Double Date - Suri’s Recap

First I must apologize for the late post.  This should have been up days ago, but I was hit with flu and it really knocked me out.  So now I hold the record for the fastest reacp and the latest one.  I wonder what record I’ll break next?

Now on to the recap:
Question - What happens when your boss is dating your mother and he forces you to go out on a double date with them?

Answer – Lots of painfully awkward moments that eventually lead to, well, we’ll get to what it leads to a little bit later; I wouldn’t want to ruin the punch line.

I had high hopes for this episode, I can’t say that I was as impressed with it as I thought I would be, however, it did give us the chance to see the lovely Linda Purl again and it had some high points and a hilarious line by Creed; so all in all I’ll give it a B+.

We start of in the cold open with our subplot for the episode. Dwight walks into the office carrying a large basket of authentic NY H&H bagels and starts distributing them to his co-workers. He has a pumpernickel bagel just for Stanley (I found this particularly interesting because while most people would think that Dwight was being racist, I thought that maybe Dwight was being considerate of Stanley’s health. Since Stanley is diabetic; he probably shouldn’t be eating bagels at all, but a pumpernickel bagel would wreak the least amount of havoc on his blood sugar. Since Dwight knows the menstrual cycles of all the women in the office, it would make sense that he would also monitor Stanley’s blood sugar.) The office mates are appreciative and Dwight says, “No problem, you owe me one, you all owe me one.” Ahh, so Dwight does have an ulterior motive, which he reveals in a talking head to be usurping Jim’s positing and before doing so, he wants to have everyone in his corner to back him up. I guess this is his Plan B after the wooden mallard didn’t work.

After the credits, Dwight is still offering bagels and when Pam refuses due to having an early lunch, she has a talking head where she tells the camera that Michael has arranged a birthday lunch for her Mom, and she and Jim have no choice but to go.

Pam’s Mom arrives, rubs her belly and hugs her; Michael joins in. Pam ducks out of the group hug with a disgusted look on her face. Michael introduces Helene to the group and she shows off the necklace he bought her for her birthday. She urges him to tell how he gave it to her and she goes ahead and says that he put it around her neck while she was still sleeping. Michael says the rest of the story is censored due to “inappropriocity,” to which Kevin remarks, “Because of sex?” and Michael promptly tell Kevin, “You’re fired.” Kevin looks over at Jim who is shaking his head no. Pam nods at Erin from her desk and Erin announces that one of Pam’s clients is on the phone and they say that it’s urgent. Jim, Helene, and Michael are waiting by the door and Pam insists on taking the call. She tries to back out of lunch due to a shipping emergency. Apparently, Jim sees right through the set up takes the phone away from her speaking into the receiver he quickly “resolves” the issue saying the paper was there all along. This elicits a sigh of relief from Creed after which he delivers his hilarious talking head saying, “Something’s up? That paper was never supposed to arrive.”

Dwight is cleaning out the refrigerator in the kitchen when Andy comes in and lets Dwight know that he polished his briefcase for him. He says that he is the ultimate in returning favors and responding to invitations: “Do not test my politeness.” This sets off a favor stand-off between Andy and Dwight: they straighten each other’s ties and jackets and Andy cleans Dwight’s glasses while the rest of the office wonders what the heck is going on. Dwight comments that Andy is complicating things but he isn’t worried. It will only up his game.

The “Scott Family”, as the hostess refers to them, arrive at Paparazzo’s restaurant (I’m sure Bob will let us know if that’s a real place in his Scrantonicity column); where they find a special table with flowers and birthday decorations. Michael offers to share the credit, but then of course takes it for himself. Pam asks her mother which birthday she’s celebrating and her mother decides to stick with 4, Pam says that’s 9 yrs. in a row which is now their longest family tradition. As Michael does the math on his napkin, Pam’s Mom teases her that she’s 6 months pregnant, but only married for 30 days so how does that add up? Jim accepts the burn for both of them as Michael declares, “You’re 54 yrs. old.” He’s gotten the math wrong, Helene is actually 58. Michael starts to freak out. He says he’s not robbing the cradle; if anything, he’s robbing the grave.

