leads to a string of clips from previous episodes (starts about 4:30 into the episode)—and no new actually plot? I thought this sort of thing went out of fashion decades ago with shows like The Jeffersons (no offense to the Jeffersons). What, did Jeff Zucker decide to insert himself in this episode by asking the writers to save a few hundred bucks this week by not actually writing a script? Come on guys, you’re better than that.

—Posted by Mike Shields