Top o’ the Mornin’ to ya, LITO readers! Sure and begorra, it’s St. Patrick’s Day in Scranton. Michael comes into the office and gleefully grabs some green M&M’s from Erin’s festive reception desk. He exclaims, “Green M&M’s?! Nature’s viagra!” Everyone seems to be a good mood. The camera pans around the office to show that mostly all (except Angela) are smiling and a wearin’ o’ the green. Kelly and Ryan walk by, they’re arguing about going to a St. Patrick’s day party after work. Meredith, looking so pretty in her green dress, interupts them and tells them to stop fighting. She says, “Don’t fight today. There is just one perfect day a year. There’s no hassles, no problems, no kids.” Ryan questions her, “Why no kids?” Kelly chimes in, “Yeah, where are your kids?!” Meredith gets upset, “Nope! Nuh-uh! Not TODAY!” and she stalks away. I guess in the world of an alcoholic (Meredith), there is no greater day than St. Patrick’s Day, where drunken debauchery is not only accepted but is encouraged? The only question is…what did she do with her kids?!

Michael explains this St. Patrick’s Day fevor in a talking head. “Here in Scranton, St. Patrick’s Day is a huge, big deal. It’s the closest the Irish will ever get to Christmas.” Huh? Well, there’s some typical Michael Scott logic for ya! Still you get his meaning. St. Patrick’s Day is a big deal where he comes from.

Camera pans to the door and in comes our favorite new dad, Jim Halpert. His co-workers greet him warmly. Then Jim sees his desk. Or actually, Dwights “Mega-Desk”. In Jim’s paternity leave absence, Dwight has taken over Jim’s desk and added it to his own, “for surveillance, gaming and business”. Jim takes all of two seconds to pull the desks apart.

Dwight is not happy! He acknowledges that he shouldn’t have gotten hooked on Mega-Desk, but now that he has, he’s unrepentant. He explains, “All I care about is Mega-Desk”. (more…)

It’s been 19 hours since they arrived at the hospital. Jim tells the camera that Pam is fully effaced and 10 inches–he means centimeters, dilated. Even though he has no idea what any of that means, he knows the baby is close. I guess Pam really could have waited until midnight. He is informed by the nurse that Pam is ready to push, so he goes into the room to assist her. Meanwhile, Michael comes in with a huge pink balloon bouquet and quickly enters Pam’s room without warning or knocking. We hear Pam screaming and Michael promptly leaves the room, turning a little white and horrified at what he has seen. I imagine it must have been a bit like the birthing scene in Knocked Up, when Seth Rogen’s friend goes in to see if he can help and the baby is crowning. I suppose that would have been a bit too graphic for network TV. He promptly reports to the camera that he has to go wash his eyes. (more…)

“Robert’s Recap” has a nice alliterative “ring” to it, don’t you think? Also, I figured it sounded really good, almost a rhyming phrase, as “Sabre” ~ Robert’s Recap… until I found out the name was pronounced “SAY-br,” not “SAH-brah.” That kind of threw me off my game for a little while. But as a professional recapper with a responsibility to our LITO constituents, I decided to get right back up on the horse and ride this recap home. (more…)

Hmmm… “The Banker”, where to begin? I hadn’t read anything on this new episode before viewing it, so I took a moment right before it started to at least see what the caption was. Here it is, in case you missed it:

“When a potential buyer arrives at Dunder Mifflin, Michael, Dwight, Andy & Pam team up to win his favor by highlighting their top-drawer contacts. Meanwhile, Michael reflects on memorable moments at the office.”

Now, it’s the last sentence of the above caption that is important here. When I read this, it didn’t dawn on me that they were talking about an old-fashioned clip show! (more…)

Good evening fellow LITO-ites! As I prepare to write the recap for last night’s episode, “Murder” on this unlucky Friday the 13th my Jersey shore town is being deluged with tidal flooding and blown-away with gale force winds. Things are so bad here that they closed the local schools for the day! Crazy. Lucky for me, we live in a high-ground area of the city. Unlucky for me, my three young children are running around my house like looney-toons driving me up a wall. Oh well. Hopefully this Friday the 13th finds you all in a luckier situation than I am. Or if not, feel free to share your tale of woe in the comments section. Onto last nights episode, “Murder”.

