Schur described the process early on with The Ringer, " The Office was being built off of the template from the British show, but there were only four characters who meant anything in the British show. Thanks to the British version of 'The Office', a basic template was already in place for the main characters of the show. Let's dive deeper into the early success of the show and why the first season only featured six episodes. For the first season, the show had a small window to thrive, and surprisingly enough, a lot of the character portrayals were built organically along the way. The show will forever be remembered as one of the greats, however, early on, nothing was guaranteed. RELATED - Which 'Office' Character Was John Krasinski Originally Auditioning For? However, bu the second season, the direction was clear and the show dominated, the sitcom released 201 episodes along with nine seasons. Like most sitcoms, it started off with a slow build in season 1. His coming-out party truly took place in March of 2005, as 'The Office' made its debut. Once I graduated, I moved to New York, and got hired at Saturday Night Live that December." Then in college I got on to the Harvard Lampoon staff my freshman year. We wrote a script and made jokes that I’m sure were terrible and showed clips of The Naked Gun without permission. We made a couple weird things, like a tribute to the Zucker brothers, where we had a panel discussion about the Naked Gun movies. He elaborated alongside Believer Mag, "In high school, my friend and I discovered that your cable-access station had to let you do whatever you wanted-it was like the Wild West. Prior to SNL, he was a normal dude writing skits alongside his buddy in high school. He would go on to become the producer for the Weekend Update, a role he would earn even more success with. Prior to his success on 'The Office', Michael Schur was thriving on 'Saturday Night Live' as a writer.