Life In The Office

Can you believe we’ve arrived at the season finale already?  It seems like only yesterday we were anxiously awaiting the season premier; wondering how the news of Pam’s pregnancy would be revealed to the office.  A lot has happened during this season including the JAM relationship coming full circle, as well as major changes to Dunder Mifflin as a company.  Which leads us to wonder what story there may be left to tell of our friends in The Office?  Sadly, the season finale left me underwhelmed.  The episode itself was just ok, not stellar, but not a complete dud either.  It just kind of ended with no major cliff hanger or twist that we’ve come to expect from a season finale.  This worries me because rumors have been circulating about this coming season becoming the last for the American version of The Office.  As a fan, I hate to see that happen; however I’d rather remember the show for the quality that we’ve come to know then have it continue at a sub-par level.

I will now step off my soap box and begin the recap:

In typical Michael fashion, the cold opening begins with Michael kvelling about being on WBRE news, the local NBC affiliate, making a statement about Sabre printers being safe, instead of focusing on the fact that there may actually be a problem.  It also appears in the Scranton Tribune the next day and there’s a clip on the WBRE website.  Michael himself calls Froggy 98.7 to talk to the host about it on the air.  Apparently, Michael Scott has entered into his 15 minutes of fame; also providing much fodder for Bob’s Scrantonicity column this week.  He gets a “booty” call from Packer (his second “appearance” this season) pretending to be an impressed female, which only boosts Michael’s ego even more.  He announces to his subordinates that he is losing his number one status of online viewings to a teacher who was falsely accused of being a pedophile and he wants everyone to stop what they are doing and watch his video 11 times to push it back to the #1 spot.  To his dismay, his employees find a news story about a baby otter at the zoo much more appealing.  Michael is disparaged by this until the otter’s cuteness factor wins him over as well.

Enter a distressed yet cool Jo Bennett who, accompanied by her dogs, has come to Scranton to sniff out the snitch.  She makes a speech about how this situation could have better been handled internally and aggressively glues the newspaper article to Pam’s painting of the office park.  Now I thought that Erin had destroyed that painting with glass cleaner, so I wonder how it got restored to its former glory and posted back up on the wall.  Could Pam have restored it herself?  She looked appalled at Jo’s gesture.  Or could we be dealing with yet another one of the production crew’s continuity errors ala Andy with no cake stains on his clothes?  I’ll let you decide.

After no one comes forward voluntarily, Jo begins an investigation and quickly rules out Michael who says the culprit should be sent to Montego Bay where they lock up the Al Qaeda.  After Jo corrects him, she explains in a TH that she learned from her mother, who was a prison guard, that if the person being interrogated says that the guilty party should have a harsh punishment, they are probably innocent.

She also dispatches Nick the IT guy to check everyone’s hard drives for evidence.  Dwight puts him in a Hipatchi Persuasion Hold until he realizes that Nick is acting under Jo’s orders.  Having nothing to hide, he allows Nick access to his computer.  This makes Kevin very nervous and he runs to his desk, no doubt to delete stuff.  Alas, he is too late; Nick informs Kevin that he already got to his computer.  This is an interesting throwback to E-mail Surveillance from Season 2, when Kevin says he has to delete a lot of stuff.  It kind of makes you wonder what exactly Kevin is hiding on his computer; probably porn.

All fingers point to Andy who had been complaining about the faulty printers, but when Michael confronts him, he insists he didn’t do it.  Andy has a TH where he explains that the Bernard’s silence whistleblowers which is how they made their money (I can’t really figure out how that makes any sense).  He claims that folk singer Woody Guthrie even wrote a song about his family.  I did a Google search and could find no such song.  I guess it wasn’t quite as popular as This Land is Your Land.

