Random Thoughts Cooked Up While At The Laundromat, And “Crime Aid” (Office S05E04) Review
I’m sleepy—errands will do that to you!—but I’ll try to be as coherent as possible.
Random thoughts while sitting at the laundromat:
(Tangent: We go to the laundromat about once a year, and only because we had to wash our comforters. Also, we were out of quarters, so we couldn’t use the laundry rooms here in my condominium complex.)
- I had some McDonalds food today (yeah, I know), and as I was peeling out the Monopoly game pieces from my drink, a thought occured to me: what if I found a rare piece now?
(In case you didn’t know, one property of each Monopoly is much rarer than the others.)
How would I complete the Monopoly? Would I have to eat a bunch more times at McDonalds to get the remaining pieces?
It didn’t dawn upon me until much, much later that I could probably find someone on a message board and ask for the remaining pieces. Then again, what if everyone there is totally heartless, and they demand half of my winnings in exchange for the non-rare pieces?
No, I did not get a rare piece.
- Hey, moron that stole the wheeled-basket-thingy I was using to empty the dryer I was using: when I push the basket-thingy towards a dryer filled with clothes, it’s probably a safe bet that I’m GOING TO USE IT!!!
You know what else might indicate that I’m going to use said basket? The fact that I grabbed some clothes from the dryer, and got ready to toss them in the general direction of where the basket should have been!
A$$hole.
- Speaking of a dryer, I’ve a question for all you loyal readers of my blog (all none of you):
You have two dryers full of clothes (A and B). The clothes in A are completely dry, and there’s about six minutes left in the cycle (one quarter = 12 minutes). The clothes in B aren’t completely dry yet, and B just ran out of time.
EDIT: Here’s some additional information to consider:
- Both dryers have the same amount of clothes in them, roughly.
- A and B are adjacent to one another; you wouldn’t have to walk halfway across the laundromat to move the clothes from one to the other.
Would you transfer the clothes from B to A, or would you shove another quarter into B?
- And finally, courtesy of my sister:
My sister ordered a Fruit n’ Yogurt Parfait from McDonalds, and when she got around to eating it, we noticed that she wasn’t given a spoon! Immediately, I noticed a restaurant right outside the laundromat, and I told her to go there and ask for a plastic spoon. Certainly the restaurant wouldn’t refuse that tiny request, right?
Hey, Miriam’s Cuisine on Sherman Way, just east of Reseda: look, we get it that the economy is slumping. We understand that small Mom & Pops are struggling to stay in business. That being said, you couldn’t spare us one plastic spoon? How much could a plastic spoon cost? A penny
(I could understand their reaction if she asked for a plastic cup, but not a spoon!)
And please don’t stare at my sister as if she was trying to rob the place, just because she was asking for a plastic spoon.
And to the guy who chimed in with “We only have silverware!”: if that were true, then why did the woman at the front say that we’d have to buy something in order to get one?
ONE FREAKING PLASTIC SPOON! Are you people kidding me??? I wonder what would have happened if I walked in with a cut on my hand, and asked for a napkin.
OK, one tacos plate, and a napkin to stop the bleeding, please! What? I have to pay first?
One plastic spoon…
- On to my late-as-usual review of Thursday’s episode of The Office:
“Crime Aid” wasn’t as bad as the second episode of the season (”Business Ethics“), but it wasn’t nearly as good as last week’s episode (”Baby Shower“). Could it be that a Michael-Holly relationship just isn’t as entertaining as a Michael-Jan relationship? Or maybe the episode needed more Jim-Pam interactions? I found it a bit hard to get into “Crime Aid” until late into the episode.
(Wouldn’t it have been funny if the writers paid homage to The Office’s Thursday night competition on CBS, CSI, by offering a scene or two where a character (ahem…Dwight) pulls out some fingerprint dust, latex gloves, and/or a blacklight? This should have happened!)
Well, the Michael-Holly relationship just hit a MAJOR snag, in the form of David Wallace. What’s next for the happy couple? Will Holly be fired over this? Will Michael actually get reprimanded? Maybe Michael can convince David that his relationship with Holly is as beneficial as Meredith’s relationship with the rep from Hammermill :P. If I had to put money on it, I’d say that Holly’s job is in trouble. Hmmm…is there anybody in the office that is qualified for a promotion to a corporate position?
I did like how Jim quickly U-turned on his way to New York. Is that a sign of Jim being secure with his relationship with Pam, or a sign of a further drift between the two of them? I’m just praying that the writers don’t use Roy as the wedge between Jim and Pam. I understand that there really isn’t another reason for bringing Roy’s character back on the show, but that’s the problem I have with Roy being the foil to the Jim-Pam relationship; it’s just too convenient and obvious. Ryan? Now that might be more fun.
By the way, I said it before, and I’ll say it again: Roy’s “Wow…I mean, you were a friend” was incredible. Roy could stop showing up on the show for the rest of the show’s run, and nothing could drive a stake further through Jim and Pam’s long-distance relationship than that single line.
I really loved the whole Phyllis-Dwight interaction throughout the episode. For a minute, I thought that Phyllis was actually going to get through to Dwight. How silly of me. I wonder how many people in the office, minus Andy, of course, doesn’t know of the Dwight-Angela shenanigans. I’m guessing that number is small enough to be counted on one hand, and if that’s the case, don’t you think someone should tell Andy?
Then again, why prematurely kill off a storyline that you know will be a winter break (if not a summer break) cliffhanger, in a season where several potential cliffhangers are possible?
(So I made this point in my running blog of “Crime Aid:”
Bob Vance just bid $1,000 for a hug from his own wife. David Wallace and Dwight both tried to outbid him for that hug.
It’s the scenes like this one that really make the show great. You all can have the scenes where Jim destroys Dwight, or the scenes where Michael does something stupid, but what really makes the show great is how personable most of the characters can be.
Let me elaborate on this point. We know that the show revolves around Michael’s idiocy, Dwight’s antics, Jim and Pam, and to a lesser extent (now), Angela and Andy. What I love equally as much about the show, though, is how the show respects the lesser characters enough to feature them in main plots during a particular episode. The second episode of the season and last season’s “Did I Stutter?” immediately come to mind. More importantly, it can be argued that the lesser characters are just as important to the success of the show as the main characters.
“Crime Aid” revolves around Michael trying to raise funds to replace stuff that was stolen from the office via an auction that, on the surface, sounds like something nobody would ever want to take part in. However, look at the scene where Bob Vance gets in a bidding war with David Wallace and Dwight over a hug from his own wife. Jim excepted (LOL), it sure looks like several people wanted to be at the auction by the end of the episode.
When I described most of the characters as “personable,” I mean that they are entertaining, and more importantly, they are engaging; you want to see what happens to them, because you know of their importance to the atmosphere of the office.
I’ve written the last three paragraphs over about 50 times, and I am still not sure if I got my point across :P.)
Until next time!