You know what they say: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. I wasn’t exactly sure where tonight’s episode of The Office was headed. Jim and Dwight both performed surprisingly poorly on their customer survey ratings. It wouldn’t be hard to understand why things may have taken a turn for the worse in their job performances. After all, Jim has been caught up in his relationship with Pam all year and Dwight’s been less than pleasant (even more than usual) since Angela and Andy got engaged. Still, it seemed somewhat out of character that both would allow their personal lives to affect their work to such a great degree.
As the results of the customer surveys affect their bonuses, Jim was very disappointed to learn that he didn’t do well. Dwight’s never been one to worry about money, what with the lucrative beet market (I’m guessing) but we all know he never likes to underperform. He was convinced that something sinister was in the works and refused to believe that his customers would consider him to be too aggressive. All the same, Michael pulled both Jim and Dwight aside to give them a training course on dealing with sales calls. Their little mock-sales-call went nowhere of course but the word butt-licker was thrown around quite a bit so that was good for some laughs there.
While it was Dwight who was convinced that the results were false, it was Jim who solved the mystery, almost by accident. He noticed that almost everyone in the office had mugs with their faces on them. Ryan revealed to Jim that these mugs were party favors from Kelly’s America’s Got Talent finale party; a party that neither Jim nor Dwight attended. Kelly was apparently unhappy that Dwight and Jim snubbed her and has been holding a grudge against them since. She bided her time and when the opportunity struck, she forged their survey results.
When Jim and Dwight confronted her in front of Michael, Kelly tried to use the “I was raped” excuse, which is apparently her fallback line for when she’s in trouble. Michael excused Jim and Dwight and instead of firing Kelly, told her that he knows how it feels when you throw a party and people don’t show up. The gallons of leftover guacamole Michael’s consumed over the years has given him a bit of a soft-side when it comes to this sort of thing. So he told Kelly to pretend to cry and he won’t punish her.
While that was going on, Angela told Andy, who recently acquired the perfect rental tent for their wedding, that she dreams of getting married in a field, near a barn where you can see the stars through the roof. We of course know that she’s referring to Schrute farm but she let Andy “discover” the location for himself. Andy and Angela sat with Dwight to let him pitch his farm as a possible location for their wedding. He showed them an album full of old (very old) wedding photos and looking Angela in straight in the eye, said that he’d give her the perfect wedding. Andy was as always, oblivious to the connection between Dwight and Angela but we all know that this new development in the Bernard wedding plans will surely close some of the gap between Dwight and Angela.
Jim and Pam spent the entire day in contact via the world’s tiniest blue-tooth earpiece (how many minutes do they have on their cell phone plans?!). This allowed them to go about their day at work as usual without their coworkers realizing they were on an eight-hour personal call. While Jim muttered to Pam on occasion, confusing and frustrating Dwight, the day-long phone call didn’t amount to much until the end of the episode.
Pam’s friend Alex showed up at the corporate office to invite her to a wine and cheese thing at some art gallery. While Jim was listening in, Alex also attempted to sway Pam to stay in New York. At first it seemed like he was just trying to keep her around because he likes her and that may be the case but his argument about her sticking around to work on her art and not wanting her to regret the decision years from now was a good one. Jim seemed to understand the argument as well. The problem on his end is that not only is he in Scranton but he’s also trying to buy his parents house. Pam doesn’t know that yet. It should be interesting to see how this all plays out.