The Cold-Open shows Dwight demonstrating his martial arts skills in the office. Why? Once a year they allow Dwight to hold a seminar to explain the latest changes and techniques in martial arts to the staff. Again…why?! As Jim explains it with his trademark sarcasm, “the one thing that 1000 year old martial arts are known to do is…change“. (more…)

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+.

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Office fans, I ask you, how do you top the JAM wedding episode? Well…you don’t! But “Mafia” holds it’s own considering the episode it had to follow.

“Mafia” starts off in the conference room. Michael is lecturing the staff about the fundamentals of business. You have to be “mental” (get it? fun-da-”mental”?) not to like the strategies Michael has come up with. He begins to list his strategies. #1. Handshake #2. Small Talk, etc…To help illustrate his point, Michael asks his staff for examples on how to best make small talk. “Ask a client about their weekend” is mentioned. Great example, Michael praises! He then looks to Meredith to play the client in his example scenario and asks her about her weekend. I was excited he picked Meredith for this. We don’t often get to hear about her personal life and whenever we do, it’s always a doozy! This time is no exception. She tells her co-workers how she found her son “taking a dump” in the top of their toilet tank. She said he calls it an “upper-decker”. ha ha & eww! Talk about TMI! Just another fun-filled day in poor Meredith’s world I guess. No wonder she told Pam she’d hate being a mom! (more…)

First off, I want to thank Donna and Bob for saving me and working on the beginning of this re-cap.  Unfortunately, I missed the first 15 minutes of the show and since I have no recording device, Donna stepped in and really helped me out by writing the beginning and Bob reviewed it and made some critiques, so this recap is really a joint effort.  This was a truly amazing episode that had a little bit of everything and everyone in it.  There’s a lot to cover so let’s get to it. 

Cold Opening: Pam and Jim are standing in the office speaking to their co-workers (who are sitting at their desks) as a team. They’re respectfully asking everyone if they could please tone down their strong, sharp smells. For example, Phyllis’s strong soap and Dwight’s stinky lunches. It seems Pam has been very nauseous during her pregnancy and she’s constantly getting sick at work. So, they thought if they asked everyone to “tone it down” she would be sick at work less often. Unfortunately, everyone does not agree! Meredith sees no reason that she shouldn’t continue to enjoy her cigars after lunch, and Dwight is appalled. Why shouldn’t he peel and eat his hard-boiled eggs at his desk? Is it his fault Pam’s pregnant? He thinks not! Next we see Dwight eating a hard boiled egg at his desk and basically rubbing it in Pam’s face. Pam, unperturbed, grabs her trash can and vomits. Next we see Andy lurching. In a talking head he explains that seeing someone else vomit, makes him vomit. In fact, just talking about vomit, makes him want to vomit. So, poor Andy vomits in his desk trash can. This starts off a chain reaction of everyone throwing up in their trash cans. Dwight, holding his egg, looks around at everyone a bit guilty for the chaos he’s caused. Pam just wipes her mouth with her napkin, and looks at Dwight smugly.

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So here we are folks, the premiere of season 6 of The Office. I’ll admit, I was nervous after last season’s finale. Pam pregnant? It smacked of desperation to me. Almost as if the writers didn’t know where to go with the story anymore and decided to go the route of so many sitcoms before ~ marriage & baby. And I’m fine with that…really. The idea of JAM babies makes me warm and fuzzy inside. However, being a fan of tv, I was worried that this plot twist would be the beginning of the end for our beloved show. Once you get into marriage & baby territory, the show usually loses it’s magic. And let’s face it, a big part of the show is the JAM magic. Albeit, it’s not the whole of the show. But, in a show featuring superb characters and spot-on comedy, it’s the JAM relationship that had me glued to my tv dying to see what would happen next for the last five seasons. That said, last night’s episode proved to me once again that The Office is sooo not your typical sitcom! I was thrilled with how they handled the pregnancy announcement. And the show itself? Superb! Ok, now let’s dissect it a bit. (more…)

I finally got a chance to catch-up on last week’s episode, “Lecture Circuit pt.2″. And, Wow! What a stinker, huh guys? I was actually surprised how bad it was. Yes, there were a few sort-of funny bits, but overall it was just not up to typical Office-standards.

The episode starts off in the break-room. Kevin is holding both and ice cream and a twin-pop. Seeing everyone giving him the “eww, you’re such a glutton” evil-eye, he feels the need to comment. “What? I didn’t eat my lunch”. Noticing the eye-rolls over that comment, he quickly edits, “I didn’t eat all my lunch.” (more…)