Life In The Office

It’s been a while since we had a new episode, so I for one am excited to get some new material. You might be curious about what my impression of Secretary’s Day was. Well, I thought it was a pretty impressionable episode about impressions, for one thing. It seems I’m not the only one making corny jokes. Gabe got some real face time in this episode, bringing this minor character to the foreground for some down home corn and awkward situations. We also get a closer look at psyche of Erin, who has quickly risen up in the ranks from a pretty minor character to an integral part of the office. Even though we have seen glimpses into her psyche before, this Erin-centric episode shows us just how strange she really is.

Being a former secretary myself as well as the mother of two very active toddlers, I’d have to say that overall I enjoyed the episode for two main reasons 1) recognizing secretaries, and 2) recognizing one of the most essential educational tools of our time: Sesame Street. That program where all the puppets live in the barrio.

Which brings me to the cold opening – Everyone is gathered around Oscar’s desk watching a funny video of Cookie Monster from Sesame Street with a Kevin voice over. It sounds like Oscar used recordings of voice mail messages that Kevin has left him. Everyone thinks it’s hysterical, including Kevin until he realizes the video is making fun of him. Then he gets all offended and sits down at his desk to mope. He looks to Angela for support claiming that the video is, “inappropriate”. Surprisingly, Angela just laughs and says, “This is my favorite day.”

Andy has come in early to decorate Erin’s desk with “Happy Secretary’s Day” banners, flowers and a little teddy bear dressed like her (probably a Build a Bear). He says it’s also his and Erin’s 3 week anniversary so he has sent several communication blasts to everyone in the office (e-mail, text, talk, snail mail and fax) to remind them to, “appreciate the crap” out of Erin. We see everyone coming in dumping little gifts and cards on her desk; including Dwight who brings her a bushel of beets.

It’s also Pam’s first day back from maternity leave and everyone seems excited to see her. She explains that she misses Ce Ce; but they need the money (trust me; I know that all those diapers don’t come cheap). She muses about how great maternity leave was, but is a little disappointed that nobody watered he plant which is now dead. Jim says he literally did not know it existed until that moment. Dwight responds that he knew it existed, and he chose to let it die. Oh Dwight, what would the office be without you?

Andy tries to convince Michael to take Erin out to lunch for Secretary’s Day. Michael is resistant at first, saying that he and Erin have nothing to talk about, but after Andy argues that Erin looks up to him; Michael finally relents and agrees to ask Erin to lunch. She suggests going to Hayworth’s restaurant because it’s special. No doubt Bob will either confirm this in his Scrantonicity column, or tell us there is no such restaurant; which I suspect will be the case. In the car on the way to Hayworth’s Erin wants to talk, but Michael just wants to listen to his book on tape: “Precious” from “Precious” based on the novel Push by Sapphire.

Meredith and Darryl are sitting in the kitchen with an open container of cookies. When Meredith offers one to Kevin, he says he’s not falling for that and refuses; until Darryl says he brought them in for his birthday. Kevin apologizes and wishes Darryl happy, “Bird-Day” (a nice reference to Season One’s “The Alliance”). When Kevin bites into the cookie, Darryl does a, “Yum, yum, yum” Cookie Monster impression and the joke is on Kev.

Kevin decides to bring the blatant attack on his voice, eating habits and overall personality up to Gabe who agrees that it’s violent and offensive. He has his first talking head since arriving at Scranton and explains that he’s had a difficult time adjusting to being at the Scranton branch. People either don’t respect him at all, or respect him too much. This cookie monster thing is an opportunity to show people that he’s an authority figure. Why exactly this wasn’t brought to Toby, I can’t figure out. But I like Gabe, so I’ll go with it.

Gabe brings Kevin into the main area of the office and announces that it has come to his attention that people have been laughing and talking about a hurtful parody video and it is now forbidden to continue this behavior; not to be scary, but they should listen to him. Kevin is grateful and everyone goes on about their business. Gabe leaves the room with a “ciao”.

