TV Throwback: The Office S2E4 - The Fire

This episode we learn a lot more about "Ryan the Temp" and, in the process, his "mentor" Michael Scott. We have another week of games letting some more personality escape from the office drones, and a life-threatening situation that turns into an unexpected "who-dunnit?" There's a lot this week in looks of anticipation and reaction, and I'd say to keep an eye out for it but obviously there will be giant paragraphs below hammering you over the head about it when the time comes. So let's get started.

Play...

0:55 - Jim & Pam Stuff: Starting right off the bat this week with drama! Extremely understated shots fired! Pam looks none too pleased to get a call requesting to speak to Jim. Turns out he has been seeing Katy (soon-to-be-Oscar-nominee Amy Adams), season 1's "hot girl" who came into the office to sell handbags. Pam catches us up in an increasingly awkward talking head: "Katy and Jim met in the office and now they're, like, going out or dating or something. And, ah...I don't know! You know? They're just- she calls him and they...you know- I'm sorry, I feel like I'm talking really loud! Am I talking really loud?"

The moment the call ends Pam jumps in with, "Hey...you can just give her your extension *nod*" Which isn't passive aggressive at all.

3:33 - The A-story this week is centered on another budding love-triangle: Michael, Dwight, and Ryan the temp.

Respecting the Camera:

Michael: Howard, slash Ryan. Ryan Howard is sitting in my office and he has been a temp here for a couple of months and he has kinda gotten the lay of the land a little bit. Has had a few laughs along the way. And now he wants to know what I think.
Ryan: The temp agency *points at form on Michael's desk* wants to know what you think.
Michael: Shall we? Let us proceed.

This type of situation was one of my favorite running comedic devices on The Office (both British and American) and one that I haven't really seen utilized by other mockumentaries. The basic conceit of a documentary like the one the crew is ostensibly trying to shoot is that they are a fly on the wall for all this real stuff happening. They then will take all that real stuff and present it to the audience with some explanation of what is happening. Part of this is the talking heads that they have been shooting, and maybe there'll be narration too. Michael often undermines this by narrating events himself as he participates in them.

The way interaction typically works is that there is a level of mutual-understanding established and maintained by everyone involved. For instance, a "date" requires that all parties understand and agree that a date is taking place, otherwise the meaning of their words and actions is going to be impossible to accurately decipher. The "he/she thinks it's a date, but their date thinks it's something else" example is an easy one because it's so familiar in both drama and comedy. In fact there's a deleted scene from this season where Jim describes his worst first date being a time his date didn't realize it was a date. But anyway, you get the idea.

This makes Michael's attempted narration a double violation. He's violating the authorship the camera crew holds over their own documentary, and he's violating the involvement his co-participants have in their own lives. Here he says that Ryan has come to him to ask his opinion, and Ryan immediately corrects him that he has simply dropped off an evaluation form required by his temp agency. Presumably Ryan went in to Michael's office just to hand it to him and leave, but now has been roped into some kind of mentorship fantasy (Michael describes himself as Mr. Miyagi and Yoda rolled into one).

After reading off one question and answering it to Ryan instead of filling out the form Michael abandons the form entirely and transitions to some sort of job interview:

Michael: Five years from now what do you want to do? Where do you want to be?
Ryan: Ahh well, I'm interested in business.
Michael: Oh, good, ambitious. Excellent. Wanna be a manager?
Ryan: Ahh no, actually ah what I want is to own my own company.
Michael: That is ridiculous *chuckles*

Last episode we got a window into Michael's ambitions with his dreams of teaching his grandchildren to walk outside the bachelor condo he presumably raised an entire imaginary family in. Michael's expectations create an odd situation where he can outwardly appear to be settling when in fact these are just the best options he can imagine. His condo, his Sebring convertable, his low-level management position in a low-level paper company; for Michael these are all jackpots. Dwight's inspection dials back the excitement on the condo, but he is into the car and the job and that helps keep them hyped in Michael's mind. So Ryan suggesting that there's more to be had and he wants it? Ridiculous! He's just a temp! Being Michael should be the dream for him. Both because it means what Michael has is impressive (to someone cooler than Dwight) and it means someone might be willing to listen to him share his secrets of how to become him.

First up? "There are ten rules of business that you need to learn. Number one...you need to play to win. But you also have to...win to play." "Got it." "And I will give you the rest of the ten at lunch."

5:21 - A fire alarm leads to the evacuation of the office, including Angela shouting at everyone to keep their hands by their sides, Dwight yelling about how "this is not a drill, panic is warranted," and Michael sprinting out ahead of everyone else.

"Yes I was the first one out and yes I've heard 'women and children first' but we do not employ children. We are not a sweatshop. Thankfully. And, ah, women are equal in the workplace. By law. So, I let them out first? I've a lawsuit on my hands.

6:24 - Dwight arrives outside and tries to begin the headcount. As we've established, rank is everything to Dwight and so he can't just start counting co-workers to make sure everyone is out. He says that Michael is number 1 and thus sets out to find Michael so he can count 1. Michael is giving Ryan the second rule of business ("You need to adapt to any situation. Adapt. React. Re-adapt. Act.") off to the side and Dwight informs him that Ryan needs a number for the count-off. Michael tells Ryan that 1 is taken, so Ryan (logically) suggests 2 for himself, which freaks Dwight out as obviously he must be #2.

Dwight: He can be 14, Margery's not here today.
Michael: Well he needs a permanent number, right?
Ryan: No, I don't.

Here we begin to learn about Ryan's complete mental and emotional detachment from his job at Dunder-Mifflin and that he and Michael's situation is like a professional version of 500 Days of Summer. Michael is in true mentorship-love and Ryan wants to keep things casual cause he's hopefully not in this place for long. Now because of that stupid form Ryan is fending off being drafted into a nicknamed group (Dwight suggests "The Three Musketeers" and Michael changes it to "The Three Stooges") and being life-coached by a guy who is slowly inventing the 10 rules of business he already declared were absolutely essential.

Ryan: I don't wanna be like a "guy" here, you know? Like Stanley is the crossword-puzzle guy. And Angel has cats- I don't wanna have a thing...here. You know, I don't wanna be the "something" guy.

I guess now we know why he was so quick to throw away his medals in Office Olympics.

8:11 - Speaking of the Office Olympics, after flourishing in a leadership role last week where he got the remaining office to goof-off together, Jim is now organizing team-building games in the parking lot while Michael is off teaching Ryan how to business. Specifically Desert Island Books, Who Would You Do?, and Would you Rather. This also builds on the more intimate relationships that began as people came out of their shells during the 1st Annual Dunder-Mifflin Olympiad. Of course Dwight was out with Michael at his condo last week so we didn't get to see him play any games. How does that go?

Phyllis: The DaVinci Code.
Angela: The DaVinci Code! I would take the DaVinci Code...so I could burn the DaVinci code.
Dwight: Okay great, that's gonna keep you warm for like seven seconds. Question is there firewood on the island?
Jim: I guess?
Dwight: Then I would bring an axe, no books.
Jim: Well it has to be a book Dwight.
Dwight: Fine. Physician's Desk Reference.
Jim: Nice. Smart.
Dwight: Hollowed out. Inside, water-proof matches. Iodine tablets....beet seeds, protein bars, NASA blanket. And...in case I get bored, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. No, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Question did my shoes come off in the plane crash?

In fairness to Dwight he arrives after the game has already started, but still. Of course he would misconstrue the game to be about surviving on an island LOST-style rather than simply being a question about your three favorite books. Lost Dwight Trait: (no pun intended) something I love about this early version of Dwight is that he doesn't immediately force the conversation into a 90 degree turn. His initial understanding of the situation is just slightly tilted and by the time you realize/understand how it's misaligned he's already set off running at such a speed and maintains such domination of the conversation that the topic is now miles away from where it should be. Again, not because he was so wrong, but because he was slightly wrong with such rapid intensity.

8:36 - 

Michael: Rule number four, in business image is everything. Andre Agassi. This car is an investment. Right? If I, ah, have to take out a client or I'm seen around Scranton in it...*taps on car* I love it. I love this car. *looks at Ryan*......do you like it? *looks down at ground*
Ryan:......yeah!

BRUTAL.

9:27 - Last week: Dwight (to Michael): What kinda shocks you got in this thing?

This Week: Dwight (pushing on the back of Ryan's car): Good shocks.

11:49 - Michael finds out that Ryan just got into business school and wants to be challenged with some business questions. Of course Michael's motivational-poster-based business education means he's ill-prepared to answer why people are rethinking the "Microsoft-model" or the cost-difference of signing a new customer over keeping an existing customer. You can see Michael's confidence as Ryan's imaginary mentor melt away, even as Dwight continues his hype-man routine by explaining that Michael didn't need college. Michael responds by immediately projecting onto Dwight. "You should go to business school like Ryan, maybe then you'd know what you're talking about."