To take the heat off himself, Andy suggests that Michael talk to Darryl; since he was just as upset about the situation as Andy was.  Michael glances across the office to his grand master pumpkin who is sitting quietly in his office.  Michael has a chat with Darryl who reveals that he may have mentioned the faulty printers to a honey he met at a bar, but he didn’t know at the time that she was a copy editor at The Scranton Tribune. Michael is beside himself.  We all know that he considers Darryl his main Bro.  Although it was an inadvertent slip Darryl will probably lose his job, which is, in Michael’s opinion, poetic justice.

Jo is meeting with Toby, who she knows didn’t do anything wrong except for write what seems to be the beginning of a pretty good mystery novel and she can’t help but offer her opinion.  Toby has a great line here, “Write your own damn novel.”  But of course, he only says that to the camera, not to Jo’s face.

Jim and Pam have a cute little scene in the stairwell together where Pam confides in Jim that she thinks that she is the whistleblower.  She explains that she was talking to this woman at day care who was telling her all about her amazing trip to Vietnam, and Pam has nothing to counter that so she lets it slip that their printers catch on fire.  Ironically, this woman’s husband is a reporter.  Oh, what to do?  Pam wants to turn herself in, but Jim wisely talks her out of that one.  This is the only JAM moment we get in the episode.  Pam decides to confide in Michael who is astonished; his mind is running a mile an hour.  He glances over at Darryl and then back to Pam.  He says that he can’t believe he’s dealing with two whistleblowers and always thought that Pam or Darryl would get him fired over something he said.

He tells Pam, through some weird charade motions, to meet him in Meredith’s van in 5 minutes to brainstorm.  They are joined by Darryl and Kelly who also thinks she’s the leak.  She explains that she can’t be responsible for what she says since she spends the whole day talking.  She says she video chats, Tweets, Skypes, texts, phones and Woofs.  Ryan has a weird little scene explaining that he invented Woof to be the last stop in social networking and he’s launching the site.  It links all your communication methods so you’re always within reach.  He demonstrates by sending himself a Woof, which is part of the “Dog Pack”, whatever that is; probably just the latest Ryan scheme.  They decide that Michael will have to convince Jo to go easy on them and then they’ll all confess once they know their jobs are safe.  I don’t know if putting all their eggs in Michael’s basket was the right choice, but it seems they have very few options.

When Jo meets with Dwight, they discuss what he’s been doing with all the money he’s been making.  It seems that Dwight is having an excellent year and Jo suggests he invest in real estate.  He has a broker working on some deals and gets a phone call while helping Toby retrieve a stuck item from the vending machine.  He leaves Toby to hold up the giant machine alone as he takes the call from his broker.  The look that Toby gives the camera as he is overpowered by the machine is just classic; I hope he wasn’t crushed.

Michael goes to Jo to discuss going easy on the whistleblower as promised.  Of course Jo sees right through him and tries to get him to tell her what he knows.  He gives her the silent treatment and she’s at her wits end.  The only one she succeeds in getting to speak is one of her dogs.  She has Michael follow her out of the office and drives away with Michael in her SUV.  They come to a private airport called Castle of Cooke (I’m sure Bob will let us know if that’s a real Scranton airport or not).  She has her private plane parked there; which is no doubt how she traveled to Scranton in the first place.  A big business tycoon like Jo Bennett would never fly commercial.

Back at the office parking lot, Dwight is on the phone with his broker finalizing the details of the property he’s about to buy when a look of overwhelming realization forms on his face while looking at the Scranton Business Park sign.  He immediately tells his broker to table the deal and make an offer at 1725 Slough Avenue.  Dwight wants to buy the Business Park.

