Peacock Adds 'The Office' Extended Superfan Episodes For The First Season
This year, Peacock got a huge boost of subscribers when it became the exclusive streaming home of The Office, the most streamed show of 2020. But the NBCUniversal streaming service knew they had to offer something a little more to entice some fans to follow the series instead of just buying it for themselves, so they made "Superfan Episodes" available. These extended cuts of episodes offer footage that was not widely seen and in some cases never even aired. Now, the selection has just grown.
In honor of National Pretzel Day (if you know, you know), Peacock has announced that Superfan Episodes from the show's first season are now available to stream. Previously, the Superfan Episodes were only available for the show's third season, but now you'll be able to watch the first season episodes with deleted scenes, never-before-seen moments, bloopers, featurettes, and alternate talking head interviews.
On the surface, this doesn't seem like all that thrilling of an addition. but it's actually a little more enticing than the initial round of Superfan Episodes from the third season. That's because some of the extended episodes (sometimes called producer's cuts) from the third season and beyond have been available on DVD, iTunes, and Netflix. But extended episodes from the first season are a rarity and seem to have never been available until now.
All six of the episodes from the first season of The Office have an extended cut. Here's their new runtimes with the additional footage that has been put into the episode:
These episodes are a bit longer than the cuts that aired on TV, which were typically in the 22-minute range, and there are some amusing bits to behold here. For example, not only is the pilot 15 minutes longer as a Superfan Episode, the ending is completely different from the usual TV cut. The scene where Jim leaves Michael his "World's Best Boss" mug encased in Jell-O is still there, but after that comes a stream of alternate interview snippets with the employees of Dunder-Mifflin. They're clearly meant to be snippets that can be cut to in between the other documentary footage to provide more characterization, so they feel rather disjointed, but it's new footage from The Office, so we can't complain too much.
Don't forget, if you want to watch more than the traditional first two seasons of The Office, you need to pay for Peacock.