Dwight begins horsing around with Ryan (well, more at Ryan than with Ryan) as he and Michael had been before. Dwight is still working under the conditions of Ryan being the know-nothing, the little-brother of their "Three Stooges" while Michael is transitioning to a sort of jealous awe. He admonishes Dwight for the way he's acting and finally drives him away with "you know what? He knows more about business than you ever will." In Dwight's rankings-based world-view Michael is a business genius (since he's above Dwight), so Ryan knowing more reshuffles the deck to put Dwight at the bottom of their group. So he storms off.

Again, Michael didn't really actively decide not to go to college or settle for not being able to, he just convinced himself he did the right thing and never really got challenged on it. "When I was Ryan's age I worked in a fast-food restaurant to save up money for school. And then I was- I lost it in a pyramid scheme but I learned more about business...right then and there than business school would ever teach me- or Ryan would ever teach me." After missing question after question he has one more puff of confidence as a final gasp. He lists off some other people who didn't go to business school, a bunch of NBA players like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. "They went right from high school to the NBA. So......so it's not the same thing. At all."

Next thing we see is Ryan and Michael in the backseat of Ryan's car as Michael leafs through his business textbooks asking for explanations. "You are so. Effin'. smart. You should be teaching me."

12:23 - The fact that "The Crow" is Dwight's all-time favorite movie is incredible. Also his strategy for coping with Michael's rejection is to start karate kicking a "Van Accessible" sign on the side of the building.

13:04 - Michael is now full-on confiding in Ryan about how he got into sales because he likes making friends but got promoted to manager and now can't be friends with everyone like he used to. I mentioned before how Michael's life is basically a person settling without ever making the choice to settle. It's rather sad that his talent for being a salesman got that taken away from him via promotion, something typically considered a positive development. Despite his love of business and habit of falling for pyramid schemes Michael doesn't exactly have ambition. It reminds of something Marge tells Homer on The Simpsons when he's fretting over Mr. Burns promising his dreams will go unfulfilled: "Homer, when a man's biggest dreams include seconds on dessert, occasional snuggling and sleeping in til noon on weekends, no one man can destroy them."

The trouble with Michael is he has no Marge to remind him what makes him happy. He doesn't really want to go to business school like Ryan, he just wants Ryan to want to listen to him. He doesn't even really want the car that he loves so much. Think about the two examples he gives to Ryan: entertaining clients and being seen around town. The car isn't for him, it's for other people. The other people are what he loves, but he can't see a way he can get them without the car.

Discovering Ryan was interested in business merely meant Michael was in possession of a desirable resource: business knowledge. Now that it's clear Ryan is already blowing past Michael's layman's knowledge of business his resource has turned worthless. And he already tried and failed to impress Ryan with his car.

15:53 - The transition to Jim's second game, Who Would You Do?, has immediately reached its inevitably awkward destiny with Kevin and Oscar immediately answering Pam. This sends Jim fumbling about the rules until he is helpfully distracted by more of Dwight's very public alone time. He is sitting in his car, windows all the way down, blasting "Everybody Hurts" by REM. Jim puts Stanley in charge as he and Pam skip off to mess with Dwight.

On their way back to the group they acquire Roy, who has wandered away from the other warehouse workers on account of them being "jackasses sometimes." Likely he found himself the butt of some uncomfortable joke, like when he and Daryl bullied Michael away back in "Sexual Harassment." They return to Who Would you Do? just as Michael and Ryan are also arriving. Michael is excited to hear what the game is: "I play this at home all the time while I'm falling asleep!"

Next up is Roy. Roy who has been engaged to Pam for several years. Roy who just left the warehouse workers for being insensitive jackasses. So we all know who Roy's going to pick!

Roy: Uhh, oh I got it! Uh what's the name of that, ah, that tight-ass Christian chick? The ah Blonde?
Angela: My name is Angela.
Roy: Hey Angela, Roy, nice to meet ya.

 

Like I said during "The Dundies" when Roy's level of caring for Pam's feelings is inexorably tied to how much he wants to go drink with Daryl, what makes Roy a great villain for The Office is he isn't a villain. He's a jerk and a doofus, but there's no scene where he's caught cheating by Jim and cites some sort of "guy-code" to keep it all secret. Unfortunately the lazy drama of secret infidelity works its way into The Office's storylines in future seasons, but not here. Instead it's easy to imagine Pam being annoyed at Roy's choice, them getting in a fight over something else, it coming up, him berating her for getting upset over a stupid game, and them not breaking up basically because they're too tired. All the usual frustration of relationship drama without the insult to intelligence for both the audience and the characters.

Michael immediately takes over leadership duties of the game, presumably because he's the only person immune to how incredibly awkward the game has just become. He picks Jim and the camera again zooms in on Pam who has gone from slightly-embarrassed confidence to slightly-nervous curiosity.

Jim immediately confesses his love for Pam and they make tender lov- wait no. "Kevin. Hands down. He's definitely got that teddy bear thing goin' on. And afterwards we could just watch bowling?"

These days it may not seem super subtle that Pam loves the way Jim has just defused the situation while Roy is locked in disgusted confusion. Of course this represents them being very different people and a terrible couple whose relationship is holding her back in a multitude of ways. The thing is, the fact we can pick up on this stuff is probably due to how subtle The Office is compared to its contemporaries. Other shows would've surely had an audible "eughhhh!" from Roy, maybe even with a few lines spelling out his confusion. Again, having a fiance who said and did things like that would likely make Pam realize, almost immediately, that this person sucks and she shouldn't marry them. But here she can't see Roy's reaction because she's too busy looking at Jim...which is a pretty good explanation for why their relationship is surviving actually.

Anyway, Michael self-selects for next turn (probably because he saw there was laughter to be had) and his choice? "I would definitely have sex with Ryan. Cause he, cause he is gonna own his own business." A few things. Michael just recently gave Ryan the Dundie for "Hottest in the office." As I said, he has spent the entire day in a veritable love-triangle with Ryan and Dwight. He stated his answer as "I would definitely have sex with..." which is exactly how NOT to answer in Who Would You Do? even when the person you name isn't standing right next to you. And finally, you'd have sex with him because he owns his own business? I realize this is Michael's attempt at re-purposing what he knows about someone into a compliment, but it really makes him look like a gold digger.

And of course Roy finally finds something funny: "You're all gay!" Yes Roy, HILARIOUS. I think I hear the warehouse guys calling you.

16:19 - As Michael is asking for the next contestant for the game he just re-killed Ryan gets a call on his cell phone: "Hey! No I can talk! I can talk. I can talk" he repeats as he quickly backs away to take the call, any call, anything but still standing next to Michael. This causes Michael to mention in passing that he left his cell phone inside and Dwight sprints back into the building to go find it and spitefully win back Michael's love.

Something that just occurred to me is that the genius of Jim & Pam's understated, under-the-radar romance really gets highlighted by the radioactive glow off of the big, showy, "love" stories between other characters. Dwight and Michael are the ones who engage in dramatic expressions of devotion, need, and affection. Along with the constant invasive presence of the camera, this probably helps pumps the brakes on Jim & Pam's romance progressing as they are surely looking at the craziness of big romantic gestures laid bare and thinking "yeahhh that's not a good look..."

Of course Michael isn't exactly impressed with Dwight's chivalry, leading to a classic bit of parsing:

Michael: *points to where Dwight just ran in* He is an idiot. The man is an IDIOT ladies and gentlemen!
Kevin: What if he dies in the fire and that's the last thing you ever said to him?
Michael: I didn't say it t-to him, I said it about him.

(Also, I have to give credit that this time I did notice Roy in the background waving the firemen back over to let them know Dwight went back in. Good job Roy. You have a soul.)

16:48 - Seeing as it's only been the men playing so far (well, we do see Stanley admonishing Kelly for not following the rules, but don't see who her pick was) the women of the office break off to play a few rounds of Who Would You Do? by themselves (minus Angela, of course). Meredith, Phyllis, and Kelly all pick Jim in a landslide and after tensely watching two Pam reactions it's finally time to see her pick.

After a struggle to find a suitable not-Jim she picks Oscar and follows that up with Toby. Much to everyone's disappointment. Especially the audience.

