The Office

I noticed it the first time I watched the finale, but I didn't say anything at the time. In the first place, I was watching alone, and there was nobody to comment to in the room. In the second place, I expected the internet would notice the error and would say something. And in the third place, I don't believe in commenting at televisions in the delusion that what I say will in any way influence the events being portrayed by actors on my screen.

But it's been a while and I've never heard it mentioned and now I have to say, has nobody else noticed that Oscar folded that paper crane wrong?

It's the most distracting thing in the world to me and I have not been able to get over it. My writing doesn't usually demand lengthy research, but for this post I have spent hours exploring possibilities and trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for two seconds of an old tv episode.

Here is the fundamental problem: the fold Oscar makes in the one shot of him folding, before he holds up a perfectly completed paper crane, is the wrong base fold to get a paper crane. You literally cannot get a paper crane out of the fold he is making. And the fold the he does make would put a completely unnecessary crease in the paper.

For the first time on my blog, I have pictures! Because there's no way to explain this impossibility without them. These two photos are of what is called a waterbomb base, one of the two most common base folds in origami. I've been folding origami since I was five, so I recognize the base folds when I see them.

The other most common base fold is called a square base and looks like this.

Detailed differences between the two are not important right now, but do you see that they're visually different? Here is a screenshot from the episode showing Oscar "folding" origami.

Clearly the waterbomb, right? That's the problem. The paper crane he holds up in the next shot comes from the square base, not the waterbomb. There is no way to get a crane out of the waterbomb unless you unfold it, start with a square, and proceed like a normal person to fold the crane the right way.

In the short shot, Oscar proceeds to firmly crease the fold he's just made. Out of curiosity, and in an attempt to see if it were possible, I started a crane using the base Oscar has. Not being an applied physicist, I was not certain how the crane would be affected by the fold that Oscar makes. To be as methodical as possible, I also only folded the fold Oscar did in the show and then unfolded and started from the beginning.

I folded it four times with that crease and ended up with a completely erroneous crease in one of these four places: the base of the neck/tail, or the base of either wing. Oscar's crane doesn't suffer from unnecessary creases. I went through several more attempts to make sense out of the folding as seen on tv, but all I did was further vindicate my original position.

Oscar's line at this point is "But, seriously, you made a nine-year documentary and you couldn't once show me doing my origami."

IT'S CAUSE YOU CAN'T FOLD ORIGAMI, OSCAR!!!

Deep breath. Exhale. I'm fine.

The puzzling thing to me is that someone clearly made a paper crane. Oscar's holding one in the shot. And Oscar's folding a waterbomb base in the previous shot. So clearly someone somewhere on that set knows at least a little about folding paper! So why the incongruity? 

I can think of only two reasonable explanations. 1) They were originally going to have him fold something besides a crane. Something that, naturally, gets folded from the waterbomb base. But then someone decided it'd be better to hold up a crane than a frog and the animal was changed without the base fold shot being redone. Or 2) The one guy who knew how to fold the crane was a mildly disgruntled employee and deliberately misguided the folding in order to get his own back at the producers.

To be honest, I'm leaning more towards option 2. Thanks, dude. You kept me awake at least sixteen different nights over the last year and a half puzzling about your stupid folding. I hope you're happy.