On last week’s episode of The Office, the clueless (so to speak) manager Michael tries to divert his staff’s attention from the company’s apparent meltdown by having them role-play a murder mystery game. The game is set in Savannah, Georgia and all the characters dive into their Southern personas and accents with gusto.
At one point Andy, played by Ed Helms, corrects an office mate’s “Florida panhandle” accent and demonstrates the proper low-country Savannah accent. (Helms is a native of Atlanta, as is Brian Baumgartner [Kevin]). It’s one of the few attempts movies or TV make to distinguish different types of Southern accents. Mostly, every Southerner speaks with a generic hillbilly accent and says y’all in places where real Southerners would not. Good for The Office.
Photo: The Wikimedia photo here is of the house formerly called the Mercer House, now the Mercer Williams house in Savannah. One of the most beautiful in Savannah (and that’s saying a lot), it was built for General Hugh Mercer, great-grandfather of songwriter Johnny Mercer. It’s most notorious as the site of the killing of Danny Hansford in 1981. The trials of owner Jim Williams for the murder are the subject of John Berendt’s 1994 book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Williams’ sister Dorothy Kingery now owns the house.
cleve callison’s blog 
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