19:11 - The next few minutes don't go well for Ryan. Michael decides it will help Dwight search if Ryan calls his cell phone...using the number he just gave him while they were sitting in Ryan's car...the number he watched Ryan program in...and of course Ryan had faked that in the belief he would soon be out of this awkward situation. Michael calls himself and the phone starts ringing in his pocket. The ringtone is "Mambo #5" but if there's no way to tell if it's a leftover from the previous' year's Dundies when he sang his parody version, or if that was what inspired it to begin with. Thankfully it turns out to not have been that big of a deal as Dwight comes charging back out of the building a few moments later.

Michael is fawning all over him now, surely because it's on tape that Dwight's death-defying gesture was even more unnecessary than it appeared due to Michael's incompetence. The status quo gets restored for real though when Dwight reveals that he found the source of the fire:

Dwight: Apparently, in business school they don't teach you how to operate a toaster oven. Because some smart, sexy temp left his cheese pita on oven instead of timing it for the TOASTER THING! *lifts up charred remains of Ryan's cheese pita* HA! A-HA! *coughs*
Michael: Wowwww okayyyy. Well I guess they don't teach how to operate a toaster oven in...business school.
Dwight: (excitedly) That's exactly what I said! 

 

Dwight begins his parody rendition of "We Didn't Start the Fire" as "Ryan Started the Fire" which Michael immediately joins in with as they dance around. And so "The Three Stooges" reform with Ryan squarely affixed to the bottom rung once again.

20:17 - Jim & Pam Stuff: The people in the office have been getting to know each other a bit more and becoming a bit closer the past two weeks via their game-playing. So this episode displays Jim and Pam's ongoing closeness by having them actively separate from the others a bit. I mentioned when they ditch the game that Jim started to pair-off and mess with Dwight. During the first game, Desert Island, we get a dual talking head with them after Meredith lists off her top five movies. Her list is basically a parade of hunks in shirtless roles and Jim is dismissively reciting them as Pam laughs along. He gets to the one exception, Legally Blonde, and Pam stops him. She kinda lik- but Jim cuts her off and emphasizes that the game is Desert Island movies, not guilty pleasure movies.

Jim: Desert Island movies are the movies you're going to watch for the rest of your life. Forever!
Pam: Goes to talk.
Jim: Unforgivable.
Pam: I take it back.
Jim: Unforgivable.
Pam: I take it back!
Jim: Good.

Now it must be lunchtime as Dwight and Michael continue singing because Jim's girlfriend(?) Katy arrives. She had called earlier and Jim filled her in on the game they were playing so she's all ready with her own Desert Island movies. Jim excitedly calls everyone over to restart the game for this new player.

Jim: Ladies and gentlemen gather 'round! We have one more participant. C'mon be polite. Be polite. Desert Island. Five Movies. Go.
Katy: Okay, umm. First. Legally Blonde.
Pam: *laughs*
(cut to Pam in a talking head)
Pam: I forgot what a super nice girl Katy is. Just, good for Jim! They are so cute together. And um, what an adorable car! *nods and smiles*
(cut back to the group)
Jim: Okayyy I think the game's over, people are like leaving. There was a bigger crowd last time. Do you wanna just go to lunch? 

Jim and Katy flirt their way back to her car, Pam grabs Roy for a kiss that takes him completely off guard, Jim looks on unimpressed, and Katy looks on dreamily and mirrors Pam's glib remark with a happy, "they are so cute!"

20:57 - The episode ends with Ryan apologizing profusely while Dwight continues mocking him, this time teamed with Kevin. Dwight christens Ryan "The FIRE guy!" thus fulfilling the test of fate Ryan set out by declaring his fear of being "the something guy." Michael comes in with business rule #5: "safety first. Don't burn the building down" and promises to complete the list tomorrow (promising Ryan this mentorship hell will continue beyond today).

The final horror is that just as Dwight is re-secure in his ranking, Michael is re-convinced of his. Despite all the realizations he came to of his place in the world of business knowledge, and all his awe for the knowledge Ryan has already brought down from Mount Business School, Michael assesses the fire's cause like this: "Look, Ryan...is book smart. And I am street smart...and book smart."

So Michael and Dwight have gone the full loop right back to where they started, but we've learned a lot about Ryan in the meantime. Pam has gone from scared and jealous with Katy's phone call to embarrassed and annoyed by Roy's Who Would You Do? response, to full-on cockiness with Katy's Desert Island movie. And hopefully we've all noticed some new stuff in "The Fire."

=Rankings=

#1 Episode 1 - The Dundies

#2 Episode 2 - Sexual Harassment

#3 Episode 4 - The Fire

#4 Episode 3 - Office Olympics

TV Throwback: The Office S2E3 - Office Olympics

Yeahhh we're back! Strangely the strongest memory I associate with "Office Olympics" is the fact that I was not watching The Office at this point in the season's original run. I remember NBC really hammering the promos for this episode hard and being slightly intrigued before immediately reminding myself "No! We don't watch this show! It's bad! We like the British one!" I eventually fixed my thinking on that (obviously) but this episode and "The Carpet" later in the season are forever linked to my not watching the show. But anyway! After two weeks being driven almost entirely by Michael we now get to see some of the supporting characters start to take shape as Michael steps out of the office for some real estate investing.

Play...

0:50 - In this cold open we get our first real Ryan-centric moment of the season as he arrives in early to work at the behest of Michael with a sausage, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich order in hand. He hands the food to Michael and excitedly inquires what surely big and exciting project he's being assigned. Michael responds that it was the sandwich. The thing he could have easily done himself was what he so desperately needed Ryan to come in early for.

But hey! He has the whole office to himself: "Home Alone. Risky Business. Take your pants off, run around." Ryan chooses to take a nap in his car instead. Michael sets the biscuit, aka most of his breakfast sandwich (and the "sandwich" part), aside and just grasps the sausage, egg and cheese in his hand. "See? Healthier. Gotta watch those carbs."

3:10 - Lost Dwight Trait: Michael is closing on a condo and starts hyping himself up as a property owner. This includes citing olden times when the landed gentry were the only ones who could vote and that others were put in stocks, a punishment Dwight thinks should return. Dwight eventually tells him he should go, which is kind of telling about Dwight's character during this season. Season 2 Dwight is thoughtful.

As with all positive interpersonal behavior this is reserved for his superiors, but the fact that Dwight is keeping an eye on the clock so Michael can focus on playing for the cameras says a lot about what Dwight is along with who he is. This transitions into Dwight trying to tag along as Michael's representative:

Dwight:  Please? I'm always the guy that you rely on at work.
Michael: Well, this isn't about work. This is closing on a condo. It's completely personal.
Dwight: So you're taking a personal day?
Michael: (coughs) Except that...it's about my living arrangement, and as boss I need to have a living arrangement in order to do work.

Of course there's the joke about Michael stumbling backwards into a confession that he maybe didn't tell corporate what he's going to be doing today (during which he repeatedly looks at the camera, which could easily tattle on him to his bosses). From another person Dwight's question about a personal day might have seemed like needling, and later-season Dwight would have been an interrogation, but here Dwight is like...well he's like Google Now. He's not gathering information for some scheme or malicious purpose, he wants it so he can maybe repackage it into useful information later on. Just like him telling Michael he needs to leave to make it on time (as Google Now does), he's probably tracking Michael's personal day usage so he can alert him when he's about to run out. Dwight isn't a problem because he's insane, he's a problem because he's too anxious to be helpful. He's not Ultron, he's Clippy.

3:41 - Respecting the Camera: Building off of the last episode where offensive behavior is called out just by virtue of the presence of a camera, eliminating the comedy delay of someone having to voice or even express their displeasure, Michael approaches Pam's desk as he readies to leave and busts out the second offensive Asian stereotype of the season. "Ahh, most honorable Pam-a-rah." As he finishes he side-eyes the camera and doesn't pause before following up with, "not offensive. Because that's the way they talk in movies." Which is both evidence he is adapting to having the camera crew around (although not a meaningful or helpful adaptation) and a quality joke about lazy racism.
4:23 - Michael is checking in with Pam to ask that everyone keep working on their expense reports (the big office-wide task of the day) before the end of the day, but he also wants to make sure she switched his magazine subscriptions over to his new condo's address. Small Business Man. Maxim. American Way. CRACKED.
Pam specifically emphasizes that she definitely changed his subscription to CRACKED, the Pepsi to MAD's Coca-Cola. Michael thinks for a moment and tries to do some image repair with "how about um, ah, fine arts...aficionado, monthly?" Pam shakes her head and he tells her to get on it, quickly glancing at the camera as he haughtily says he doesn't just read CRACKED.