At lunch Erin is jabbering on and on and we see Michael getting increasingly more uncomfortable. Its interesting how Michael always recognizes everyone’s social ineptness, except his own of course. Michael gets desperate and turns the conversation to Andy and Erin wants to know what he was like before she met him. Michael reveals that Andy was engaged to Angela; apparently this is news to Erin and she starts to freak out. Apparently, Andy has neglected to tell his new girlfriend about his past relationship with a woman she works with. Erin gets really upset and hides behind her hair. She tells Michael that in the foster home, her hair was her room. Michael looks around and realizes everyone in the restaurant is watching them and tries to calm Erin down. He tries to save his embarrassment in the only way he knows how; comedy. I actually liked his When Harry Met Sally reference, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

Erin looks pretty catatonic on the ride back to the office as Michael tries to make awkward conversation. When they get back, Erin seems to have completely changed her personality. She snaps at Andy and Oscar and gives Angela a dirty look.

Pam’s milk comes in and of course, Dwight, the consummate farmer, recognizes that she’s uncomfortable and needs to be “milked”. However, she can’t find her breast pump. Dwight offers to “drain her” manually, but she politely declines and goes to the bathroom to look for her pump (at least she doesn’t try to pump at her desk like Hannah did, gross). When she enters the bathroom she finds Meredith, uh pumping. Pam starts yelling at Meredith who tells her to relax, she just likes how it feels and was warming it up for her. Pam tells her that it’s not sterile (which I happen to agree with).

At work, we have a pumping room. However, before that existed, all the new mothers would pump in the handicapped stall in the bathroom. All the pumps would be lined up on the floor around this one chair which had milk stains all over it next to the toilet. When I came back from maternity leave and tried to pump myself, I realized how completely gross this was and complained to my boss. After seeing how upset I was, she extended my maternity leave for an extra week and when I came back; there was a pumping room with a locking door, a cabinet to keep the pumps, and a counter to set it up on, but most importantly – no toilet for your bottles to fall into. Only lactating mothers had a copy of the key. No one ever thanked me for that now that I look back on it.

I could not stop laughing at this scene since the acclimation of new mothers back into the work place is just so relatable. I completely knew how Pam was feeling, which is one of the reasons I love this show.

In the conference room everyone is mingling at the Secretary’s Day party. Kelli does the Cookie Monster voice and Pam says that Jim does a really great Cookie Monster impression. Everyone who knows this show and the actors knows that John Krasinski does fantastic impressions and it’s often said that he makes the rest of the cast laugh with his impressions. We also saw some of these in S2, Drug Testing. Well, he does not disappoint and does a very impressive Cookie Monster using dialogue that Kevin would say. Gabe comes over and as a reminder of his earlier announcement says they should leave the impressions to the pros at Mad TV. Jim responds with a Cookie Monster voice informing him that that show hasn’t been on in many cookies; everyone laughs.

Andy gets up and announces why today is so important and he thanks Angela, the chairman of the Party Planning committee (I don’t remember her being reinstated), for doing such a wonderful job. Michael tries to get him to nix the Angela talk, but Andy doesn’t get it. As he dons his guitar and announces that he is about to sing a little ditty he wrote called, “Secretary of Love”, Erin throws an enormous piece of cake in his face. She starts yelling at him about not telling her that he slept with Angela and wants to know who else he’s slept with. She forces everyone to confess that they all knew about Andy and Angela’s engagement and then storms out yelling, “I don’t know you”, pushing Gabe as she leaves. Gabe has a TH where he says that he thinks his energies are better served on the Cookie Monster situation and he’s not going to get involved.

Kevin is at Erin’s desk consoling her. He says that he’s here if she needs him. Pam, overhearing this, leans over to Jim and does yet another Cookie Monster impression. Gabe catches her and suspends her for two days without pay. When Jim protests in his wife’s defense, he gets a two-day suspension slapped on him as well. When Dwight does a slow clap in agreement with Gabe’s decisions, he too gets hit with suspension. Kevin satisfactorily gloats, “C is for suspension.” Probably my favorite quote of the episode.

Michael and Andy are in Michael’s office talking. Andy wants to know how Michael could let something like this slip. Michael can’t believe that Andy didn’t tell Erin about his engagement to Angela. He says he was going to tell her, but in his own time. Michael says not to blame him, he didn’t know it was supposed to be a secret and everyone knows he can’t keep secrets anyway. I have to side with Michael on this one. The relationship and engagement was common knowledge. Even though it ended before Erin started working at Dunder Mifflin, there was no reason to think that Erin didn’t know about it.

