FinkPish

Thinking about it (or, in that case, not really thinking about it) and actually doing it are very different.

musick

Darryl Philbin: We do safety training every year. Or after an accident. We've never made it a full year. This particular time, I was reaching for a supply box on the top shelf, when one office worker, who shall remain nameless, kicked the ladder out from under me and yelled ...
[Michael enters warehouse and approaches Darryl on ladder]
Michael Scott: [laughing hysterically] Hey Darryl, how's it hangin'?

FinkPish

Oh right, forgot about that one, since we only hear about it.

Jimmy James

That's Michael doing something to make a joke. Frankly, I think that's in character. He'd recklessly kill somebody to make a joke. I don't think he'd do the same to make a point, though.

Amel

Not too much to say except that the show is starting to lose me. I don't like the hour long episodes, they seem to run out of gas. Michael's still too much of an ass - it's just too unbelievable that he'd still have a job. They just don't have the balance right for me.

Toby, Creed, and Kelly were great again last night.

I must be forgetting something about Ryan & Pam, did he show interest in her before last night? At least then it would make sense that he'd ask her out.

Goat3001

Every guy seemed to want to do Pam. IIRC, Ryan hadn't really mentioned it before like Toby and Kevin have.

The reason he asked her out was because Ryan is now a suit and thinks he's the man.

calhoun07

Ok, I agree with the psychopath part. I was struggling to find the exact word but it would not come to me.

And I don't see how he endangered Dwight's life. They clearly drove into a shallow lake, and the comedy of it all was enhanced when it was shown all they had to do was stand up to walk out of the lake instead of that display of not being able to swim very well.

maingon

wow. I dont see this show loosing me, to me its the greatest show, I love it, last 2 episodes have been pretty good. I laugh every season, you get people on these boards no matter the show saying the same thing and how they are gonna stop watching.

maingon

seeing this reminds me of this, cracks me up just thinking about it

"Darryl: We do safety training every year. Or after an accident. We’ve never made it a full year. This particular time, I was reaching for a supply box on the top shelf, when one office worker, who shall remain nameless, kicked the ladder out from under me and yelled …
Michael: “Hey Darryl, how’s it hangin’?”"

maingon

the office ratings are pretty good


"“The Office” garnered 8.49 million viewers and a 4.5/11 in the adults 18-49 demo. The Office was the highest rated NBC show in the demo for the night (lead-in Earl/30 Rock at 3.4 each; ER at 3.7). In terms of scripted programming on NBC, “The Office” ties “Law and Order: SVU” as the second highest rated show in the demo for the week, behind only “Heroes” (5.5)."

musick

surprised no one mentioned the great line about buying a gift basket online

invisiblegt

He smells like I think Pierce Brosnan would smell...

dhmac

I'm always impressed by how The Office always has great Deleted Scenes.

(IMO, the "hour-long" episodes this season weren't too long - they were too short because I want these deleted scenes back in!)

SexualPudding

It was definitely a set up. If you remember, Ryan took a quick glance at the mock ups she had done and acted all excited about them, and then once she denied him, he goes "oh...ok...well uhh let me take a look at these then."

Jimmy James

I don't think the issue with these hour episodes is a scene to scene lack of funny -- it's that too little of substance is actually happening in the episodes. There is plenty of good scene, but not enough is happening to justify a whole hour. I think this also explains why not everybody is bugged by it -- it you're satisfied by a collection of scenes and aren't necessarily looking for plot, you might not care as much. It's a personal preference thing.

Roto

Halfway through this thread and this has been said twice already. Go watch season one. He was that stupid then.

I tend to agree that he drove into the lake intentionally to make his point.

Jack Straw

The two deleted scenes that are up now are very funny and should have been included at the expense of something else.

Mad Dawg

It's not really a big deal to me in the grand scheme, since I enjoyed the vast majority of the show and don't think it's jumped the shark or anything. But at the end of the day, no matter WHY Michael drove into the lake, it just wasn't funny.

SFranke

There is really no reason Michael still has a job. The show is that there was never offered an explanation as to why Michael was still RM, other than his great salesman abilities. Ryan, who knows first hand Michael's incompetence and now has some power to do something about it, will probably make every effort to dismiss Michael. Although he can't outwit Ryan on his own, Michael has Jan, who understand corporate culture and can help him maintain control of the branch, in his corner .

South Park this week has a self-referential moment where Cartman said that he would go on TV and say horrible things, especially about Jews, and the world would call him brave and probably give him an Emmy. The Office had a similar moment, where Jim asked if "the magic" was gone between them, and Pam says no. Both were right.

orangecrush

I really enjoyed the episode. The look on the lawyers face when Michael mentioned his daughter's alergy had me laughing a lot for some reason.

Doughboy

The hour long episodes do tend to drag, but it's not like the show isn't still very funny. The problem with the extended episodes is that there are more dead spots.

I thought Jim's fake conversation with Pam about how the thrill is gone now that they're officially together was a nice jab at fans and critics who think the two of them hooking up is a "jump the shark" moment.

And speaking of "jump the shark", I agree with the WTF sentiment about Michael driving into the lake. He's always done dumb things before, like proposing to Carol after 9 dates last season. But this was beyond even his level of stupidity. A scene like that belongs in Police Academy 3, not The Office.

Brian Gentz

I haven't read through the entire thread, but I have a theory that Michael knowingly drove into the lake so that he could go back to Ryan and tell him that technology isn't always the answer. He had just seen the one guy tell him that the website idea could bring him back, so he needed to try and have something against technology.

Jimmy James

If you really care about that issue, I think you need to go ahead and read the thread. A lot of it deals with this. I'm going to respond and break a little new ground, though.

Even if we accept that Michael is depraved enough to do what you propose, in what way does driving his car into a lake make this a better point for him than just reporting to Ryan (and getting Dwight to confirm) that the GPS told him to drive the car into the lake but he was smart enough not to do it? That's the far better rhetorical point, isn't it? Even getting out of the car, jumping into the lake, and lying about doing it would have been the better path.

Brian Gentz

because it wasn't his car, it was rental?

More than likely it just made for a funny visual.

cdollaz

I completely disagree. There is as much, if not more, substance and plot in these first 2 episodes as there have been throughout the series. Relationships forming and breaking. New boss/subordinates interaction. An employee getting hit by a car. How much plot was there on The Dundies, or The Injury, or Basketball? None, really, and those are considered some of the best episodes in the series.