(For the record CRACKED.com, which inherited the mantle from the long-bust magazine, is one of the smarts and most interesting websites around and I recommend it. Ironically Michael would likely be completely befuddled by it. #NotAnAd)

5:49 - The key to this episode is the total division between the A-story of Michael and Dwight's adventure closing on Michael's condo and the B-story of the eponymous Office Olympics. They haven't actually developed yet, but the seeds have been sown with Jim "dying of boredom" at his desk and Pam "reviving" him by sharing a game. Specifically, the game of trying to throw things in Dwight's coffee mug while he's away from his desk. Now Jim learns that Oscar and Kevin have a "paper football flicking and hitting things" game ("Hateball" named for how much their desk-cluster-mate Angela hates it) they've been playing for over 2 years whenever Michael is out. Hmm...I wonder if situational natures will be an important theme of this story...

6:16 - 

Michael: Home sweet home.
Dwight: Which one's yours?
Michael: (points at the condo across the street) Right there. My sanctuary. My party pad. Someday I can just see my grandkids learning how to walk out here. Hang a swing from this tree. Push them back...wait...(turns around) No, it's this one right here. Home sweet home.

One of my favorite unique quirks of Michael Scott is that he doesn't work incrementally. This condo isn't his, he's not even moving in today he's just closing on it. Still, it's his sanctuary (presumably he hasn't even been alone inside it yet) and his party pad (also nope). He doesn't have kids, he doesn't have a wife, he doesn't even have a girlfriend nor the hint of female companionship but his immediate go-to is his grandkids learning how to walk (in the street). Also perfect is he is developing these fantasies as he is speaking, as shown by the fact that he's not even looking at the right unit as he muses. While he said this was about his living situation it turns out it's about the WILDLY-removed, imaginary, 30-years-from-now living situation that he's desperately willing to slather an image of across any property.

8:35 - Again, the "evil" of Dwight here isn't that he's the cartoon villain of later seasons but that he is a walking mass of practicality. The first thing he points out is that Michael's current place is bigger than this condo, which Michael waves away by pointing out he'll own this place so it's "still an upgrade." They then head up to the master bedroom where Michael begins an MTV Cribs-esque tour of all the amenities (surround sound system, plasma screen TV) that he has imagined for it. The camera is sticking with Michael, being drawn into his fantasy world. Meanwhile Dwight is staunchly tethered to reality, doing the inspection that Michael was obviously too busy fantasizing about pimped-out bedrooms and scurrying grandkids to even consider doing. The concern finally begins to creep across Michael's face as the neighbor's clearly audible shout of "I don't hear you practicing!" followed by the drone of a cello alerts Dwight to the condo's shared wall being paper-thin.

9:38 - The 1st Annual Dunder-Mifflin Olympiad has it's opening ceremonies, featuring the debut of Pam's (eventually massively important) yogurt-lid medals and Jim lighting a candle he found in the men's bathroom. Kevin happily and with a hint of self-satisfaction points out that it smells like cookies. I'm just mentioning this to point out that Kevin won a Dundie for stinking up the bathroom and now Jim has found a scented candle in the men's room that Kevin knows an awful lot about and seems in line with his olfactory preferences...hmm...

10:50 - Michael is already visibly shaken by Dwight's many observations about the condo, so when he says it's a ten year mortgage and Carol the realtor corrects him that it's "10 years fixed, over 30" he really falls apart. What's funniest about this is that 30 years is he obviously considers this an insane amount of time to think about being tied to this condo but we JUST heard him musing about his grandkids to walk out front! GrandKIDS. Plural. Did he think going from no relationship to multiple grandkids carried a ten year timeframe?
12:33 - He does eventually sign after claiming the ceilings have been lowered since he saw it last and lamenting that the complex isn't filled with sexy singles like he was promised (presumably by Melrose Place). Once Carol the realtor explains that he will lose $7,000 if he walks away now we get a second of Michael's thousand yard stare before smash cutting to he and Dwight hanging out on the floor enjoying some post-closing wraps.
Michael congratulates himself on his becoming a homeowner and they both chuckle about how much fun they're having compared to the losers stuck back in the office.

15:08 - Jim & Pam Stuff -

Pam: Come on Angela, don't you have a game?
Angela: I have one, yes.
Pam: Well let's play, what is it?
Angela: I call it "Pam-Pong." I count how many times Jim gets up from his desk and goes to reception to talk to you.
Pam: ...we're friends.
Angela: Apparently.

I haven't talked a whole lot about the Office Olympics themselves because the individual moments - the naming of "box of paper snow-shoe racing" to "Flonkerton," Kevin pouring M&Ms into his mouth - aren't as important as the overall activity of the group sharing/reveling in their individual ways of staying sane at work.

This joyous openness is possible because Michael and Dwight are gone. While usually the worry with a boss would be being found goofing off, at Dunder-Mifflin Scranton the disaster would be being discovered goofing off without your boss. With Michael it's either he's going to be so hurt by being excluded that he'll overreact and seriously affect someone's employment or, even worse, interject himself into all the various sanity-restoring games thus ruining them. But for today the theme in the office is about being able to share what you love without fear of having it taken away from you or destroyed because the person you have to hide it from is gone.

Well, except when the thing you love is the guy/girl you're not engaged to. When any eyes, not just Michael Scott's, are the enemy.

With gleeful venom Angela yanks Pam and Jim's reliance upon each other into the harsh, artificial office lighting where it's made to look like an ugly thing. It's cruel, but at the same time Pam was needling her about sharing her coping mechanism while not being fully open about her own.

16:26 - Nope, never mind. Damn you Angela!

18:27 - Oscar and Toby are in the middle of a neck-and-neck coffee-carrying race around the office when Michael and Dwight return. Everyone immediately falls silent and returns to their desks and expense reports. Jim keeps the stopwatch running, but it's obviously in vain. Almost immediately we see Ryan dump his medals in the trash in the full, none-too-impressed view of Pam. He explains himself in a talking head:

Ryan: I figured I could throw it away now or I could keep it for a couple of months and then throw it away. I mean it was really nice of Pam to make them but what am I gonna do with a gold medal made of paper clips and an old yogurt lid?

Gee, I don't know Ryan. Maybe keep it until your soulmate's girlfriend passive-aggressively asks you to put together copies of their performance numbers for a job interview with corporate at the end of next season. Then put it in the folder with his reports and an encouraging note. And then he's so touched that he leaves the interview, breaks up with his girlfriend, drives back to Scranton, and interrupts you doing a talking head about how star-crossed your relationship is so he can ask you to dinner and then a few seasons later you get married? How about THAT Ryan??? Cause, you know, that's what Pam ends up doing. Oh and also, Jim bailing on that interview also leads to Ryan getting the job which assists in him becoming a drug addict and failing his way out of everything.

But at least you stressed how nice it was of her to make them.

20:59 - While trying to talk Michael into signing, Carol the realtor mentioned how condo buyers in financial duress often rent out the unit's third bedroom to help pay for it. Michael balks at the idea, but after signing he "rewards" Dwight by offering to let him pay $500 a month (plus utilities) to live there. Dwight of course responds with a barrage of questions and Michael takes back the offer in a fit of annoyance.

We then watch as Michael snaps at Dwight over his mortgage advice (even though Dwight actually outright owns his 9 bedroom farmhouse and 60 acre working beet farm) and sits in his office gazing in misery at the keys he was bouncing out the door to go get earlier. Wallowing over how he has become trapped in what he called his "sanctuary" and "party pad." He now realizes what Dwight understood immediately: he has basically bought a coffin. And as Dwight said, "if I were buying a coffin I would get one with thicker walls."

Jim is also wallowing. He passes in his expense reports and explains in a talking head that he got more work done during breaks in the Dunder-Mifflin Olympiad than he normally does trudging through a full day. While Michael looks at his keys with a glazed expression of nausea, Jim looks longingly at his Pam-crafted, yogurt-lid medal hanging in full-view from his desk lamp. He refuses to be defeated though. He returns to reception (another point in Pam-Pong. Deal with it Angela!) and informs Pam to tell everyone the closing ceremonies will take place at 5:00 as planned.

In a beautiful moment he invites Michael out and presents him with a gold medal for closing on his condo and has him take the highest position on a paper-stack medal podium. "I don't really know what to say...I'm not one for making speeches, but my heart is very full at this moment." Naturally the yogurt-lid medal does for Michael what he imagines the Dundies do for everyone else.

Of course the joke of the Olympiad's closing ceremony is expertly hidden by Jim using Michael's condo closing. Despite the playing of the national anthem ("uh, because your condo is in America") and Pam releasing a string of paper doves the mock ceremony doesn't mock Michael's celebration. As with the best moments of The Office the joke and the feelings run in parallel, not in opposition. The ending is both a last-minute victory for goofing off and a meaningful and desperately needed moment of support for the clueless boss the joke is being smuggled past.

