After years of will they/won’t they/Roy they, Jim Halpert and Pam Beesly became husband and wife during the sixth season of The Office. “Niagara” is a lovely two-part episode, culminating in the couple getting hitched on the Maid of the Mist (the viral video-inspired wedding dance is cute, too, even with the unfortunate attachment to Chris Brown), although it originally had a not-so-lovely ending involving Dwight and a horse.
Before the writers landed on the dance idea, “Niagara” co-writer Greg Daniels was “really committed” to Roy — Pam’s former partner who once attacked Jim — entering the church on a horse. “All throughout the episode, Roy’s been kind of haunting around and unhappy that they’re getting married,” director Paul Feig told Entertainment Weekly, “so when they ask if anybody has reason why this couple can’t get married, he rides into the church on a horse to sweep Pam off her feet like a knight in shining armor and declares, ‘I have an objection.’ And she’s like, ‘What are you doing? No, I want to get married.’ She sends him away, so he has to ride his horse back out of the church.”
In this draft, Roy slumps away and abandons the horse, giving Dwight an idea.
“Dwight got fascinated with this historical display at the hotel that talked about various animals. It started with a cow had been swept over the falls and survived, and then a couple of people tried to go over the falls in a barrel and were killed, and then some sheep went over the falls and survived. And he came up with this theory that you could survive going over the falls if you were riding a horse, because a horse would have the instinct of how to swim properly.”
According to Daniels, Dwight jumped off at the last second, “while the horse goes over in the background of the wedding.” The other writers, including Mindy Kaling, were not nearly as infatuated with this idea as Daniels (“I don’t know, I think this is kind of dark and weird”), and it was eventually dropped. Like how that horse dropped into the falls.
As far as sitcom wedding shenanigans go, “Dwight kills a horse” falls somewhere between “Marshall gets a bad haircut” (bottom of the list) and “Uncle Jesse gets stuck in a tree after skydiving” (list). Full House remains undefeated at sitcom shenanigans.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
