"Office" Watch-"WUPHF.com"

Before I get to this week’s episode I’d like to do a quick recap of the last two episodes that I’ve thus far neglected.

“Christening”:

My brother watched this episode before I did & told me it was terrible. When I started it I was wondering why he had such a negative opinion, then I finished the episode and felt the same way.

The main storyline deserved credit for keeping Michael’s character arc reasonable. It makes sense that he would get caught up in the church group’s enthusiasm (especially when the other member of the office were being so insufferable, not surprisingly with Ryan leading the way) & volunteer to join them on their trip to Mexico. The problem was that the payoff of Andy & him throwing a tantrum to get off the bus to Mexico wasn’t overly rewarding in either laughs or character development.

Jim & Pam can be hilarious when they’re frazzled (see the episode where they discover Michael’s dating Pam’s mom), but here it didn’t lead to very many laughs outside of CeCe being baptized in an “Arcade Fire” t-shirt. While Dwight attempting to make sales throughout the baptism & reception was annoying more than anything.

The best part of the episode was Toby’s difficult relationship with God punctuated by his perfect delivery in asking God why he’s so mean, but that took up one minute of the episode, which basically says it all.

Episode Grade: C-

“Viewing Party”:

This episode was an improvement on the previous week but hardly anything for the creative team of “The Office” to be proud of. This time the A storyline involving Michael was actually worse. The idea of Michael realizing that Gabe is actually his boss had a lot of promise, but having Michael treat Gabe terribly & acting like a complete ass at Erin & Gabe’s “Glee” party didn’t work well for me. I know, Michael always acts like an ass in party situations because he has a need to be the center of attention, except when Erin was trying so hard to accommodate him & clearly cared about his opinion of Gabe it came off as to childish even for him. The one saving grace was his fatherly moment with Erin at the end, a nice moment for two characters that always bond well over their silly senses of humor.

Andy’s frustration with Erin dating Gabe has also begun to become a tiresome storyline on a show that seems to be getting tired. At least this storyline led to the funniest moment of the episode with Darryl telling Andy, “All I know is that if I was a girl, and had a choose between a tall dude who loved Asia and a you-lookin’ dude who loved sweaters and … wearing sweaters, I’d choose you. And I’d blow your mind.” The discovery that Darryl & Andy make a great team has been one of the few bright spots on a season that has continued last year’s struggles.

The one storyline I really enjoyed was the Pam/Dwight/Jim/CeCe storyline. Dwight as the only person capable of calming CeCe was an inspired bit that allowed us to see Dwight in, a rather rare, helpful light. Jenna Fischer did a great job in showing Pam’s desperation in needing to get Cece back on normal sleeping hours so that she herself could get some rest, & Jim being forced to feed Dwight pizza was priceless.

The rest of the cast had a few notable moments as well, in specific Kevin (“I wanted to eat a pig in a blanket in a blanket”) & Kelly with her comment on “Glee,” “Honestly, that show? It's irresponsible" (as someone who watches “Glee” on a weekly basis I couldn’t agree more with Kelly’s criticisms).

Not an overly bad episode, but the overly petulant version of Michael has grown quite tiresome so if an episode’s going to feature him that way it had better have good reason to (this one didn’t) or the rest of the storyline needs to be superb & this half hour couldn’t quite manage.

Episode Grade: C+

“WUPHF.com”

“WUPHF.com” gave us our first real dose of Ryan Howard in about a millennia (or since the Michael Scott Paper Company days) and though it failed to revive his character from the hipster tool he’s become to the a far more interesting three dimensional character he once was it did at least move forward his relationship with Michael.

As any long time “Office” fan knows Michael has long held Ryan in some form of creepy, deluded form of admiration & in this episode Michael finally realizes, with help from Pam, that Ryan is not his friend and is in no way admirable. In his recap of this episode Alan Sepinwall argues that at this point Michael still having any feelings of veneration towards Ryan, after Ryan’s become “so loathsome and such a cartoon,” is simply ridiculous & hence the plot did not work for him. I can certainly see that point but as we’ve seen through the prior six seasons Michael is capable of deluding himself (thinking he’d be a millionaire in a few years & hence pledging to pay for a classroom of 3^rd graders to go to college) and romanticizing relationships (from Todd Packer, to Carol, to Jan) & thus I bought & enjoyed the storyline. I’m also a major fan of Michael as a somewhat competent manager & here he got to display that side of his personality (Though, as Myles McNutt points out, why Michael wouldn’t buy out everyone else in the company in order to protect them is unclear).

The other two storylines provided more of the laughs in this one & they did a solid job doing so even if they did so by falling back on old premises. I don’t believe there is an “Office” fan out there who doesn’t miss Jim the prankster, but as time has gone on Jim has accepted that selling paper is his career & he now has a wife & child to help support so he’s cut down on the hi-jinx. Here we got an excuse for him to return to his old ways when he’s informed of a new commissions cap (which runs opposite of last year when Jim discovered he’d make more money as a salesman than manager, but whatever…) & thus has no motivation to work. After going around wasting time with different co-workers Jim finally settles in to pull a prank, but this time on Gabe instead of Dwight. Now to some degree this is a rather spiteful move on Jim’s part, especially considering Gabe didn’t implement the cap, but I was okay with it because it made me laugh & sometimes that’s all that matters.

Dwight putting on a hay themed kiddy park just so he could declare himself “Hay King” was somewhat amusing but Kevin getting lost in the hay bale maze & Angela’s reaction to someone finding her funny were priceless.

I found myself laughing consistently through this episode & at this point that’s an achievement for “The Office.”

Episode Grade: B

Other Thoughts:

· One of the better cold openings this year with “big boobz” (a former IT guy’s description of Pam) being the office’s system password.

· Of course Michael & Ryan would attempt to recreate the Justin Long Mac commercials

· “Let’s be honest: If I can make mushed carrots seem better than a boob, I can pretty much sell anything.”

· “Just think of your commission cap as a naked old man in a gym locker room.”

· Enjoyed Oscar once again coming up with a good idea (using WUPHF as an emergency warning system) & being completely ignored.

· “Yes, I have a dream. … I want to own a decommissioned lighthouse. And I want to live at the top. And nobody knows I live there. And there’s a button I can press and launch that lighthouse into space.”

· “I always wanted to be hay king … but the world shines on Mose.”

· “Did I truck 300 bales of hay to a parking lot to rectify some childhood disappointment? Yes.”

· Biggest laugh of the episode: “Oscar is my Queen. That’s easy, give me a hard one—that’s what Oscar said.”

· “Toby is the instruction card you throw away.”