The condo side of "Office Olympics" is obviously about lying to yourself. Michael had filled his head with so many fantasies that he never really looked at the condo to see if it could make those dreams possible, never mind plausible. Dwight's inspection and practical questioning was a necessary dose of harsh reality that just came wayyyy too late. At first glance, the Olympiad might seem like it's about truth; about taking a day off from the lies you have to tell others. With Michael gone everyone pulled back the veil on what they really choose to make of themselves in the office when others (particularly Michael) aren't looking. They got to show themselves to one another for possibly the first time.

Jim: Okay, so I think that's H-O-R for Stanley and H-O for Phyllis.
Phyllis: Are you callin' me a ho?
Jim: (shocked) Oh my God. Phyllis coming alive! I like it.

The Olympiad was born out of a general bristling at filling out expense reports. It was stupid and pointless so they strapped boxes of paper to their feet and raced to a strip of scotch tape in pursuit of used yogurt-lids. It was just as stupid and just as pointless. Ryan makes that clear when he immediately and openly tosses his medal in the trash, revealing that the ruse was over. He was done with the process that had transformed it from paper clips and trash into something meaningful and desirable. The 1st Annual Dunder-Mifflin Olympiad was a fantasy much like Michael's party-pad, but it was about coping together rather than the usual lying to each other about the need to cope at all.

Jim and Pam keep their medals because, for them, they don't revert back to a hasty union of garbage and office supplies. They stay medals. That's what Ryan is oblivious to when he stresses the part about Pam making them. Pam designed them and assembled them, but everyone playing together is what made them medals. You could presumably hire a jeweler to shape a lump of metal into the shape of an Olympic medal, but that doesn't make it an Olympic medal. What makes it an Olympic medal is the part where an athlete wins a contest and someone hangs it around their neck as a result.

The closing ceremony was a joke but it also really was a closing ceremony, and it really was a celebration of Michael buying his condo. It was everything that they worked together to make it.

=Rankings=
#1 Episode 1 - The Dundies
#2 Episode 2 - Sexual Harassment
#3 Episode 3 - Office Olympics
(These rankings might kill me by mid-season considering how much I agonized over just these three)

TV Throwback: The Office S2E2 - Sexual Harassment

Welcome to the second installment of my re-watch of The Office season 2, the greatest season of television ever. Part 1, "The Dundies" is back here. This week we spend time with Michael's best friend Todd Packer, meet Pam's mom, and get to watch Michael Scott cross the line, misunderstand the line, trip over the line, and cross it some more. (I've also decided to add little subheadings for my recurring arguments so I don't have to repeatedly say "Dwight's character lost his way," "they stopped using the camera as a character," and "JIM & PAM WAS THE BEST!" every time I want to start a rant.)

Play...

2:50 - No cold open this time so we're jumping right in and learning about Michael's position as "King of Forwards." As in king of annoying and offensive joke emails including "signs your priest might be Michael Jackson."
Lost Dwight Trait - Dwight shows Michael a video of a monkey doing something sexual in the hopes of getting the validation of him sharing it, and displaying the desperate hopefulness that got wrung out of him over 8 seasons. Later season Dwight would have either scoffed at Michael's lack of professionalism or revealed some Machiavellian intentions in trying to get him to share it. One of the keys to early Dwight is that people are completely different to him based on whether they are above or below him. It's the basis of his obsession over being "Assistant Regional Manager" rather than "Assistant TO the Regional Manager" and being #2 in the office, as he has to rationalize the actions of anyone above him and gets to judge and attempt to control those below him. So his frequent arguments about positioning aren't just ego, they're also so he doesn't have to foul his worldview by having to rationalize the actions of someone like Jim the way he happily does with Michael and Jan.
Respecting the Camera - After Michael laughs at the monkey video he looks toward the camera, gets serious and explains to the camera crew/audience/greater world that the video is not offensive because it's nature and thus educational.

This few minutes also introduces Todd Packer, the Pack-Man! Michael's only friend and a complete asshole. There's one teeny-tiny moment right as Packer enters that gets fleshed out later in the season but is worth mentioning here. Packer walks up behind Michael while he's still talking to Dwight and lifts the back of his suit jacket up over his head hockey-fight style.

Michael gets instantly aggravated with his mystery attacker with an angry "okay" that seems to be leading into a threat or reprimand, until he hears Packer talking. Even though Packer insults him Michael is suddenly delighted and excitedly greets him. Much like Dwight, Michael has his own dichotomy of the world: anything is okay if it's a joke, and if you're trying to shut down a joke it's because you don't want things to be okay.

3:28 - Respecting the Camera

Packer: We're talking blonde incompetent.
Michael: Ohhh yeah.
(The shot switches from a close-up to a wide shot to catch Angela glaring at them from the background)
Packer: Like, ah, ten words a minute...talking.
Michael: (Casually holds a hand up to Packer to get him to pause and turns to camera) Well to be fair blondes, brunets. You know, there's a lot of dumb people out there.
Packer: (looks around exaggeratedly) They are women, right?
(Camera pans to Phyllis looking on incredulously)
Michael: Ohhhh wow! I didn't say it! I didn't say it!
Packer: I said it!
(Michael and Packer laugh)

Again, that exchange moves at a snappier, less sitcom-y pace because they didn't need a character to come in and challenge Packer to set up Packer not caring. The presence of the camera crew creates this constant challenge to whatever is happening, because Michael needs to be liked and knows what Packer is doing is risky and divisive, so he jumps into hedge his bets. In later seasons this constant challenge is lost. Suddenly Kelly or Angela or someone would have to jump in and get mad, have a whole "I'm mad" exchange, and have a confrontation with Packer that needs to be moved on from at an unrealistic pace to get to the next joke. Here it manages to both zip along and flow naturally.

6:00 - "There's no such thing as an appropriate joke. That's what makes it a joke." - Michael Scott
The story Packer was telling earlier was about the downfall of Dunder Mifflin's CFO who was fired for sexual harassment (Packer explained it as his secretary blowing the whistle on him sleeping with her "just to be a bitch"). This gets a visit from the Scranton Human Resources representative Toby, Michael's nemesis. Like I said earlier, anything is okay to Michael as long as it's a joke and he tries to make everything a joke so everything stays okay. We can understand Toby having to come in and fix that misconception, but to Michael he's just coming in to ruin things.

It's actually interesting to contrast Michael and Packer through their blaming and resentment. Packer resents being challenged because everyone else is just a toy to him, especially women. So the secretary standing up for herself becomes a "bitch" who ruined the CFO's fun, and from the moment he's on-screen he goes on the attack against Jim because Jim is a threat. Jim is a toy that he knows can outplay him. Packer and Michael are friends because Michael is fully willing to be a toy. The same way Dwight rationalizes whatever Michael's doing as noble because he needs to believe in his superiors, Michael rationalizes whatever Packer does as fun jokes because he needs to believe they're friends.

It's easy to think of Michael hating Toby in the same selfish fun-ruiner way, but in Michael's mind Toby ruins everyone's fun. Michael describes the office as a family, of which he typically appoints himself some mixture of father and fun uncle. He points out that Toby, as a member of HR, is part of corporate and thus not part of the family. So even as Toby tries to protect the office from Michael, Michael sees himself as defending the office from Toby. He's Patch Adams, the employees are his patients, and Toby is the establishment making them sick by failing to understand laughter is the best medicine.

07:00 - Michael: A man goes to a five dollar...lady of the night. And he gets crabs. So the next day he goes back to complain. And the woman says, "hey, it was only five dollars. What did you expect? Lobster?" (laughs, then gets serious) This is what's at stake.

08:14 - Michael heads down to the warehouse, as he declares it to be where jokes are born, in search of a great joke to remind everyone how wrong Toby is at the sexual harassment seminar later. He is immediately harassed by Roy and Darryl about how tight his pants are, gets uncomfortable, and basically runs away. This is the ultimate hypocrisy of Michael's view of humor: he sells it as family and inclusion but it's really just about him not being excluded. You get the impression that what Michael loves most about comedy is that all you have to do is laugh and somehow you're involved. Comedy is an excuse to laugh, and laughter is a shortcut to inclusion, so as long as comedy is always happening he always has an avenue to stay included. When the warehouse workers start making fun of him it's not as much that his ego is taking a hit as it is that they are actively making fun of him and him alone, pushing him away with laughter.

