The Office, Episode 12 Review (Did I Stutter?), And More Proof That the BCS is Full of BS
No quick-hitters, as I still have a headache. Let’s get to it:
- Tonight’s Office started out pretty slowly, but when it got going, it really got going! Tonight, we got the prototypical “storyline” episode; tonight’s episode wasn’t over-the-top funny, but it served its purpose to further a number of existing storylines, and may possibly lay the framework for future episodes. Look what we discovered from tonight’s episode alone!
(BTW, I loved the whole opening scene. Would it have been too rated-R for someone to suggest that Michael put an impression of something else into the cement? Why did Oscar waste his time trying to convince Michael that an impression of his face didn’t seem safe?) And why didn’t Michael’s head get kinda stuck in the cement? That would have been hilarious, in a morbid way…
We know Ryan has issues with Jim for Jim’s interaction with David Wallace, and now we know that Toby hates Jim for his relationship with Pam. Is Jim’s job possibly at risk? Perhaps Jim will be demoted, and Dwight will be promoted to the real #2 and not the #2 in his mind only. Or perhaps Jim will get fed up with the negativity towards him, and he has to choose between keeping his position with the company and staying close to his girlfriend. We’ve got Dwight already against Jim, and now Ryan and Toby…Andy, logically, has to be next to attack Jim, right, perhaps with a little prodding from Angela?
By the way, Toby, what happened to going to Costa Rica? Couldn’t afford the plane ticket? And Pam’s blind as a bat sans corrective lenses, eh? You just knew there were going to be some inappropriate comments made to Pam by the men of the Office (namely, Kevin and Creed). As far as the main storyline of the episode is concerned…
Also, did anyone notice that, on the company hierarchy chart that Dwight has—why he has one is a completely different story—Dwight’s name is just slightly above Jim’s?
EDIT: If you look carefully at the office hierarchy, you’ll see the following (I nearly spit water all over my laptop when I first noticed this):
- Above Dwight’s name are the words “Original Assistant Regional Manager.” Over Jim’s name are the words “Assistant Regional Manager.”
- Creed’s name (Creed Bratton) is in quotes.
- All the females in the office have the female symbol next to their names. Next to Oscar’s name is two male symbols. Next to each female is a moon symbol (quarter moon, half moon, etc.), presumably to indicate their “time” of the month. Phyllis’ and Meredith’s symbols are crossed out, for obvious reasons.
- The members of the Party Planning Committee are indicated in purple.
- Toby’s name has the Star of David next to it. Kevin’s name has a shamrock next to it.
- Next to Andy’s name is a Chess pawn is the image of a college graduate (did nobody else in the office graduate college?). Next to Darryl and Stanley’s names are a symbol that I can’t quite make out, but I presume they are an indication that these two are black. EDIT: Krunk said the image appears to be a fist. A sign of “Black Power,” perhaps?
- Devon (the guy who got fired in Halloween) has his name crossed out.
Speaking of Andy, who didn’t see Dwight doing something with Andy’s car to upset him? I gotta take down a transcript of what Dwight did to persuade Andy to sell his car for cheap, and try that out at a used car dealership 
Finally! Someone grew a pair and called Michael out! Too bad it was Stanley; I would have loved to see a partially-drunk Meredith do it instead. Then again, it was awesome to see Stanley finally get more than a couple lines in an episode, and the tension between the two of them was great. It came as a pleasant surprise to me that Michael finally figured out that he was the authority figure of the office, and expected Stanley to treat him with some respect. And I loved the end of the episode, where Phyllis called Michael’s “summer Christmas” plan the worst thing she’s ever heard of, only to have Michael clear the room of everyone but himself and her.
If only I didn’t have to endure Michael butchering the series of jokes in the final talking head segment.
Favorite moments (coming soon…):
- Oscar: “Michael…that doesn’t seem…safe (rolls eyes, as if to remind himself who he’s talking to)”
- Pam: “Yeah…I slept over at a friend’s house, and…I forgot my contact lens solution, so I had to wear my backup glasses. Shut up!” (No comment.)
- Michael: “Pam, those make you look so ugly. In order to get hotter, you take the glasses off. You’re moving in the wrong direction.”
- Jim’s second fake proposal. Much funnier than the first one.
- Jim’s one-up on Andy’s idea for a new outgoing voicemail message. That had a bit of Dwight in it.
- Andy: “You meet a lot of ladies driving an Xterra, because…you pull up to a stop light, and look over, and there’s an Xterra next to you, they’re always driven by chicks. So there’s your ice breaker.” OK…
- Michael: “What’s the pink?” Dwight: “Menstrual cycles.” (see above)
- Kevin: “All the girlfriends that I’ve ever had have worn glasses. It’s kinda a turn on for me…like librarians…could you just say ‘These are due back Thursday’?” Creeeeeeeeeeepy…
- Creed: “I’d like to put the piano in front of Pam, without her glasses, and see what happens. I’d also like to see her topless.” LOL!
- Michael: “I would have never thought that gangs would be tickling each other.”
- Michael: “It’s the only possible solution I have left.” Toby: “Well, you can actually fire him.” Michael: “Ok…I’ve had enough of you.” Poor Toby
- Stanley: “Are you serious?” Michael: “I am serious…we are all serious. You are fired like a heart attack.” I swear I knew Michael was going to screw up this line!
- Michael: “Why don’t they just make the plane out of the airline food?” See above.
- Raise your hand if you were surprised that the B(S)CS rejected a plan to have a four-team playoff to crown an NCAA football champion every year. Apparently, not determining a champion on the field, according to these clowns, is the best way to determine a champion. Using arbitrary computer numbers and “try to be as unbiased as possible” football writers, these clowns would like us to believe, is the best way to determine a champion. According to Big 12 commish Dan Beebe,
“Even though we could construct barriers at this time, we felt like … there could be easily an errosion of that; more pressure to add more teams with an ability to get to the national championship game as we went over time. The system is under a lot of scrutiny that can result in pressure to add games. Our league is not favorable to a playoff system as a whole, and viewed this as the first step in that direction.”
Let me summarize: a four-team, plus-one playoff system would shaft team #5. If the playoffs were expanded to eight, team #9 would get shafted. Also, the B(S)CS would also like us fans to understand that adding additional games adds additional stress onto the students, both physically and academically. However, nobody seems to complain when NCAA basketball players have to spend up to three weeks outside of the classroom. The B(S)CS believes that players already play too many games; I didn’t hear anyone complaining when teams started adding a 12th game to their schedules.
I love this quote:
“We have decided that because we feel at this time the BCS is in an unprecedented state of health, we feel it’s never been healthier during its first decade, we have made a decision to move forward in the next cycle with the current format,” ACC commissioner and BCS coordinator John Swofford said.
By “unprecedented state of health,” these people are referring to their bank accounts, if that wasn’t painfully clear. I say, if we’re going to use an arbitrary system of picking the two teams to play in the National Championship game, we should be allowed to vote American Idol style.
Vote 1-800-BCS-0001 for USC, or text message BCS01 for USC! Standard text messaging rates apply!
American Idol-style voting can’t be any worse than what we currently have, right?