Upstairs, Gabe is concluding the investigation in Jo’s absence.  Creed has one of his fabulously funny lines as he tells Gabe in true Creed fashion, “I’m very relieved to learn it wasn’t you.”  It just wouldn’t be an Office episode without a good Creed line.  Gabe announces that Andy is the culprit and Andy objects.  He wants to know what Gabe based his decision on and reminds him that he informed Gabe about the printer defect weeks ago and it could very well be Gabe himself.  The rest of the Office comes to Andy’s defense saying that they don’t know definitively that it was Andy.  They continue to discuss the possibilities as the camera cuts to— wait for it —- none other than David Wallace.  For those who feared we’d never see Andy Buckley on the show again, there he sits on his back porch, his dog perched next to him, sporting a yellow “Suck It” sweat shirt.  He says that he may have heard from an old client and he may have immediately started spreading the news to other clients and potential clients.  So here we have yet another whistleblower.  But he doesn’t take the credit for talking to the press, he just wants to talk about his invention, “Suck It”, but the camera cuts him off and goes back to the office mates who are still debating just as Nick the IT guy enters the room and interrupts the meeting.  He makes an announcement that through the organization Teach for America, he is going to Detroit to teach inner city kids about computers.  Hey, I’m from Detroit, we’re not all underprivileged you know.  No one seems to care that Nick is leaving; they can’t even remember his name.  Phyllis thinks his name is Shadow and everyone calls him Man, Champ, Sport or Lurch.  Nick gets frustrated and starts spilling the beans about what he’s found on everyone’s computer; which goes back to Dwight’s saying, “Information is power.”  Nick has certainly got the power as he reveals that Ryan isn’t really a photographer, Kelli has never really been a size 2 and Darryl is actually on Facebook, even though he tells everyone he’s not.  Then he points to Andy and says that he’s the whistleblower.  He sent an e-mail to the editor and Nick also found a quick time video of Andy’s little printer experiment.  He flips everyone the bird and storms out.  So even though Gabe had no hard evidence before, he does now.  Andy is confirmed to be the real whistleblower. 

Michael is seated on Jo’s plane. He seems nervous but Jo strikes up a friendly conversation about Michael’s life, saying that he doesn’t seem like his usual self.  Michael opens up to Jo about how it hasn’t been a good year for him.  His favorite restaurant closed down, his Blockbuster stock is down and he misses Holly.  When Jo asks him who Holly is, he tells her she was the best HR rep that Dunder Mifflin had ever seen and she is at the Nashua branch.

Jo confides in Michael that she hates that she sells cheap printers.  She always dreamed of breaking the glass ceiling and opening the door for other business minded little girls; and they’d make a Barbie out of her.  But if she has to make a public apology/recall statement, that’s all she’ll be remembered for and no one will want to play with her Barbie; poor Jo. L  Michael promptly volunteers to read the apology statement for her and after yet another bad Airplane joke, Jo agrees to have him read the statement.

In the next scene, we see Michael reading a statement of apology in front of a group of reporters.  Both he and Joe are pleased with the outcome.  Andy, however, is not fairing quite as well.  His bag has been put up into the ceiling as retaliation from his fellow co-workers.  In a talking head, he tries to explain that he thought he was doing the right thing.  He didn’t want schools and homes to burn down.  However, he seems to be in the minority opinion.  It doesn’t look as though he’ll be getting fired over it though.  As he is standing on his desk retrieving his bag from the ceiling, Erin comes over and puts a hand on his leg.  She tells him that she thought it was brave of him to go to the press.  He doesn’t give her much of a response, but as he’s walking away, we see a big grin forming on his face.  Could there be hope for this relationship after all?  We’ll have to wait until next season to find out.

As Jo departs, she pokes her head into Michael’s office to thank him and say good-bye.  She tells him that she hopes things start to look up for him and to let her know if there’s anything she can do to brighten his life (I just love all her southern terminology).  He replies by saying that she can transfer Holly back from Nashua.  Joe agrees to see what she can do.  And so closes Season 6 of The Office. 

Will Holly return to Scranton for what is rumored to be the final season?  Will Michael finally be reunited with “The One” and settle down once and for all?  Will Andy and Erin get back together? What will life for the Office mates be like under the ownership of Dwight K. Schrute?  All these questions and more will be answered when the show resumes in the fall.  We’ll see you in September kids.

~Peace out~