11:18 - Toby gives his seminar and it all seems perfectly professional and well received, even if not particularly effective as Pam saying her mother is coming to visit gets a "milf" from Kevin. Things go immediately downhill when Michael arrives late, carrying a blow-up doll. I said earlier that Michael's concern is everyone's fun being ruined, but that's 100% just his view of things. He's a more benign version of Packer, but he's Packer-lite none-the-less. He starts reaching out to his employees, trying to get the "family" to join together to rebuke Toby the outsider (even when the tail-end of the well received meeting he just ran shows us he's even more an office insider than Michael). Angela brings up the email forwards and Michael blows her a kiss in thanks before she expresses her hatred of them at which point he grimaces and waves his hand at her, tossing her out of the family to rot with Toby. During a discussion of office relationships Michael says how he could've slept with a hot former employee, Kevin claims she wasn't that hot and Michael revokes him via expression just like Angela. Finally he digs a hole too deep as he compliments a sexy schoolgirl pin-up next to Stanley's desk, and defends Stanley's right to it and reveals his own enjoyment of it only to find out it's a picture of Stanley's daughter in her school uniform.

Defeated on how things are (or at least how he thought they were) he retreats to the land of hypotheticals. What if Pam was a lesbian? He wonders to her displeasure as she knows exactly where this is going. Sure enough it's not long before he's cooked up a hypothetical situation of her making out with a partner, declaring they should act it out, scanning the employees for a girl for Pam to make out with, failing to see a viable candidate (i.e. one he would like to fantasize about), and then deciding the blow-up doll will do. That's where the Packer influence finally shines through brightest. Michael is a frat-boy stereotype by proxy as surely those braindead direct-to-DVD National Lampoon's Naked College Sex Party movies perfectly represent his fantasy world.

I don't think sex for him is a power-play like with Packer or the warehouse workers, but rather that it's just a provocative thing that people like to both hear about and brag about. It's almost like he dreams about having sex just to get to the kiss-and-tell afterwards. The conquest not even for conquest's sake, but for the chance to report something people might actually pay attention to. Earlier in the episode he gleefully tells the story of he and Packer meeting a set of twins, Packer telling them he and Michael were brothers, and then how Packer slept with both of them. Again, not about the conquest (because Michael didn't conquer anything, and Packer probably didn't either in reality) but the story, and Michael is so happy to have the story. Then during his exercise in Pam's hypothetical lesbianism he presents it as, "what if they made out in front of everybody...at home. And I told everybody everything about it." Toby says he's lost, and who can blame him, but actually we've hit the core of Michael's relationship with inappropriateness. They're the stories that get attention, they're the emails that get a response, and they're the situations that are jokes and he can't stand to lose any of that.

11:50 - I really didn't mean for this to turn into an exploration of Michael's relationship with sex, even if it is turning out to be a major point of the episode. This exchange sums it up PERFECTLY though. After the previous scene we smash-cut to a sexual harassment video and obviously expect Toby has brought it out after Michael's rampage of inappropriateness during the meeting. It's Michael and the warehouse workers watching it though, laughing and eating pizza. Obviously they're back on better terms now that there's a common enemy again with Toby and the video and the warehouse staff are much more willing to be on the wrong side of the debate with Michael. Feeling energized by being back within a group Michael leave the conference room to invite the rest of the office back in on the fun they're about to have doing Mystery Science Theater 3000 on the video.

Michael: Hey, we have to watch Toby's video that he's showing us in order to brainwash us and I was wondering if anybody'd like to join in? Gonna be fun. Got microwave pizza. Whadda ya say? Jim?
Jim: No thanks, I'm good.
Michael: That's what she said. (laughs) Pam?
Pam: Umm. My mother's coming.
Michael: That's what she said (immediately stops and clears throat) no, but, okay.

This is AMAZING! First that they got this joke on network television, but also what a sudden, jolting turn on a dime it is. Michael has been railing against appropriateness all episode, he's turned his irreverence up to 11. He makes the "that's what she said" joke at what Jim said just because "sexual harassment" and "references." He arbitrarily responds to Pam's excuse with the same joke and accidentally nails it in a way Todd Packer could only dream of. Rather than celebrate he hits the brakes immediately and tries to move on as quickly as possible. He was making sex jokes the way a kid might use dirty words, just reveling in the fact they're generically inappropriate. Now he just accidentally told a really, genuinely filthy sex joke and is immediately uncomfortable with how real things just got. Finally his free-fall into being Todd Packer hits a jolt as a key difference between them, Todd's perversion versus Michael's immaturity, shows through.

13:34 - Once again we could really use Michael Scott in the modern day as he serves as a perfect parody of Men's Rights Activists before they even rose to their current prominence. He, the warehouse workers, and Kevin are watching the sexual harassment video where a female employee is asked if she's a "natural redhead" to her shock and indignation. Darryl demands he pause the video, jumps out of his chair, points at her and says "that's that girl from that thing. I banged this girl right there!" Immediately Michael starts pointing at her, calling her a hypocrite and declaring the whole thing a scam. It's eerie how much that exchange is the exact attitude and initial progression of #GamerGate.

16:04 - And finally after Michael's boss Jan and a lawyer from corporate arrive to finish the sexual harassment refresher everything comes together in what is actually a rather famous exchange The Office's history.

Michael: Attention everyone. Hello? Uh yes, I just want you to know that, uh, this is not my decision. But from here on out we can no longer be friends. And when we talk about things here we must only discuss work associated things. And, ah, you can consider this my retirement from comedy. And in the future if I want to say something funny, or witty, or do an impression, I will no longer, ever, do any of those things.
Jim: Does that include "that's what she said?"
Michael: Mmm-hmm, yes.
Jim: Wow, that is really hard. Do you really think you can go all day long?
(Michael looks at Packer who has an evil smirk)
Jim: Well, you always left me satisfied and smiling, so...
(Packer nods)
Michael: (bursting) That's what she said! (laughs)
(Jan rolls her eyes)
Jan: Michael...Michael! (Jan motions him back into his office)
(Jim grins at the camera and pumps his fist)
Packer: (pointing towards Michael) There he is!
(Michael continues laughing and blows a kiss back as he is pushed back into his office by Jan)

Again, Michael's retirement from comedy and the end of his friendship with everyone are inexorably linked in his mind because comedy is his only path to friendship.

17:15 - In classic National Lampoon's College Sex Romp style, the arrival of the lawyer from corporate must be "the man" ganging up on Michael to hold him down, so he brings in a lawyer of his own who specializes in free speech issues, motorcycle head injuries, and diet pill lawsuits. "He does it all," as Michael puts it. Then Jan explains reality to Michael and finally breaks through his movie-fueled fantasy of him against the world. Corporate's lawyer is already his lawyer because he's corporate. He gives a talking head about how he was so busy being the bad boy he forgot he was corporate, and is back to being egotistical now that he's reveling in being a member of corporate and having a lawyer to take care of him. The very thing that made Toby a hated outsider now makes Michael feel involved, no longer threatened, and ends his day-long tantrum.

19:00 - Jim & Pam Stuff - Pam's mother arrives, and I'm going to set aside my annoyance that they recast the part for her wedding so they could have a more established actress for that ridiculous storyline where she dates Michael. After a while Jim makes his way to the desk to say hello. The Beesley women have their backs to Jim as he walks up, so they don't notice him immediately pretend he's grabbing candy and scramble back to his seat when Roy walks in. In another subtle bit of non-cartoonish Roy villainy he is charming and dressed up with his hair slicked back, but dressed up like a teenager heading to his sports team's banquet. The "I only have to dress up once a year" uniform of a sweater, collared shirt, and khakis. Now, what's so villainous about that? Well, we've just watched him be an abusive oaf all day, harassing Michael, mocking the sexual harassment video, and reacting with weird glee at Darryl's claim to have slept with the actress. He's not nice to Pam's mom because he's nice, he's nice to her to keep up the charade that he's a passable partner for her daughter.

The hit for Jim isn't just that he's uncomfortable around Roy and thus misses his chance to meet Mama Beesley. It's that he has never met Pam's mom while Roy knows her well and they have a rapport. He and Pam may have the better connection, but she and Roy have the older and more calcified one. Pam's mom greets Roy with a "hey handsome" and a hug and she surely doesn't even know who Jim is. He can feel as close as he wants, but there's solid evidence of what an outside presence he is in Pam's real life. At least until Roy leaves and Pam's mom immediately leans to her daughter and whispers, "so which one's Jim?" Pam gasps back with an embarrassed "mom!" and Jim smiles to himself. He's a topic, he's a presence, he's even a gossipy secret.

