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The Office: Top 10 Cold Opens

A cold open is the opening of a show usually before it hits the title sequence. When it comes to The Office, the cold opens are usually nothing short of excellent. Sometimes it's related to the plot of the whole episode. Other times it's just random shenanigans that we end up loving so much.

7. Halloween

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the office joker

It’s Halloween time in Season 5’s Employee Transfer, as everyone dresses up to work (except for Jim) in some interesting costumes. Stanley just has something over his head so he can sleep, while Kelly is Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City. Creed comes in dressed as Heath Ledger’s Joker, and repeats the iconic line, “Let’s put a smile on that face,” in that menacing tone. You’re not sure if he’s just getting in the Halloween spirit or if he really means it because well…it’s Creed. This sucks for Kevin who spent all night also working on his Joker costume. Pam dresses up all the way in New York, except no one else does that over there. She comes in dressed up as Charlie Chaplin but due to the fact she used grease paint, she can’t get rid of the moustache. And if she takes off her hat, she looks like Hitler. The best part is when Dwight is coming in to the office and you realize, he’s also dressed up as the Joker.

6. A Chance At The Title

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In Season 6, we have two managers: Michael who takes care of the big picture stuff, and Jim who deals with the day-to-day operations. In the cold open for The Promotion, Dwight needs something signed and visits Michael who directs him to Jim, who annoys Dwight and thus sends him back to Michael. Dwight then tries to trick Michael into issuing a complaint against Jim, but fails to do so. He then goes back to Jim to issue the same complaint, and Jim just messes with him back while acting serious about it.

This leads to Dwight getting super mad, especially because he wanted the promotion that Jim received. In a talking head, he talks about how he’d like to put Jim in a triangle chokehold, and keep pressing and pressing, and then put him in a hammerlock until Jim loses his breath, as the crowd goes crazy and he’s now victorious with a shot at the title. He sounds like a really twisted person, and that’s what makes it hilarious.

5. The Cube

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For once, Michael is conducting a serious meeting in the conference room in Season 4’s Launch Party, and it looks like everyone’s into the meeting as they all look alert and interested. But in reality, they’re looking at the TV behind Michael, which has the ‘DVD’ cube bouncing around. As Jim explains to us, they’re waiting to see if the cube can get into a corner as it never seems to do. As they react in disappointment every time it doesn’t, Michael thinks that they’re responding to his ideas and whatever he’s talking about.

The cube finally hits a corner just as Michael proposes an idea for something, and they scream in joy. Michael is very pleased, thinking that everyone was happy with the meeting. “Somedays I am just on fire,” he says. It’s amazing how the writers turned something so normal, into something completely hilarious.

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