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.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.
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)
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?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.
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.
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.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.
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)
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)
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