I know, I should just be happy that Michael Scott and David Brent finally crossed paths on last night's episode of The Office. Oh, sure, while I was watching the scene I felt nothing but unadulterated glee, but soon after I made the mistake of trying to think through the repercussions of Brent's appearance in Michael Scott's universe. (Yes, I've spent way too much time analyzing the Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis, which is also somewhat involved here, too.) What I'm left with is: How did these two people, living thousands of miles apart, once live a day with the exact same events occurring?
The pilot episode of the American Office was an ever-so-slightly altered version of the same script of Ricky Gervais' first episode of the UK Office. As separate entities, this makes sense. After the pilot, the American version deviated almost entirely from the plot of its UK counterpart. But now that it's confirmed that these two do exist in the same world, how could two human beings could live such eerily similar days -- repeating pretty much the exact same lines of dialogue?
For example, on the day that both Scott and Brent were told that their respective companies were downsizing, they both thought it would be a hilarious idea to fire a secretary for stealing Post-It notes in front of a new temp. How do we, as a viewer, explain this? Are these two just so genetically similar that they the odds were just in favor of them living the same day? Is it possible that Michael Scott saw David Brent's documentary and copied some of his actions? That's not completely unbelievable considering how much Michael loves paper companies, so a documentary on a British paper company seems like something that would interest Michael. If so, though, why didn't Scott recognize Brent when he ran into him in last night's episode?
Making this an even stranger occurrence? Both of these respective days were filmed by a camera crew for this supposed documentary on office workers. There is proof that such a strange paradox exists! Since it's been a few years, let's assume that Michael never saw the documentary about Brent's company, Wernham-Hogg. But when the documentary on Dunder Mifflin-Sabre is finally released to the world, there will have to be at least one person who notices that the beginnings to both documentaries are almost exactly the same -- probably the producers of the Wernham-Hogg feature.
What would happen next? After all of the legal battles for plagiarism and copyright infringement are settled, something miraculous: The footage of these two men, oceans apart, will be studied for decades on how two people -- who have never met -- could live a day with the exact same events. OK, maybe "miraculous" is too strong a word, but there will at least be a segment devoted to this on 20/20.