Season Finale: Steve Carell/Usher

Everyone was in such a good mood this week. I feel like the writers and cast are happy with the way things turned out this year. I know I am. Steve Carell was great as always and it was extra cool to have his wife (and ex-SNL cast member) Nancy Walls in the monologue. We had many of "The Office" cast around during the show. We see them pretty often and some of our writers have gone on to work for that show, so they are kind of like an extended family.

Usher was unbelievable. How does somebody dance like that? I talked to him in the hallway. I was like "How do you do it? You must rehearse every minute of the day."
He just smiled and said that he didn't! "It's just natural, the same way you guys do what you do."

I loved that Ricky Gervais was there too. Man, I am really name dropping. What do you call that on a blog? Blogdropping? Nameblogging?

I took some photos during rehearsals and the show:

Thursday at the re-write table. That's James Anderson on the left. Jason is probably laughing at something I said which I'm sure was very funny. Check out the framed photos of different sketches on the wall.

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Blocking for the cold open. Jim Downey up front reading the sketch. Lorne talking to Mike Shoemaker, one of the producers. Wally holding cue cards. Steve up in the monitor.

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Right after Amy and I shot the "There Can Only Be One" piece, I took this of the playback monitor.

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Louie putting on Bill's prosthetic fat face.

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I still have some more episodes to write about that I skipped over. So I'll do that soon. Thank you!

Shia LaBeouf/My Morning Jacket

My favorite memory of this one was watching Kenan do that "Scared Straight" character. He did it at the read-through on Wednesday and right away it killed me. Oh my god it made me laugh. He pronounced 'sit down' like "thiddaaown!"

It was great to have Shia back for the second time. I asked for a DVD of the newest Indiana Jones and totally did not get one. The Game Show sketch was so much fun too. I took a picture from my phone during rehearsal. It's the view from where I was sitting:

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That's Wally holding the cue cards. Bryan Tucker and John Lutz are two writers who played the ambulance guys. I wanted to take more pictures but I got caught up in getting ready for the show. I'll take more the next time.

That Hillary cold open was added late in the week. It's cool seeing it now on all the news shows. I just watched John Edwards watching it on Larry King. I've been playing the newest Grand Theft Auto game a lot recently so I enjoyed getting to do one of the characters with Bill on Weekend Update. I've been into that game since the "Vice City" version a few years ago. I mean really into it. It takes me about a year to complete each one.

It's always a little sad on the last week of the season. I feel like everyone loves being there, and the heavy schedule allows me to ignore everything else in my life. Summer is the time for facing all of that! But the cast does hang out with each other on the off weeks, and I think we are starting a month earlier in the fall.

Thanks to everybody who wrote a nice comment by the way!
Fred