Others try to approach Erin to help her through this difficult time. It’s clear that everyone likes Erin and doesn’t like seeing her so upset. Angela, in her own demented way tries to get Erin to realize that her behavior was embarrassing for both of them and that she’s upset for the wrong reasons before they realize that Toby is standing at the fax machine. Pam even gives it a shot by trying to tell Erin about her engagement to Roy. Erin just gets even more upset thinking that Pam was engaged to Andy. We all know that relationship never got past The Rainbow Connection. Andy really has tried to go out with almost every girl in the office. We get a sweet little JAM moment after that when Pam realizes how lucky she is and goes over and gives Jim a little kiss on the forehead.

Gabe obviously calls into HR at corporate in Tallahassee and finds out that he’s not allowed to suspend or reprimand anyone. At the same time, Toby calls Pam and tells her he found out the same information. Gabe comes back into the office looking a bit defeated and tries to correct the situation by accepting an apology in exchange for lifting the suspension. Dwight falls for it and prostrates himself before Gabe. But Pam slips Jim a note and they both realize that they can get two days off, with pay, to spend with their baby (or do other things ;D ) and they play up to Gabe saying that they need to take their suspension in order to correct their behavior and walk out together. Gabe follows them into the parking lot and looks worried as they drive off.

Andy and Erin are also out in the parking lot talking and she says that she can’t trust Andy anymore. She needs to be by herself for a while to figure things out. I guess for all the setting up that was done to get these two together, the relationship was not going to last for the long haul. I still have hope for these two crazy kids though (“crazy” being the optimum word here). What I want to know is – how did Andy get his clothes so clean after Erin through all that cake with heavy frosting on him? I mean, there’s not even a stain. Does he keep an extra set of clothes at work just in the event of a mishap of this sort? If so, how is it that the outfit is the identical one to what he was wearing earlier? I think there are some continuity issues that need to be addressed here, but I digress.

Back upstairs, Gabe tries to make good with the other employees who have already figured out what Jim and Pam have just pulled off. When offering to buy everyone coffee to make up for it doesn’t work, Gabe makes a last attempt at getting everyone to laugh by doing an awful Cookie impression. Suddenly, Kevin stands up and starts doing an impression of Gabe, the corporate drone. Everyone gets into it and starts making fun of Gabe; including his use of ciao as a sign off line. “I say ‘Ciao’ ‘cause I’m fancy from Tallahassee.” Everyone seems to lighten up as Gabe leaves the room mortified.

Erin is sitting on a bench outside as Michael approaches her. She says she thought everyone had left, but he says he was just watching Cookie Monster. He finally had a chance to download it. He apologizes for Erin’s situation (of course taking none of the blame) and tries to get her to feel better by making fun of Angela and Andy. He says that Angela old enough to be her mother, is 3 feet tall, wears pioneer women clothing and probably has never pooped. This actually works and Erin starts to laugh. Then he does an impression of his neighbor, continuing with the impression theme, as an Andy voice over starts. He’s watching them from his car. He says that sometimes telling someone something is hard (TWSS). He acknowledges that at least someone made Erin happy on Secretary’s Day. Awww, you have to feel bad for Andy at this point because her really likes Erin and has put in a solid effort for her thus far. Maybe they’ll make up.

In the tag scene, everyone is gathered around Kevin’s computer watching a video he put together with The Count, using Oscar’s voice in retaliation. Even though Kevin thinks it’s brilliant, no one else gets it. The count has a very distinctive voice and it sounds nothing like Oscar. Kevin tries to defend himself saying Oscar is an accountant and The Count likes to count numbers. They counter that Kevin is also an accountant. Kevin then says that The Count is purple, and Oscar wears purple. No one buys that one. Even Oscar offers that it would have been funnier if he’d used Oscar the Grouch. Everyone agrees. But Michael comes to Kevin’s rescue and says Kevin “nailed him” TWSS; good work Cookie Monster. Kevin is pleased.

Well that about wraps it up. I thoroughly enjoyed this episode and I hope you’ve enjoyed this recap.

Suri (aka HDF)