21:10 - Surrounding the Jim & Pam scene is Packer holding court in the back of the office, telling raunchy jokes. Michael approaches and listens, looking into the camera more and smirking rather than the boisterous laughter he eagerly tethered himself to Packer with in the beginning. Todd begins telling a joke about a guy at a nymphomaniac convention filled with perfect 10s except for one uggo that looks like...he points at Phyllis and doubles the insult by not knowing her name to finish casting her as a totem of ugliness. Kevin fills in the name for him and Michael jumps in to say that crosses the line (which is both the name of the video he mocked earlier and Jan's wording that he rebelled against). Packer glares at him and he sheepishly follows up with, "not you" to Packer and starts reprimanding Kevin because he said the name and Packer is innocent because, "a point is not a say." None of this is new-found decency, understanding, or maturity. The key to Michael is that the corporate cool kids invited him to sit at their lunch table so now he's playing by their rules while also keeping things open with Packer (Kevin is expendable).

Two things are abundantly clear: these reviews probably aren't going to get any shorter as I go, and it was really stupid of me to think I could rank episodes. Still, fun to try a high-dive into what could easily be a shallow episode of cynically "inappropriate humor" only to find it vast caverns of depth and character moments. Michael isn't a monster, he's just a lonely idiot. With the right influences he can grow unfortunate fangs, but he's decent enough to be afraid when he recognizes that. In the end he just needs a role within a group, be it among the inappropriate outsiders or the corporate insiders, and he's happy to do what he's told...until the next person pressures him to do something else. Unless it's Toby.

=Rankings=

#1 Episode 1 - The Dundies
#2 Episode 2 - Sexual Harassment
(I guess)

TV Throwback: The Office S2E1 - The Dundies

I've said it before and I'll say it again right now: season 2 of The Office is the best season I've seen of any TV show. The American one I mean, not that the second (and final) British season is any slouch. There's some time before the Fall TV premieres and I feel like doing/writing something fun in the meantime so I've decided to re-watch and discuss the second season and why I'm so enamored with it. Unfortunately my TiVo won't be making this journey with me because it's in a different country right now, but thanks to there being a TiVo Netflix app I'm going to pretend they're cousins or something. Okay? Let's get started.

---

The season premiere is "The Dundies" about the Scranton branch's annual employee awards show/chance for Michael to buy his employees' attention for his wanna-be Johnny Carson act. I like to think of it as a season opener in two ways: obviously that it's the first episode of the second season but also thinking of the first season as kind of a pre-season. The system was still being drawn up, the roles were still being tinkered with, the timing and chemistry wasn't quite worked out. There are some call-backs later in the season to things that happened back in that primordial ooze, but much like with Parks & Rec's first season, or an NFL pre-season, you could watch it but it's more about seeing the potential take shape than be reached. This episode works perfectly as an introduction for those who skipped the pre-season (and most did) but let's get started and talk about that later.

Play...

00:35 -  I like how, along with similarly high quality, comic sensibilities, and talent interconnection, there's a through-line of GREAT theme songs running through The Office, 30 Rock, Parks & Recreation, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. It's not crazy to think they could exist in a shared universe, right? If BK99 has an episode about the difficulty of policing a "Leap Day" celebration I will be like pigman in PCU: "THIS IS MY THESIS MAN!"

01:29 - Right away we get one of the five-tool jokes that made the show so great in its prime and were so sorely missed when all the jokes seemed to become "now isn't THIS a wacky situation? Wakka wakka!" Michael is explaining The Dundies in an interview with the documentary crew, and more importantly the importance of The Dundies from his perspective. He describes how un-worthy of awards some of his employees are simply by who they are ("who's going to give Kevin an award? Dunkin' Donuts?") establishing that he's a jerk, that he's shallow, and he has a pretty low opinion of some of his underlings. He's doing this as a service to them ("this is everybody's favorite day") and paints an absurd picture of an employee sharing their Dundie triumph with their neighbor only to have the neighbor hang themselves due to "lack of recognition." So in the first minute we have this dismissive jerk tell this ridiculously over the top, self-congratulatory story about how he's kind-of saving his employees lives with this comedy award show, which also hints at his own fear of going unrecognized when you consider how drastic and over-the-top he envisioned the consequences. Huh? Layers? Remember when this show had layers???

01:37 - And almost immediately we get an employee's perspective on "everybody's favorite day" as Pam describes The Dundies as a car crash you want to look away from but can't because your boss is making you watch.

02:49 - Michael takes us on a tour of past Dundies winners, which also serves to help reintroducing characters (first real game after the pre-season, remember?). Starting with Jim who doesn't have his on display (or probably anywhere) but explains to Michael he doesn't display them to avoid getting cocky. Dwight sucks up by revealing his are at home in a display case above his bed, earning a "T.M.I." from Michael. Michael also takes a moment to explain in an interview that he used to say don't go there, but stopped because, "that's lame." I'm sure I could keep listing this stuff for the rest of the time but I guess the main point is the mockumentary format starts to get a bad reputation as a shortcut to plot and character development, since you can just have characters tell plot and character details directly to the audience rather than showing them, but The Office does show them. Rather than following up Michael's T.M.I. with a cut to someone else looking embarrassed, or a talking-head where they say "ugh, it's so pathetic and embarrassing that he talks like that" they take the chance to let Michael further dig his own hole by showing how childish and uncool his idea of cool is.

03:26 -  Now that we know Michael thinks The Dundies are "really funny" and that his idea of funny is calling Jim "Fat Halpert" repeatedly in a Fat Albert impression, and that he thinks T.M.I. is cool, newly upgraded slang (we're not even four minutes in by the way), we finally get to see some Dundies action via a tape recording (he has taped every ceremony) that Pam is being forced to watch to find highlights. It's Michael in a tuxedo t-shirt (HA! Bro! Classic!) singing a parody of Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5" using the names of his female employees that he obviously has NOT written before starting. "A little bit of Paaaam all night longgg, a little bit of Angelaaa on the...thing..." I love this immediate crystallization of Michael as a character. He does things for himself while also letting his imagination run wild to the point that his selfish party is saving lives, he has a shallow and warped "what's hot right now" sense of culture, and to him references and jokes are the same thing. I'm guessing he LOVED the later Scary Movie sequels where it's just people dressed up as momentarily newsworthy people.

05:19 - Somehow I forgot that Michael held a Tsunami Relief FUN-raiser which corporate allowed because they naturally assumed it was a FUNDraiser. Michael does feel like it was worth it as, "people were very affected by the footage." I didn't take into account how bittersweet Michael's wholehearted belief in the Patch Adams "laughter is the best medicine" philosophy would be after the circumstances of Robin Williams's death...but anyway, Michael has lost the company funding for The Dundies because he used up his yearly office party opportunity twice with the fun-raiser and an 05/05/05 party that he defends as coming around "once every billion years!" Combined with his fond memories of Lou Bega I have to think there was a little of the 9/9/99 MTV Video Music Awards hype in there. Plus the yearly "it won't be this date for another hundred years!" events of the naughts.

Something more important here is Michael's reaction when Jan "drops an a-bomb" about the funding being cut off. He immediately leaps up, directs the cameras out of his office, shuts the door, and closes the blinds; even leaving Jan hanging for a moment too long on the phone, prompting her to ask if he's still there. Another way The Office ruled at maximizing the mockumentary format rather than using it as a shortcut was how it dealt with the viewer as a character and visibility. I've written about it before, but the key is that unlike other shows, where the camera is a magic window into private moments, if a character is on-screen they are being watched. Either they know they are, or they can find out that they are. Michael's response here is to hide from everyone. He hides from the documentary crew to hide his agitation and minimize how undercut he just was by his boss, and he hides from his employees because he already promised them more appetizers and now the funding for anything has vanished.

06:05 - I called The Dundies Michael's chance to be a wanna-be Johnny Carson and here he is putting on a turban to do a mind-reader "loosely based on Carnac, one of Carson's classic characters" (aka EXACTLY Carnac). He also reveals a reason he's fretting over the lack of funding: no corporate approval means no open bar which means his audience won't be drunk...enough to tolerate him (is left unsaid).

07:11 - We get our first Jim & Pam moment of the season as she reaches a point in the taped ceremony where Michael hands out the award for "Longest Engagement" which she wins every year due to her fiance Roy's reluctance to set a wedding date. In the video we can see Pam's hurt at the joke at her sorest spot, Roy's insensitive enjoyment of it (his acceptance speech is simply, "we'll see you next year!"), and Jim's frustration at the whole thing. The camera swings around to current-day Pam watching the tape and captures her dread, as tonight she's sure to "win" again, and Jim's shared dread as he watches her from his desk. Jim tries to talk Michael out of the joke, framing the repetition as laziness rather than how it's STOMPING ON BOTH THEIR HEARTS! CAN'T YOU SEE THAT?!?! *Spoiler Alert* Jim & Pam stuff is a good chunk of why I love this season of TV above all others, and seeing how hard they nailed it in a later episode is what got me watching the show after being a fan of the British one who was driven away by the bungled pilot.

