More context comes with Peacock’s The Office Superfan Episodes.
Dwight and Jim’s rivalry goes back to the first episode of The Office when Schrute’s calculator was cooked in Jello. A fake alliance followed, and so much more. And while Dwight had more than enough reason to give Jim payback in season seven of The Office in Dwight Schrute (Acting) Manager, The Office Superfan Episodes are giving us new insight into why Jim drew the short stick under Dwight’s reign.
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Dwight Schrute: Acting Manager puts Jim on brunch duty
In season 7 episode 25 of The Office, titled Dwight Schrute (Acting) Manager, after Jim turns down the acting manager role with Jo, Dwight Schrute (best salesman in the company), gets a call he’s been waiting for his whole life. Jo wants him to step up in Jim’s place; things are about to change.
As Jim explains the changes Dwight has made in the opening scenes of the episode, like manual time-punching machines and new employee titles like Junior Sales Associate, Big Tuna also reveals Dwight has staggered lunches throughout the day to avoid wasting time, and Jim’s is 10:30 a.m.
“I find the first two hours of the day go by much faster than the last seven hours,” Jim says.
The question is: who had the 10 a.m. and why did Jim get stuck on the 10:30? Was it Angela? Was it Dwight? Does that mean Jim was the new number two?
It would make sense if Jim were the number new number two, because Dwight prefers early lunches and there’s no doubt he’d demand to eat first.
How do we know Dwight takes early lunches?
Michael asks Dwight to lunch in extended The Office Superfan Episodes
In season 5 of The Office Superfan Episodes episode 18, Golden Ticket, after his first run at pushing off the ill-fated idea on Dwight, Michael asks the “Assistant to The Regional Manager” if he’d like to go to lunch with him (to take another swing at convincing Dwight to take credit for the blunder). Dwight, well aware of what the lunch will be about, though still loyal, replies “with all my heart.”
The Golden Ticket idea, The Office Superfan Episodes, credit Peacock
While this is an original scene from The Office, in The Office Superfan Episodes, the cameras continue to roll and Dwight adds, “But I’ve already eaten lunch.” Michael, a bit surprised, looks at his watch and says, “it’s 11:00 a.m.”
This is when Dwight reveals his strange meal schedule. “I’m a farmer, I eat breakfast at 4:30, by the time 10 a.m. rolls around I’m famished for lunch. Let’s wait three hours and have some supper.”
Dwight’s odd schedule may be why Big Tuna got put on the 10:30 lunch schedule in Dwight Schrute: Acting Manager.
Given that Schrute has always viewed Jim as an adversary, frenemy, and trusted advisor at various times, the 10:30 slot may prove that Dwight still saw Jim as the true number two of the office, even if he was now number one.
Krasinski explained their relationship in a little more detail in an interview with Cheatsheet as The Office Superfan Episodes began to roll out on Peacock.
“I think [Dwight] was everything I didn’t want to be or so I thought,” Krasinski said. “We were in the scenes together coming from two totally different places and that was so cool the weird explosive thing.”
Krasinski went on to explain that, by the end of the series, the two had begun to view each other as brothers.
Perhaps Dwight viewed Jim as an equal after all, and rather than seeing a 10:30 a.m. lunch as punishment, it was more a representation of how Dwight viewed Jim; trustworthy, irritating, inferior, but the closest thing he had to a friend in the office, given the odd lunch schedule was the worst Jim saw of Dwight’s wrath.
Remember, half the cast left or were fired when Dwight assumed the role again in season nine, something he’d promised for years.
Was Jim’s brotherly affection for Dwight reciprocated or is the 10:30 a.m. lunch just a strange coincidence?
The Office Superfan Episodes are now streaming on Peacock.