Back at the office Andy has one-upped Dwight and purchased lunch for everyone. He took a page right out of the “Schrute book of niceness.” Dwight challenges, “There is no book, only a survival guide”. It’s beginning to look as if Dwight’s plan is not working out the way he thought it would. He counters Andy’s move by cleaning up after lunch and locking Andy out of the conference room.

At the restaurant Michael is becoming increasingly nervous about Helene’s age. It looks more like he’s thinking of breaking up with her. He even goes as far as to diss his own home-made gift to her, a scrap book of their first month of memories together, in which he even plagiarized a Shel Silverstein poem. Pam says the book is a home run.  It seems with every sweet thing that Michael does for mother, Pam warms up to the idea of them as a couple a little bit more.

After cake he tells Helen that he can’t continue dating her because of Pam’s feelings. When she relents and says that Michael has made her Mom happy and that makes her happy, his plan to project the blame for the break-up on Pam backfires on him and he is then forced to reveal the real reason for breaking up with her.  He explains that it’s all the little things he wants to do with his life like go to Italy, skydiving, bungee jumping and have children.  Unfortunately, Helene has already completed her journey “down there” which is not Michael’s fault, it’s mother nature who has very strict rules about fertility. (Hey Michael, didn’t you ever read about that 82 yr. old woman from Europe who had twins due to the miracles of modern science? Google it.) The car ride home is solemn as Helene declares that she’s 58, what is she supposed to do now? Michael starts to say that there are hobbies she can take up, but Jim quickly shuts him up. Michael is no longer the MVP of the day.

The niceness battle is really heating up when Andy gives Dwight a Starbucks gift card worth $15.00 from the entire office. Dwight declares the day wasted, he is no closer to taking Jim down.

Jim, Pam, & Michael are back at the office; Michael calls Pam in to his office to try to make it up to her for dating her Mom and then dumping her on her birthday. Pam won’t accept a raise or a bribe of a million dollars, but when Michael suggests that she hit him, she jumps all over it. She wants to do it after 5:00 in the parking lot, in front of everyone.

Everyone quickly hears about the punch and start talking about it. Kelly and Ryan come in to Michael’s office to make sure he understands what’s about to happen. Michael panics and tries to find ways of getting out of it, but everyone seems to be behind Pam’s choice; Toby even gives her pointers on how to deliver the best punch.

At 5:00 everyone gathers in the parking lot to witness the hit, but Michael is nowhere to be found; he’s in the stairwell contemplating whether or not to come out. He finally decides to go out and get it over with and finds everyone waiting for the show. Pam tries to hit him twice, but he flinches and raises his hands. Finally she accepts an apology which Michael can’t seem to come up with on his own, but he promises never to date any member of her family ever again. She turns to leave when Michael comments, “For the record, she came on to me.”  This pushes an already hormonal Pam over the edge, so she spins around and delivers a killer slap to Michael’s face that he did not see coming. Afterward, she admits to Jim that he was right, hitting Michael did not make her feel better.

Dwight takes Michael upstairs to put some chicken on his cheek. Michael tells Dwight that he owes him one and Dwight tries to cash in the favor immediately by asking Michael to fire Jim and promote him to co-manager, Michael promptly denies this request and Dwight removes his dinner from Michael’s face. Dwight is foiled again.

I’m not so sure I’m fully embracing the “plotting Dwight” sub-themes.  They seem to be a part of every episode lately.  I wonder where the writers are going with this? Feel free to speculate in the comments.

I forgot to mention that there was this little thing with Ryan showing Erin some pictures he took.  Ryan later appears in Michael’s office wearing a camera around his neck. It seems that Ryan is taking up photography as a hobby (or a way of picking up girls) and trying to pass himself off as an artist. NBC.com has a put up a link to a site with Ryan’s photographs:

http://www.thousandandonewords.com

I can’t quite put my finger on what the writers are trying to do with Ryan lately either.  Every week seems to be a new gimmick; the fedora in The Lover, The Mr. Rogers look in Koi Pond, and this week the camera.  Either Ryan is trying to find himself or just trying to figure out what the ladies like best.  To me, it all just adds to his shady character.

That about wraps it up. Like I said, I didn’t find this episode to be a particularly funny one, but it was a good way to wrap up the Michael dates Pam’s Mom arc and it did have its moments. What did you guys think?

Suri (aka HDF)