09:22 - Actual tuxedo for Michael this year, and he had the words to his parody written ahead of time and put on cue cards! Really stepping up his game! Although, he is making an 8 Mile (released: 2002) reference in 2005.
10:00 - A brutally awkward part of this episode that I always forget is that the ceremony is taking place in the middle of a Chili's restaurant, with other diners all around with music, comedy sound affects, and Michael's awful jokes being blasted through a speaker system. Yikes.

10:59 - Perhaps no character went off the rails quite like Dwight in later years as he seemed to totally lose touch with reality. While later Dwight became a ridiculous schemer, early Dwight is defined by a devotion to honor, justice, and chain of command. In this episode the B-plot has been about some embarrassing graffiti about Michael on the women's bathroom wall, and his desperate need to read it and punish the vandal (or, barring that, all the women in the office collectively). What made him funniest was his utter, humorless devotion to black and white reality (and how Jim's pranks took advantage of that). Which makes him perfect as the utterly imperfect straight-man for Michael's terrible, hackneyed comedy routines:

Michael: I was out on a very, very hot date last night with a girl from HR, Dwight.
Dwight: Really? We don't have any girls from HR.
Michael: No, I, that...for the sake of the story. And things were getting hot and heavy!
Dwight: Yeah?
Michael: And I was about to take her bra off.
Dwight: Yeahhhh!
Michael: When she had me fill out six hours worth of paperwork!
Dwight: Like an AIDS test?

12:09 - Almost immediately Roy and Darryl decide if they're going to have to pay for their own drinks they may as well go to a bar that doesn't have Michael performing in it, which seemingly means Pam automatically has to leave too. In the parking lot she angrily ditches Roy, chastising him for not considering what she wanted to do. Does she really want to watch The Dundies? Probably not, considering we know how much she hates the "Longest Engagement" award she's sure to get. Roy even references it as a reason to leave, which is even more insulting since we already saw him proudly guffaw over it in the taped ceremony. So he knows how upset it makes her (and thus how upset his refusal to set a wedding date upsets her) but only cares when he can use it as an excuse to go drinking with his buddy instead of her co-workers. Roy was SUCH a well-drawn piece of garbage without straying into cartoon villainy. You could clearly see why Pam deserves better than him while still having it be subtle enough that she doesn't seem like an idiot. You can understand how she became stuck in this situation, and why an argument in a parking lot isn't going to suddenly make it crumble the way usual dramatic tricks like infidelity might. Anyway, Pam chastises Roy for his insensitivity and stomps back to Chili's, joining Jim at his table.
12:15 - Oh God, Michael's racist Asian character "Ping." Thankfully Twitter didn't exist yet or we would be living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland after the meltdown these few seconds would have caused.

#CancelColbert

14:06 - Now Michael compares himself to Bob Hope on a USO tour in Saudi Arabia with how much he's sweating. What's interesting watching this era of Michael now is how he might be even more relevant now. I can 100% envision cold opens or even episodes about Michael's various adventures in hashtag activism. You  KNOW there'd have been an ice bucket challenge cold open. This was before the hashtag had even been invented, and already we had the perfect parody of people thought "click to change the world" was a thing. I was happy The Office didn't keep dragging itself along past it's sell-by date, but right now I'm kind of bummed out we didn't get Michael Scott reacting to Upworthy videos, running out of his office to proclaim "the first three minutes will make you the angriest, but then it'll change your heart forever!" or messing up Doge memes. GAH! I need to stop thinking about this. It'll drive me mad.

17:46 - It's strange how much the transition to emotional stuff in sitcoms has devolved recently. It's not as telegraphed as in the 80s and 90s with the "issue episodes" of sitcoms where a character would turn to the camera and say "okay folks, we've had fun tonight, but I'd like to take a minute to talk to you about rabies," but tonal shifts still come with a sort of "ca-CHUNK" like you can see, hear, and feel the train switching tracks. Here we get the "we're a family" stuff, but from how it actually tends to happen. It's funny how Ed O'Neil is in both Modern Family, which really noisily (and effectively,but noisily) will switch from comedy to emotion for the "we're a family" bits that pop up so often, and he was in Married With Children which had possibly the most subtle "we're a family" transitions of any sitcom. Some outsider would criticize or insult the Bundys and next thing you know their interpersonal venom would align outwards and they'd go on the attack (often literally ending up in a brawl).

Here we get the first attack from outside Dunder-Mifflin, as some townies at the bar (including a conspicuous Apatow-verse cameo regular) hurl insults and then objects at Michael during the awful "Tiny Dancer" parody "Tiny Dundie." Something about Michael that falls away in later seasons is that he will never seek out a reason to stop doing something he wants to do, even if it should be obvious to him, but if one smacks him across the top of the head he will be defeated immediately and takes it hard. Here he effectively cancels the rest of the show, not in a showy huff but with a realization a more tactful person would've had from the start: "I had some more Dundies to give out but I'm just gonna cut it short and wrap it up so people can enjoy their food." He then dejectedly gives Kevin an award commemorating how badly he made the bathroom smell one time. Pam, who has been drinking all night, either to drown her dread over yet again winning "Longest Engagement" or her pain over still being in the longest engagement, shows her care for Michael by showing care for The Dundies as she starts clapping and cheering for Kevin's victory, prompting Jim and the others to join in. She points out that she hasn't gotten a Dundie yet, and Jim says he hasn't either and starts a Dundies chant that allows Michael to "reluctantly" return to hosting from his pit of despair.

After Stanley wins "fine work" and gripes in an acceptance speech (the first of the night) that last year he got "great work," Michael announces that the next award goes to Pam, whose drunken laughter over Stanley's speech immediately seizes into expectant dread. She has won...the "whitest sneakers award!" She gives an exuberant speech, really playing off the award show cliches that Michael tries to lampoon but doesn't understand parody enough to be able to. Everyone applauds and enjoys. She hugs Michael and kisses him on the cheek, and returns to the table where she hugs Jim and kisses him...on the lips. Again, SO MUCH of this show isn't just what's happening but that it's happening with other people watching. All their co-workers in the background hit various levels of "woahhhh" and Jim awkwardly walks back around the table to his seat with a struggling mixture of "wish the BEST MOMENT of my LIFE didn't just take place in front of EVERYONE."

18:06 - Just need to mention that Jenna Fischer's drunk acting where she's just sitting there staring at Jim and over-nodding as he talks to the camera is amazing. Also, fun-fact, we learn in a talking-head with the Chili's manager that she is now banned for life from Chili's for sneaking drinks off other people's tables to get around serving limits. A pity there'll never be a scene where she, Jim, and the kids are on a family road trip and desperate for somewhere to stop for food but the only places they can find are all Chili's.

20:23 -  Here at the end, Jim is sitting with Pam while she waits for Angela to give her a ride home. Pam reveals (to us) that she wrote the graffiti about Michael in the women's room and she feels bad, but laughs in agreement when Jim say no she doesn't. Sure she stepped in to save Michael's feelings when he was heckled by outsiders, but he's still the oblivious jerk of a boss who pressed on the bruise of her engagement and made her watch tapes of his bad jokes all day before watching them live that night. Angela's car eventually arrives and Jim walks Pam toward the passenger door, before Pam stops him. "Hey, um, can I ask you a question?" before looking towards the camera and following up with, "I just wanted to say thanks."

Maybe the fact that I study interaction is why I love this show so much. It's pretty common in sitcoms for coincidence and contrivances to act as the antagonist. Everything is strained misunderstandings and eventually The Office has it's share of them (especially with Jim & Pam). In season 2 though the "big bad" tends to be context. Pam abandons her question (and every time it kills me not to hear what it was) because they are on camera. She doesn't chicken out, or hold back for drama's sake. Even though her shyness has gone with her sobriety (which is what allowed her to rescue Michael) she still knows whatever she was going to ask should be asked in private, and they don't get to have that privacy with their relationship being an office friendship. Throughout the season we'll see moments where what holds them apart is understanding rather than misunderstanding, avoiding the usual "oh COME ON you IDIOTS!" frustration that comes with watching characters think and act like characters, living lives where nothing can be solved before the finale and behavior has to follow the plot rather than logic.

I doubt every post in his re-watch will be THIS massive. I just had a lot of pent up feelings about what made this show so great I guess. Hopefully it was somewhat interesting. Usually I give things the thumbs up/down ratings of my TiVo but I feel too close to this material to rate it (plus Netflix uses five stars rather than three thumbs). So I'm going to try and rank them, even just out of my own curiosity for where things end up. Congrats to "The Dundies" for shooting right to #1!

=Rankings=

#1: Episode 1 - The Dundies