NBC yesterday released Season 4 of "The Office" on DVD, including the episode "Local Ad" featuring Clear Ink's Second Life work. New to the DVD are two of the deleted scenes, along with commentary from episode writer BJ Novak and director Jason Reitman.

Reitman says that the Second Life scenes scared him the most, given that you couldn't actually animate the scenes - they had to be acted out by people running the characters. Though what we delivered to Reitman were finished QuickTime files, we had the sense that he thought he was watching the action in real time; I think this is confirmed in his commentary.

He also expressed concern about how to convey the written script - Jim is a guy with a guitar from Philly who is a sportswriter - into Second Life in just a few seconds. I think we got that one.

The deleted scenes include a great paintball fight and a funny reveal in Dwight's apartment.

The whole episode as shot ran quite long and was edited for time, so I'm glad these scenes are now available.

This is actually the third run of "Local Ad": 9PM Thursday, April 3. Its first rerun was after the state of the union speech in January.

The Dunder Mifflin group in Second Life, created for the filming of the episode, has grown to over 1000 members based on word of mouth, and Clear Ink will once again open up its backlot on Channing for fans of "The Office" to gather after tonight's episode airs.

In October, the original airing of "Local Ad" followed by a day the premiere of Second Life as a major component of a story in CBS's "CSI:NY". That episode was the first of a two-part story that was to have concluded in February. Due to the WGA strike, the concluding episode did not air until last night, once again the night before "The Office" episode. However a funny thing seemed to have happened on the road to part to of "CSI:NY". For the most part, the Second Life tie-in went away. There was no mention of Second Life or virtual worlds, and the brief scene of the villain in a virtual world was very un-Second-Life-like. This may have been planned all along, or the conclusion was revised. I won't speculate here, but that story will probably be told (link to follow).

If you missed the "Local Ad" episode of "The Office" on April 3, you can always catch it here on hulu.com.

You can also catch part 1 or part 2 of the CSI:NY episodes at cbs.com.

With the advent of TiVo, etc., sponsors increasingly turn to product placement to gain attention lost to viewers skipping through commercials. For instance, HP pays a promotional consideration to NBC's The Office for the placement of their computers and monitors within the show's stories. In the October 25th episode, "Local Ad", the Second Life brand just happened to go along for the ride as part of the story (with a little help from Clear Ink.) This was named by IAG Research as one of the top 10 most effective placements of 2007 based on "positive impact on brand opinion." The Office was the only non-reality show in the top 10, and Second Life was probably the only brand not to pay its way into the top 10.

[Additional coverage at Wired and Massively]

As I mentioned in my previous post on "The Office", I'd cover some of what happened after the episode aired in another post.

I'd rather run this post in context of the discussion about "The Office - A Viral Approach to Second Life" on Aleister Kronos's "Ambling in Second Life." I wrapped up my point of view in a comment to there, though Aleister ran the comment as a post of its own called "The Office in Second Life - An Update". Rather than reprint my post here, I'll send you over there.