While The Office’s Michael Scott made viewers cringe with many moments that made it into the series, one of the sitcom’s funniest cut scenes would have made an infamous episode even worse. Michael Scott is an inspired comic creation, but that doesn’t mean that his antics are always easy to watch. Steve Carrell’s dim-witted but well-meaning office manager had many moments of sweetness, but the antihero character also made plenty of inappropriate gaffes and thoughtless remarks that made it tough to root for him. One of the most infamous of these arrived via his misguided alternative personalities.
Some of Michael’s alternate personalities were harmless, like his secret agent persona Michael Scarn. However, almost every member of The Office’s cast of characters found Michael’s “Prison Mike” character hard to watch. Introduced in The Office season 3, episode 9, “The Convict,” Prison Mike was a bizarre character born out of Michael’s discomfort with his previously incarcerated co-worker. When Michael discovered that a new employee had previously been in prison, he demanded to hear stories about life on the inside. However, he was horrified when prison life sounded better than office work and soon began using his misguided Prison Mike character to scare The Office’s employees straight.
The Office: Michael Scott’s 10 Best Alter Egos, Ranked
Michael Scott loved to play different characters on The Office, even if they were sometimes just outright offensive or obnoxious.
Michael’s Prison Mike Origin Makes His Alter Ego So Much Creepier
While the scene was cut from the original airing of “The Convict,” Peacock’s Superfan version of the episode shows Michael explaining how he came up with the character of Prison Mike, and the moment makes the character even harder to watch. Michael reveals that he first came up with Prison Mike in an improv class when some college students wouldn’t stop talking. He put on a super creepy “prison voice” and told the college students that he would stab them if they didn’t stop.
Michael says that the students never talked to him again, a detail that managed to make an already divisive persona even creepier. Prison Mike was an inherently cringe-worthy persona since the character relied on the very sheltered Michael’s racist assumptions about prison life. However, the discovery that Michael had already threatened a group of unseen characters without this uncomfortable persona made the character’s appearance even worse. While “The Convict” is not among the cringiest episodes of The Office, the Prison Mike sequence is one of the show’s more hard-to-watch moments even without this backstory.
The Office’s Original “The Convict” Episode Cut Out More Offensive Prison Mike Jokes
The Superfan episode’s version of the Prison Mike scene in the conference room is also longer than the version that aired, and it includes more offensive jokes about what Michael thinks prison life is like. The creators of the series were wise to jettison these gags as Prison Mike’s antics do eventually grow tiresome, but the character is an effective reminder of Michael’s comically ill-informed worldview in small doses. Like a lot of inspired comic creations, Prison Mike only works when his appearances are brief and can maintain a lot of tension. As such, The Office’s painfully cringeworthy episode was wise to trim this scene.
