On her blog, Jenna Fischer gives up information about what to expect when The Office returns. She says:

We start back to work on The Office the week of March 3rd. We are doing 6 episodes. The sixth will be an hour long finale. Our first episode back is The Dinner Party. Michael and Jan throw a dinner party for a few of the Dunder-Mifflin couples. It’s HILARIOUS. We had just started filming when we got shut down. I don’t know anything else from there. I’ll be curious to see how the writers condense the stories with only 6 episodes left this season.

I think The Office can only benefit from a condensed season. Early in this season they were getting too drawn out with the hour long episodes. Also, there are always filler episodes in every series, in every season. Now hopefully we’ll get back to back great episodes.